Today, he splits his time between the UK, India and Dubai, has worked with celebrities at major fashion shows and runs his own salon.
But behind the sunglasses that have become part of JJ’s image is a story few people knew.
For around 20 years, he has worn them beneath the bright lights of the hair and fashion industry. Until now, most people did not know why.
“I’m still partially sighted, and I’m sensitive to intense light,” JJ said.
“Bright lights and my eyes have an arrangement, the shades are the treaty.”
Now, for the first time, he is publicly telling the story of the years in which his sight deteriorated, his mental health collapsed and he had to build his life again from almost nothing.
It is a journey which eventually took him from earning £100 a week as he started over to working with celebrities on an international stage.
But long before hair became his profession, JJ had built an entirely different career.
He worked in the NHS, eventually heading up a learning and development team.
Then his eyesight began deteriorating.
One morning, he woke to find one eye had become “a complete blackout”, while the other was blurry.
Initially, he tried to make light of it.
“My night out wasn’t that heavy,” he remembers thinking.
An appointment with his optician, however, resulted in an urgent referral to Moorfields Eye Hospital.
JJ was diagnosed with keratoconus, a condition in which the cornea becomes distorted, causing vision to become progressively blurred.
Doctors attempted to slow the deterioration in his left eye using corneal cross-linking, but the cornea in his right eye was already too thin for the procedure.
He eventually underwent a laser-assisted corneal transplant in his right eye, restoring his vision to above the driving standard.
But his left eye continued to deteriorate and JJ later underwent a second laser-assisted transplant.
His vision was restored in one eye and stabilised in the other.
Yet the operations only tell part of what was happening to him.
As JJ’s sight deteriorated, so did the life he had built around him.
“I won’t dress up what that period was,” he said.
“I had a full mental breakdown and needed specialist support, including supported housing.
“I shut out my family and my friends. It cost me my home, my relationship at the time and my business.
“I started again with a sofa bed and government support. That was my starting line, the second time around.”
The second operation became a turning point.
“My sight came back quicker, and, for the first time in a long time, I could look forward instead of just getting through the day,” he said.
But being able to look forward presented another question: what was he going to do with the rest of his life?
All JJ knew professionally was corporate training.
The answer, however, would take him back to his childhood.
JJ’s mother had been a beautician and the salon where she worked had a barber’s shop upstairs.
As a teenager, JJ had worked there as a Saturday boy, meaning hair had quietly been part of his life long before it became his career.
Then, at one of the most uncertain periods of his life, something remarkable happened.
Someone anonymously paid for him to attend a course at the London School of Barbering.
JJ still does not know who.
“To this day, I don’t know who it was,” he said.
“Whoever you are: that gift changed everything.”
There was no instant success story waiting on the other side of the course.
JJ started again earning around £100 a week.
He was learning a new profession while also adjusting to life as a partially sighted man.
But barbering gave him a route back.
From those beginnings, JJ worked his way up through the industry, eventually styling celebrities during major fashion shows and building a career which now sees him splitting his time between India, Dubai and the UK.
He also runs a salon in Wellingborough.
And throughout that journey, the sunglasses remained.
They may have become part of his look, but JJ’s shades serve a very practical purpose.
He remains partially sighted and is sensitive to intense light, particularly challenging for somebody whose working life can involve fashion shows, photography and powerful studio lighting.
“I’ve worn them for twenty years under the brightest lights of an industry that gave me my life back,” he said.
For all those years, however, JJ rarely explained why.
“This book is the first time I’ve ever explained the sunglasses, let alone opened up about my mental health.”
His experiences now form part of his new book, POSITIONED: How barbers and hairstylists go from behind the chair to the global stage, released on 16 September.
The book is aimed at helping other barbers and hairstylists take their careers beyond the salon chair, drawing upon the lessons JJ learnt while rebuilding his own.
But it has also prompted him to talk publicly about a chapter of his life he had largely kept private.
Consultant ophthalmologist Dan Gore, who treated JJ at Moorfields Eye Hospital, said his vision was already deteriorating when he was first seen.
The femtosecond laser used during JJ’s transplant allowed surgeons to work with accuracy within a hundredth of a millimetre.
But recovery was not quick. Stitches following corneal transplants can remain in place for a year or more.
“JJ’s recovery wasn’t quick, but he’s had a great result and his vision should hold for decades to come,” Mr Gore said.
Hearing what JJ subsequently did with that opportunity has also had an impact on the surgeon who treated him.
“That an operation taking two hours can have such a dramatic effect in helping him turn his life around is really humbling to hear,” Mr Gore said.
JJ’s transplants were only possible because other people had donated their corneas after death.
For JJ, Moorfields became one part of a much bigger story about being given another opportunity at life.
“Moorfields gave me their expertise, their determination — and hope,” he said.
As a thank you, every pound of his author profit from the new book will be donated to Moorfields Eye Charity.
“Donating every pound of my author profit to Moorfields Eye Charity is the least I can do.”
Yet perhaps the most remarkable part of JJ’s story is not where his career eventually took him.
It is where the second version of his life began.
Not backstage at a fashion show. Not alongside a celebrity. Not in Dubai, India or London.
But from a sofa bed, with limited sight, government support and no certainty about what came next.
Then someone whose identity he still does not know paid for a barbering course.
JJ took the opportunity and started again.
Twenty years later, the sunglasses remain, but the life behind them looks very different.
POSITIONED: How barbers and hairstylists go from behind the chair to the global stage is released on 16 September 2026 in paperback and Kindle editions. Every pound of JJ Savani’s author profit will be donated to Moorfields Eye Charity.
Further information about the book and ordering is available at globalstylistblueprint.com/positioned.
