Summer Hair: Shorter, Hotter, Cooler, and Sexier...

Brooklyn Decker

Summer is the time when even our long-haired clients contemplate a change, sometimes even a drastic one. If you want to be daring in life, what better way than through your hair? It’s painless, chances are you’re going to like it, you’re going to get a reaction, you might revive your love life (your husband or your significant other may feel like he has a new paramour) – you just never know! And, if you change your mind, it grows out. If only every chance we take could be so easy.

Jennifer Anniston

Actors Brooklyn Decker, Jennifer Anniston, Olivia Palermo, and singer Keri Hilson all went for variations on the bob – the lob, asymmetrical, slightly shaggy, beveled -- losing a lot of length off the bottom but keeping plenty around the face. 

Olivia Palermo

This is the cut for ladies with long hair who want to take a chance, but not TOO BIG a chance. It leaves you with a lot of versatility and movement, especially those that are above the shoulder, but looks totally fresh, cooler, and very summery. 

Keri Hilson

This is also the perfect time to play around with color as well, since you have less hair to treat, and it’s healthier for having cut off the oldest and most damaged part of your hair.

Selita Ebanks

Some ladies went for much more drastic changes. Victoria’s Secret model Selita Ebanks broke ranks with her Rapunzel-locked sisters, taking a huge risk with an asymmetrical pixie with long, cheek-grazing bangs, and an asymmetrical slice of bright blonde color. If she parts her hair on the other side, that thatch of blonde becomes a small streak in her dark hair. It’s surprisingly versatile, and a major change for someone who is probably contractually obligated to have long hair. 

Jenna Elfman

Actor Jenna Elfman’s short cut is a softer version with similar lines, cut over the ear, short at the nape and long side-swept bangs. The top layers are lighter than the lower layers to create contrast and depth, and she can wear the bangs down or slick them back.

Evan Rachel Wood

Evan Rachel Wood, who changes her hair as often as she changes (pick one: men, outfits, lipsticks), surprised everyone at the True Blood preview by turning up with a punky spiked pixie. It shows off her delicate features and can be worn as messy or controlled as she wishes. 

Ginnifer Goodwin

Our other pixie is Ginnifer Goodwin, who has maintained her bold cut throughout the award show season and well beyond. Hair this short is a sign of confidence. A woman who is not afraid to wear it is comfortable that people are going to like it, and doesn’t really care if they don’t. With short crops like Ginnifer’s, Evan Rachel’s, Jenna’s and Selita’s we always say in our salon, “the shorter the hair, the bigger the earrings.”

Tyra Banks

Carla Guigino

A summer cut for the drama-adverse is keeping most of the length and reshaping the interior to get a whole new look, like Tyra Banks and Carla Guigino. It’s a moderate, updated gypsy shag, with sexy bangs and flowing layers. It has that tousled, just-rolled-out-of-bed look.

Solange Knowles

And we admire Solange Knowles, who decided to stop the extensions and chemical processing and just let her hair do what it does naturally. She may not keep it this way for very long, but it’s nice to see someone let it go and stop fighting the beautiful curls they were born with. It’s total freedom, if you have the attitude.

One thing you will notice in all of these pictures is makeup -- everyone is wearing it. Makeup matters, no matter what haircut you choose. And the shorter your hair, the more your face is showing, so even if it’s just a touch of mascara and lip gloss, full-on makeup, or the hardest look of all, the “natural” look, you need a little something. 

Celebrities know they cannot leave home without it, and you should think like a celebrity. Remember, when you see those spreads in the gossip magazines of stars going to the grocery store or Starbucks without their makeup, they’re almost unrecognizable – they look just like us. Better we look like them.

Until next week, ciao…

Summertime, and the Highlights are Coming…

Highlights are one of the most popular services at our salon, and summer is the season when even the most conservative clients want a bit of brightness, something playful, some dimensional color -- and come in asking for highlights. But be warned: there are good highlights and bad highlights. 

Beyonce, Halle Berry and Star Jones

Now, when I say this, I don’t mean the color. As a master colorist, I know that it isn’t the color that is “bad,” it’s that the color is wrong for the client. Highlights are meant to accentuate, and a good colorist knows that it’s the contrast between the shade of the highlight and the tone of the client’s skin that makes or breaks the look. Here are some examples of good and not-so-good highlights on some of your favorite celebrities.

Black Hair: Beyonce, Halle Berry, and Star Jones

Beyonce’s highlights are thin, beautiful, a glistening deep brown on black, and they compliment her skin tone perfectly. They’re subtle, rich, and her hair looks healthy. This is what we want highlights to do. Halle’s highlights are very stripey, and a caramel color that is very similar to her skin tone, so they wash her out instead of contrasting with her skin. And I have to say that I think her best cut is short. On that face, short hair is just so sexy. Star Jones’ reddish highlights are over a mocha base, and are very brassy. They don’t work with her skin tones or her makeup. These colors would work on someone else, but they just don’t work for Star. 

Multi-Ethnic Hair: Tyra Banks and Nicole Ritchie

Tyra Banks and Nicole Ritchie

Tyra Banks hair looks wonderful. This is a beautiful example of multi-dimensional highlights, with many high- and low-lights creating a multi-tonal look that compliments her coloring and brings out her eyes. As for Nicole Ritchie, I think she looks much better as a brunette. Her hair looks dry and dull, there’s not a lot of light or shine in this look – and this is where highlights can go wrong, when the hair is too damaged and porous, and the too-light color only accentuates it. These highlights do not bring out her lovely golden skin tones, so let’s all hope Nicole opts to go back to the beautiful espresso brown she wore not too long ago. It was stunning.

Dark Brown Hair: Jessica Alba and Eva Longoria

Jessica Alba and Eva Longoria

Jessica Alba’s highlights come up very red, with honey and caramel woven in as well, but it compliments her skin tone and her hair shows up very nicely, full of shine and dimension. With Eva Longoria, I think they didn’t create enough highlights. She needs more brightness around her face. These few highlights weren’t worth the trouble, and they’re brassy. Again, there is no wrong right or wrong color; the color isn’t wrong or bad, it’s just not right for the person. 

 

Red Hair: Julia Roberts and Lindsay Lohan

Julia Roberts and Lindsay Lohan

Julia’s color is exactly right for her, really bringing out her eyes. I wouldn’t take her one bit lighter. Her highlights are a very warm mix of coppers and reds that bring out her skin tones perfectly. With Lindsay Lohan, I don’t understand how a natural redhead ended up with such an unnatural look. Perhaps it’s all the damage from her constant color changes, but someone tried to put red highlights in her extensions to match her now dyed-red hair. It’s just a mess. She should remove the extensions and see a talented colorist who can gently take her back to her natural color without any further damage to her hair.  

Light-to-Medium Brown Hair: Jennifer Anniston and Carmen Electra

Jennifer Anniston and Carmen Electra

Jennifer Anniston is the Queen of the Multi-Dimensional Highlights. Her hair looks so natural, with the lightest highlights around her face creating a halo effect. Her colorist uses a combination of multiple colors in such thin highlights that it looks as if she’s done nothing. She takes very good care of her hair; it always looks incredibly healthy and shiny. This is what most of my clients aspire to!  At the other end of the spectrum, Carmen Electra’s highlights are very uneven – the top of her hair is brassy, the lower half ashy. There’s no dimension to the color, no variation going on.

Dark-to-Medium Blonde Hair: Reese Witherspoon and Christina Applegate

Reese Witherspoon and Christina Applegate

As a natural blonde, Reese Witherspoon doesn’t have far to go with highlights, and hers are some of the best, a mix of highlights and lowlights that her colorist has created very thoughtfully, and which compliment her skin tone and really bring out her blue eyes. Brava! Christina Applegate’s hair looks fried, she has a couple inches of dark roots, and it appears that one side of her head has more highlights than the other. It’s too much of one color and it washes out her lovely face. I would love to see her with a deeper blonde base and lighter highlights, which would bring out her delicate features and make her overall color stand out more.

If you have or are considering highlights, be sure you are in the hands of a colorist who not only knows how to select and execute the most flattering color for you, but also knows how to protect the health of your hair and, if necessary, repair damage that may already have been done elsewhere. 

If a hair colorist tells you to wait until your hair is in better condition before doing any more highlights, listen to him/her. Have a series of salon treatments to repair the damage. There are a number of excellent reconstructing treatments that will give you excellent results, as will using only professional products prescribed by your colorist. A good hair colorist is someone with the integrity to values the health of your hair over making a few extra dollars on a given day.   

So there you have it. Until next week, ciao!

The Tony Awards: When It’s THE HAIR That’s On Stage…

Christie Brinkley/WireImage

The 2011 Tony Awards are the highest honor in the Broadway community. Unlike the Academy Awards and other movie-related awards, the Tony Awards recognize a form of entertainment that is grueling, with actors performing two shows a day, multiple days per week, before a live audience, with all of their lines memorized and no multiple takes or editing together of the best performances. So, the award show tends to bring out the nominees and presenters in beautiful clothes, but it is a more casual atmosphere, and a nice break from heavy theatrical makeup and wigs  and costumes.

Alexa Ray Joel/WireImage

Which means that we did not see any elaborate, overdone hairstyles. Instead, we saw lots of shiny, healthy hair and beautiful color. One of the original “supermodels,” Christie Brinkley, looked radiant in a casually “undone” beehive up-do that artfully suggested an homage to the Sixties-era icon of sexiness, Brigitte Bardot, with her signature California beach blonde-on-blonde. She proves absolutely that you can look sexy near sixty without looking ridiculous. Taking care of yourself definitely pays.

Vanessa Redgrave/WireImage

And it was nice to see her accompanied by her daughter Alexa Ray Joel, who is a study in contrasts with her mother’s coloring -- deep-set hazel eyes and shiny espresso brown chignon. Her hair is glossy and healthy, and offsets her pale complexion beautifully.

Brooke Shields/WireImage

The gloriously elegant Vanessa Redgrave was disappointing. We loved her silver tuxedo, but her severely slicked back silver hair was too simple. I would have preferred seeing her wear it looser, with a bit of dimensional color to add subtle variation and bring some color to her complexion.

Annabella Sciorra/WireImage

Brooke Shields Grecian curls were a refreshing style change, and worked beautifully with her gown, but I would have chosen a side part. The center part elongates her already long face and neck, and the side part would have been more flattering and softened the edges.  

Marg Helgenberger/WireImage

Anabella Sciorra, Marg Helgenberger, and Edie Falco all wore their hair long and loose, with 

 Ms. Falco opting for a slightly backcombed, modified “Jackie-O” bouffant. 

Edie Falco/WireImage

The overall feeling of the night was healthy, groomed, conditioned, and shiny hair, beautifully colored, and casually styled. 

Al Pacino/WireImage

Special occasion hair doesn’t have to be elaborate; it has to be beautiful and make you feel confident.

And if you’re feeling REALLY confident, you can always choose to “style” – and we use this term loosely -- your hair like the amazingly talented Mr. Al Pacino.

Until next week…ciao!

MTV Movie Awards: It’s the Total Package That Counts

Emma Stone

Cameron Diaz

When it comes to award shows, the MTV Movie Awards are pretty much the opposite of the Academy Awards – and rightfully so. The Oscars are never going to have a category for “Best Onscreen Kiss” or “Best Fight Scene.” So it is to be expected that the show’s attendees, nominees, presenters, and hosts are going to choose more casual and playful looks.  

“Best Comedic Performer” winner Emma Stone is back to being a redhead after dabbling in the platinum blonde pool, and we think it suits her better, bringing out her gorgeous blue eyes.

Kristen Stewart

Emma, like presenter Cameron Diaz, “Best Female Performance” winner Kristen Stewart, and “MTV Generation Award” winner Reese Witherspoon all wore casual, beachy waves that complimented their short designer frocks and, in Ms. Diaz’s case, a black romper and miles of leg.

Reese Witherspoon

What makes these “just rolled out of bed” styles work for special events is the makeup. You can tell that no matter how “undone” the hair looks at this event, EVERYONE had her makeup done.

Makeup is like flowers in that it is colorful, and each color adds dimension. With makeup, color brings out different features, the same way that when you walk into residence and see a bouquet of beautiful flowers, your eye goes right to it. 

Selena Gomez

Makeup is the same way, a bunch of pastel and bright colors together composed of the lipstick, the rouge, the mascara and eye makeup. It’s a bouquet of flowers on the face. Makeup makes the face the focal point, so as long as the hair looks healthy – even if it isn’t perfect – the overall look is good. Color is makeup for the hair, and all of these women sport makeup for the hair, and needed the makeup for the face as well to look appropriately hot for an award show red carpet. 

Bryce Dallas Howard

You can prove it to yourself: Take a picture of yourself with your hair styled but without any makeup on, then with a little makeup, then full makeup, and you’ll see a huge difference. The makeup makes the emphasis. You can go out and see a woman with a really great hairstyle and killer color but without makeup, and she just doesn’t look as good as she could (unless she’s a 21-year-old model). Sometimes lipstick and blush are enough, or a little mascara. We need to emphasize what we have.

Hailee Steinfeld

Reese Witherspoon’s hair is just “okay, but it’s not something you’d go out with on a fancy night, unless you add the right makeup, a pretty dress, and a big smile -- then it works.

Selena Gomez’s hair is just a half-updo with more extensions and a little curl, but without makeup it wouldn’t turn any heads, nor would the half-updo worn by “Best Fight Winner” Bryce Dallas Howard. When it comes to big events, the more casual the look, the more makeup you need to look “finished.”

Emma Watson

Hailee Steinfeld’s sharp tuxedo and long, straight hair are fine, but add in that pop of bright red lipstick, and it’s simply perfect. Emma Watson’s bright coral lips and smoky eyes look amazing paired with her pixie combed flat, swept aside and tucked behind her ears.

 

Mila Kunis

Mila Kunis’ hair is just ironed flat and center-parted, nothing you couldn’t achieve on your own at home, but what makes the look is the makeup and the clothes. It all has to go together. There weren’t any hairstyles at the MTV Movie Awards that my clients are going to bring into the salon and say, “Dino, make me look like THIS.” Maybe some of the hair colors, though.

Without the addition of the right outfit and great makeup to make it a complete look, the overall look of the hair that night was “You can do this at home.” It really is all about the total package, whether you’re a minimalist with mascara and lipgloss, or you go all out with a full face of colorful makeup, it’s all a “look” that tells people, “this woman cares for herself, and knows all eyes will be on her.” If you think “hot” while you’re getting ready, you’ll get hot.

Until next week…ciao!