Bangkok--20 Feb--Arc Worldwide
P&G Beauty & Grooming, one of the leading lights in the industry, unveils the latest trend for Spring/Summer 2012 in the Beauty Debate event, an annual symposium bringing together the company’s leading scientists and lifestyle trend experts with top minds in the industry to discuss the beauty vision for the future, was held in Singapore.
Spring/Summer 12 Fashion Round up
White, pastels, tropical prints, floral, deco, tribal, metallic, Olympics, lace, film noir, Fifties — the list of fashion themes for spring summer 2012 adds up to a compelling season, rich in inspiration. It is this visual feast that is the starting point for the P&G Beauty and Grooming ambassadors to shape and interpret each designer’s themes and ideas, distilling the diverse moods of the season, translating them into relevant and desirable hair and make-up looks.
Out of such an array of trends there are clear trend predictions, as depicted already in the trends defined by the P&G Color & Fashion Forecast that were predicted 24 months previously. The ambassadors talked of ‘poetic innocence, childlike and ethereal’ as a major new mood with shows including Louis Vuitton, Chloe and Valentino embodying the P&G trend Visible Aura. As a counterpoint, strong femininity emerged too as a key theme that is in line with the P&G trend Tango with its bolder, more sensual tendencies as seen at Missoni, Chanel and Anna Sui. This season’s feeling for luxury is understated and less synthetic: a strong fashion theme at shows including DKNY, Givenchy and Balmain, echoing the P&G trend Sand Dunes. A more urban, artistic creative theme, seen at shows including DSquared2 and Gucci, resonates strongly with the P&G trend Beauty Graffiti.
Trends from Pantene Pro-V
Pantene Pro-V Global Ambassador Sam McKnight is one of a handful of session stylists globally whose work continues to define and shape fashion hair style. It’s been a vintage year for McKnight, having created the relaxed hairstyle for Kate Moss’ nuptials (and for the ensuing editorial in US Vogue), as well as continuing to lead the creative field with his inimitable take on modern hair. This season, Sam’s international show roster includes Chanel, Balmain, Blumarine, Jaeger and Vivienne Westwood.
Look 1: Liquid Sculpture
“We decided at the beginning of September, before any of the shows, that a wet hair look felt right for this season,” says Sam. “This summer, there’s a tougher mood, and although wet hair is definitely a summer look this is the opposite to that rough textured ‘beach’ hair — it’s tighter to the head, more dramatic,” maintains
Sam. This resonates with the Tango trend, that explores the ideas of fierce confidence and drama. By the end of Paris Pret-a-Porter, one month later, Sam’s prescience was proven as seminal shows across the fashion capitals from New York (Alexander Wang) to Paris (Chanel) via London (Nicole Farhi) and Milan (Prada) all featured wet hair. “There’s an elegant toughness to this look,” says Sam of the aquatic themed hair at Chanel that featured a boyish parting, low key quiff and pearls in the hair that looked like water droplets. “It was meant to look as if the girls had just run their fingers through wet hair,” says Sam. “But we had to use a combination of mousse, gel and a mask to shape it and keep it looking wet. This is a perfect example of how you can use treatment products to style the hair,” says Sam.
For Nicole Farhi, the architecturally structured collection inspired Sam to create a clean, ‘precisely groomed’ ponytail with a glossy wet-look sheen. “It needed to look sporty and sophisticated,” he adds, so the hair was pulled back tightly into a pony — one of many ponytails seen this season — secured in the middle of the back of the head, and polished so that it hung straight down.
The theme of ‘natural alien’ at the Mugler show inspired Sam to mix references to a classic Helmut Newton woman with the idea of a girl emerging from a primordial swamp. The glossily wet-look hair was smoothed straight back from the hairline and hung loose down the back.
Look 2: Poetic Innocence
“The hair was airy, ethereal, romantic and languid,“ says Sam. “The girls were wraiths, innocent, na?ve and childlike; this season it was about the beauty of youth — or how young each girl was supposed to look”, he adds, in describing one of the season’s most captivating looks that converged across fashion, hair and makeup. Visible Aura perfectly describes this new mood that combines ideas ranging from celestial lightness, transparency of texture, iridescence and luminescence.
The veils of hair at Vivienne Westwood Gold Label perfectly epitomize this trend for poetic innocence. “There is an innocent aura about the hair which comes from the uncomplicated freshness of this style,” says Sam. “I also wanted to bring in an element of history, with the ethereal veil of hair framing the face as in an old family portrait,” he adds.
With Mary Katrantzou’s collection based on the idea of ‘nature vs nurture’ Sam created a na?ve, childlike, floaty style that tapped into the richly detailed colorful, floral, watery mood of the show. “It was important to keep the hair simple,” says Sam who devised a low ponytail with a veil around the hairline left loose so that it floated as the girls walked. As the catwalk was lit by daylight Sam wanted to create a halo-like effect with the hair.
Look3: Chic Modernism
“This trend is about contemporary glamour,” says Sam. “Expensive looking hair that’s not overly groomed. It’s a fresher approach that’s easy and modern.” It’s a mood that chimes with Sand Dunes, that combines the natural with the luxurious for a new simplicity that derives from healthy living. What this means for hair is casual, elegant styles with an understated, low-key polish.
Totally on trend, Jaeger’s ‘luxury polished ponytail’, with the lengths of the hair swept over from a low side parting, and styled to sit in a glossy wave on one shoulder looked sophisticated and modern. With its theme of a modern ‘Dolce Vita’, Sam created a look for Blumarine inspired by the glamorous stars of Federico Fellini’s films, but in a ‘young, fresh’ way. The casually styled ponytails, worn low on the neck, falling from a natural centre parting, with a little fullness on the crown, appeared loose and casual.
For Moschino Cheap and Chic, Sam took the wholesome message of ‘healthy body, healthy mind’ one stage further: “I wanted to apply this to the hair look, too — to explore the simplicity of nature in a healthy, playful way”. Sam created a casual, looped ponytail on freshly washed and conditioned hair, adding a ribbon or raffia bow to add to the sense of fun. Balmain provided the most minimal approach to the theme if chic modernism. “it’s always that understated luxury at Balmain,” says Sam, who swept hair back into a sleek, glossy ponytail secured at the centre back of the head. Key to the look is the natural texture of the ponytail — “we didn’t want it to look too polished,” says Sam.
Look4: Modern Nostalgia
This season’s retro references are focused on the middle of the last century: the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies providing the inspiration, but brought smartly up to date with contemporary and playful details including the random use of color and texture dishevellement. This taps into the Beauty Graffiti trend where creative colors and textures are used to express a spontaneous DIY mood. At Fendi in Milan, the Fifites ‘dolce vita’ mood inspired Sam to create a controlled bouffant look. “The inspiration was a ‘mathemetician, gone mad’, so I unravelled that prim and classic school teacher look that’s a bit Miss Jean Brodie,” says Sam who ended up with a thoroughly modern volumised look. For Clements Ribeiro’s ‘Chelsea Girl’ themed show, Sam created a look full of volume and texture, that looked like an intentionally messy bouffant. The lengths of backcombed hair were captured in a low ponytail, which gave a loose, undone appeal to the look.
At Mulberry’s British seaside ‘end of the pier’ show, Sam looked to director Ken Loach whose seminal British black and white films were known their gritty realism. ‘My muse was a girl on holiday in England who got caught in the rain,” says Sam, who teased the hair into a bouffant to give it a bedraggled texture. The modernizing element came in the form of ice cream colored sections of hair in green, pink and yellow inspired by the colors in the collection. Placed randomly they gave the hair a totally unexpected edge of modernity. Using colour to update a referenced era, such as the ‘music festival’ look at DSquared2, immediately makes for a contemporary feel. Loose, centre parted hair, textured through the lengths, sported flashes of pink and blue dip dyed color.
Trends from Wella Professionals
Eugene Souleiman is a true avant guardian with a talent for creating sculptural, art- and culturally-inspired hair styles that explore both real and imaginary worlds. His career over the past quarter century has seen him finesse his unique creative focus for the world’s leading designers, photographers and publications. At over 20 key shows this season, from New York to Milan and Paris, Eugene delivered thought-provoking, ingenious and enduringly beautiful hairstyles.
Look 1: Blaze- The Famme Fatale
“This look is about strength and control of the hair, working with shape and texture to bring about something sculptural, almost architectural,” says Eugene in describing the bold, dramatic looks that echo the characteristics of Blaze — the Femme Fatale — the trend that stems from Tango. “It’s a backlash against ease,” explains Eugene, “the antithesis of ‘blow-out’ hair, yet it remains polished and elegant, worn up and away from the face.” In a season rich in pattern, print and embellishment, creating a smaller head shape became a statement in itself, explains Eugene.
At Tommy Hilfiger, centre-parted hair gathered into a low pony tail had a ‘grown up, Latin’ feel, while at Missoni, the inspiration was ‘Spanish Harlem’ and featured girls with a ‘vibrant, Flamenco’ character evident in the looped up, roughly side parted styles that appeared slightly disheveled. For Donna Karan, a pulled back ponytail gave a clean silhouette to a show rich in African prints. Eugene bound the base of the pony so that it stood proud of the head lending it an almost tribal edge. It is possible to make a strong statement with the minimum of hair, as at Stella McCartney, where the neatly knotted buns were, according to Eugene: “concise yet powerful and the perfect foil for the curved neckline details in Donna Karan the collection.”
For Paco Rabanne, Eugene adopted a more sculptural approach, shaping the heads by creating a flattened quiff and responding to the shimmering, metallic clothes by adding a swinging ponytail. “This show was about having fun and celebrating fashion and we really wanted the hair to move as the girls walked,” says Eugene. Exploring the more graphic qualities of Blaze, for Antonio Marras, Eugene wrapped the lengths of the hair close to the head, added a glossy sheen, then adorned it with a tiara crafted out of twisted ropes of hair (the twist is this season’s braid).
Re-shaping the head, to create a new profile at Issey Miyake, Eugene worked to the show theme of ‘botanicals and the sculptor Brancusi’, making the head into the shape of a tulip bud using the hair. He enhanced the look by spraying the hair with graduated bands of colour to mimic the natural shading of tulip petals.
The head-sculpting potential of a quiff was seen at Haider Ackermann too, where Eugene produced a more masculine look. “The mood board was pictures of men looking all sweaty and clubby and I’d got 20 girls with long hair,” he laughs. Making the hair appear short was crucial to the look, so he pleated it tightly to lie flat against the back of the head, polishing the hair to a high shine. This left length on top that was powdered and greased to add texture.
Look 2: Grace-The modern muse
“Grace is a new direction for long hair, and relies on quality of hair as well as style. This look is very, very expensive, yet it looks effortless,” says Eugene, explaining the thinking behind Grace — the Modern Muse, the trend that stems from Sand Dunes which describes how the values of luxury have evolved and how everything natural has become more luxurious. What distinguishes Grace’s hair from that which is just worn long is an element of control: “This is hair that is one entity,” comments Eugene. “It is styled to move in unison, so that what you get is a clear silhouette.” ‘This isn’t wash and wear hair,” maintains Eugene. “Care, product use and styling form the basis of these looks.”
The perfect example of the effortless aspect of Grace was the look at Chloe, based on ‘really cool girls — French Vogue fashion editors’. The languid, supremely elegant style was centre-parted and cascaded onto the shoulders. “The poise and lightness comes from within,” comments Eugene. “There’s a halo of light that isn’t coming from frizz or texture, but from an inner glow.”
A more relaxed manifestation of Grace was seen at DKNY where long, tumbling waves of hair — what Eugene describes as ‘New York’ hair — had a raw, shiny texture. Each girl wore a huge hat, so Eugene played with color to add texture and interest, making the hair lighter on top and darker underneath, as if she had been in the sun, to play up the ‘rich girl’ Hampton’s Chic theme of the show.
Jeremy Scott’s show — ‘Barbie Goes Country’ — exemplifies another aspect of the Grace silhouette with long hair that was backcombed and sculpted to give volume and shape on top, then curled and gathered into bunches. ‘The look was fun and young and a bit Beverly Hillbillies,” says Eugene.
“The theme at Etro was Deco Twenties,” says Eugene. “But we didn’t want to do anything too literal. This look had elements of flapper but also a tribal feeling that came from the prints on the clothes.” Bringing control to long hair, Eugene slicked hair close to the head at the front, sectioned from a severely angled parting. The upper lengths of hair were sculpted and folded to give a bob like shape at the back of the head, while the underneath lengths were left loose.
Y-3 revealed a similar feeling of ease, but this time, more sporty, based upon the London 2012 Olympics-influenced collection. Says Eugene: “We added asymmetry to long hair by centre parting it, taking one side over the ear and keeping the surface smooth, then taking the other side above the ear and adding texture”.
The theme of wealth continued at Peter Som with the creative direction of ‘bad hair, for a bad girl, from a rich family’. Eugene had fun playing with color, using a wash of rose gold at the roots to look as if a more extreme shade had washed out over time. “We created a character through the hair that was a little bit East Village heiress, post her rebellious stage, so there’s this underlying aura of wealth and privilege, overlaid with something a bit more raw.”
Catwalk Colour from Wella Professionals
If you used GPS coordinates to help pinpoint Josh Wood’s unique genius with hair colour you would be directed to an imaginary location, somewhere between the studio of an aesthete with the most highly tuned artistic tastes and the laboratory of a science boffin cum wizard. This location is the inside of Josh’s head and his talent lies in realising his ideas for other peoples’ heads — his Alpha clientele as well models for fashion shoots and shows. This season, his presence at Louis Vuitton gave blonde a new vocabulary: ‘girlish, angelic, imaginary.’ In his work with Eugene, Josh painted hair to match clothes and had fun working with delicate washes of shades that make the idea of ‘color fade’ seem like the most desirable look on the planet.
“The old codes of luxury have changed,” says Josh. “Previously, luxury was about needing a whole head of the best color possible to feel empowered; whereas now all you need is a streak.” This new minimalism, echoed in the Grace looks, comes partly from technology: “We’re seeing new color technologies that allow us this level of understatement. It’s like having the most plain and sombre garment but the stitching is neon — there is something just so modern about that,” explains Josh. He describes this new mood in color as coming from within: “Backstage at the shows, the creative teams were talking about ‘an aura, an inner glow, backlit and angelic’, all descriptive terms that embody this new vision of femininity.” ‘Youthful’ was another word that was on everyone’s lips this season but Josh reassures: “This is about looking real. Yes, it’s sophisticated, but it doesn’t have to look old and overdone.”
Key to the look is an incredible lightness of touch with femininity and softness, typified by Louis Vuitton, where the girls had baby blonde hair. Achieving a state of Grace can be realised through a palette of soft and light colors, described by Josh as ‘pistachio, primrose, peach, periwinkle’. Soft, fondant shades, the colors of ice cream may have been on everyone’s lips this season. Now it looks like they’re going to be in our hair too
The counterpoint to the free and easy mood of Grace is Blaze, a more precise painterly approach where the specific placement of color is intentionally designed to create an effect. “It’s like Impressionism,” says Josh, describing close-up, careful detail that when viewed from a distance gives a homogenous effect. “There’s a technical quality to it, a craftsmanship taken to a ‘hard to define’ level whereby you’re doing something specific in order to achieve an overall effect.” This works on a more focused scale: “When the head shape is quite small, color becomes vitally important and a real statement in itself,” explains Josh. Color is affected by texture too, becoming stronger, darker and with a reflective brightness when hair is polished and slicked down — a key aspect of the Blaze trend. “This look is for strong women who are committed to their color,” attests Josh, describing a bold palette of black, grey and fuchsia at Narciso Rodriguez. “This isn’t about color as an accessory, but color with conviction — and that’s really powerful.