18 posts tagged "Wella"
One—Make That Two—For The Boys
As previously noted, skirting the masculine/feminine divide was the lasting beauty impression at the Fall shows, with big, bushy brows and even makeshift sideburns turning up from New York to Paris. The trend was realized most visibly (and readily) through ubiquitous quiffs—free-flowing top sections of hair that were spiked up and combed back over slicked-back sides, and twisted-up back sections at shows like Rochas and Dolce & Gabbana. Runway only? Not hardly. Magazines are rushing to embrace the look, too, and this month alone we’ve spotted the backstage style made popular by Wella global creative director Eugene Souleiman, Redken creative consultant Guido Palau, and coiffing star Luke Hersheson on Laura Blokhina in Elle Denmark and on Kim Noorda in Vogue Taiwan. While Blokhina’s hair is already quite short, which made creating variance between voluminous and flat planes a relatively simple endeavor, hairstylist Marie Thomsen had her work cut out for her with Noorda’s mid-back-grazing strands. When working with longer locks, it’s essential to create a sharp part to separate the sides from the top and press generous amounts of styling wax, like Redken’s Structure Wax 17, into hair before fastening your twist in the back. Think of it like sporting 2009′s side-shave without the permanence of actually applying razor to scalp. What do you think of these gender-bending styles?
Better Off Blonde Or Brunette?
In the latest issue of Vogue Italia, Amber Valletta grapples with the modeling establishment’s current dilemma and a question that has divided mankind since the dawn of peroxide: blonde or brunette? Both, we’d argue, considering how well the nineties super is pulling them off. In an interesting bit of foreshadowing, Ms. Valletta swaps Spring’s seventies-inspired, middle-parted strands and big frizzy manes in favor of Fall’s nod to the sixties, sporting in one photo an icy, voluminous, Hitchcockian set, and in the other a raven-hued architectural motif preferred by Vidal Sassoon and his cohorts. The styling magic on display was made possible by the teamwork of Eugene Souleiman for Wella Professionals and colorist Josh Wood, the latter of whom wowed us at Jean Paul Gaultier, where his mastery of the gray scale made Guido Palau’s bourgeois beehives that much more of a spectacle. Requisite, decade-appropriate eyeliner and lots and lots of lashes courtesy of Chanel’s Peter Philips also abound in these Amber pics. So, what say you: Does platinum prevail, or have you fallen victim to the dark arts?
The Bold And The Beautiful, Backstage At Kenzo
More often than not this season, we have heard the words “She’s a strong woman” uttered backstage by hair and makeup pros to explain beauty looks from New York to Paris. To wit, Fall’s full, boyish brow has been everywhere, often complemented by contoured cheeks and sleek, barbershop coifs to complete the vision of a girl who embodies beauty because of her disregard for its conventions. And so it went at Kenzo, where makeup artist Tom Pecheux had two specific defiant muses in mind, Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe. “Not so much their work, but the kind of women they are—powerful with a strong mind but at the same time sophisticated,” Pecheux explained, making a point to disregard the obvious references. (“We’re not doing unibrows,” he quipped.) He was, however, applying pigment and powders “not like makeup, but like an emotion.” Translation: blending everything with fingers instead of brushes, for a smudged, lived-in effect that included a wash of MAC Cream Colour Base in Khaki on lids and below the lower lash line and its Eye Pencil in Taupe, drawn in between individual lashes for definition without the use of mascara. Mouths were covered with MAC Lip Pencil in Bordeaux Line, a dark berry, which was jostled to blur any lines. “A perfect purple lip would translate with too much attitude,” Pecheux explained. “Here, it’s more about inner beauty.”
Wella global creative director Eugene Souleiman added Hailee Steinfeld to the inspirational mix. “They’re Amish/True Grit braids,” he said of the “ornate and arid” plaits he was creating from slicked-back sides, crossing one over the other and sewing (yes, sewing) them together below the napes of models’ necks before fastening them into a fluid loop with more needle-and-twine action. “I wanted to mix Frida Kahlo with Diego Rivera,” Souleiman said of the overall style, which included a mannish quiff above the hairline that was prepped with Wella Ocean Spritz for a matte texture and left hanging toward the back in a long tuft. For a finishing touch, a few girls had flower bouquets woven through their hair.
As models lined up for their first looks, we couldn’t help but notice that they all bore a striking resemblance to Arizona Muse, whose bushy arches and chiseled, androgynous features may as well have inspired the look. Muse didn’t need any help from pencils or powders, though, of course. ” I do them myself,” she revealed of her well-groomed brows, removing her headphones to chat. (On her iPod: Florence and the Machine’s Lungs.) The runway star did reveal that she too has struggled with over-plucking at one point in her life. “I recently saw a picture of myself when I was 14. It was awful!” She currently only plucks to clean up strays. Let that be lesson to the tweezer-happy among you.
“Redefining Chic,” Backstage at Rochas
“It is winter,” Wella global creative director Eugene Souleiman quipped backstage at Rochas, where he was fashioning yet another “handsome,” masculine-inspired hairdo to add to his growing Fall repertoire. (Souleiman has been one of the coiffeurs responsible for the trend’s ascendance, giving it a similar spotlight at both Narciso Rodriguez and Missoni.) But cold, harsh weather aside, Souleiman had another suggestion as to why much of the hair establishment has shied away from pretty this season. “We’ve superseded the glamorous look,” he proposed. “The wind machine and the wavy hair are over. We’re redefining chic.”
To make that point all the more clear, Souleiman took his inspiration from an old post-grunge Jil Sander campaign starring Guinevere van Seenus that was hanging from Marco Zanini’s inspiration board, which manifest itself into a “front that looks like a GQ man” with a sleek updo in back. Prepping hair with Wella Perfect Setting lotion and applying heat, Souleiman coated strands in its Velvet Amplifier serum and created a deep, side-parted ridge before securing a square-shaped twist into an anchor of coiled braids.
Staying in line with Souleiman’s goal to “make chic minimal,” makeup artist Lucia Pieroni kept things simple, albeit striking. Most impressive were the full, “boyish” brows she filled in using MAC eye shadows in Omega, Copper, and Technographic. “These are the best,” she said of the powders’ blendable consistency, which allowed her to mix shades to match individual brow color and create softer lines. Also of note was the brown greasy eye she painted onto lids using the metallic coffee color from Clé de Peau’s forthcoming collection of cream eye shadows. “It’s more like shading,” she said of the light dusting of pigment she topped off with MAC clear lip gloss, which also adorned the tops of cheekbones for a sheer, dewy highlight. Lips were treated to a slathering of Homeoplasmine for a concentrated dose of hydration and then coated with Clé de Peau lipstick in T9, a peachy nude. If this is the new chic, we’re all for it.
“Handsome” Beauties Backstage At Narciso Rodriguez
Shiseido artistic director Dick Page is sporting a purple-tinged black eye at the moment, but his own shiner was not in fact the inspiration behind the similarly hued makeup backstage at Narciso Rodriguez. “We just started playing around,” Page said of the greasy, multi-dimensional lids he constructed for the occasion. “We tried something brown to begin with, but it looked naff,” so Page decided on Shiseido’s forthcoming Shimmering Cream Eye Color in Purple Dawn, which he layered with the same highly blendable luminescent pigment in Caviar, a green black. Perfect application was not on Page’s agenda. He smudged the colors together with a finger-ful of “grease” in the form of Shiseido’s Benefiance Full Correction Lip Treatment. (“We’re going to have to destroy that a bit,’ he said as an assistant brought him a model to inspect). Skin was left deliberately bare, save for concealer touch-ups as needed. “I try to not get in the way,” the face painter said of the fresh-faced girls that are still at the beginning of the fashion cycle. He has similar feelings about brows. That’s right; no bleached arches here—”It’s so tired,” Page opined of the controversial look.
Natural brows suited Wella global creative director Eugene Souleiman’s masculine, “dirty” hair just fine. “It’s not a pretty woman,” he said of the Narciso girl for Fall. “She’s more striking, handsome. She’s strong and assertive.” This mandated a “raw” coif, which Souleiman prepped with plenty of Wella Ocean Spritz texturizer, gathering hair into a ponytail and quite simply tying it in a knot. Rubbing a pomade in between his palms, Souleiman “squashed” the sides of the head for a sleek finish. “We’re celebrating imperfections,” he surmised of the look, a revelry that also included uncharacteristic castings. Androgynous stunner Jamie Bochert made her debut appearance on the Narciso runway, sporting a “strong and unusual” as-yet-unnamed gray nail lacquer, courtesy of Deborah Lippmann.