Who Do You Think Women REALLY Dress For?

Jennifer Anniston

Jenna Dewan-Tatum

The other day, I overheard a woman in my salon say that women don’t dress for themselves or for men – they dress up for other WOMEN. Now, this is certainly not how I have always viewed things. In fact, when I thought about it, I divided women into three categories: the “smallest” – women who dress to please no one but themselves; the “medium” category of women who dress to compete with or impress other women; and the “largest” and (in my humble masculine opinion) most important category, women who dress to attract and seduce men.

Katherine Heigl

So, this conversation really got me going, and then I saw the pictures of ELLE Magazine’s Women in Film luncheon, a lovely women-only daytime event honoring the power ladies of the movie industry. 

Amber Heard

And there they were, with dresses slit to their navels (yes, Miss Jennifer Anniston), ample amounts of cleavage, sparkles, skin-tight sheaths, minis, killer heels – and not a man in sight. 

Camila Alves

Alice Eve

So, have I been fooling myself all these years that the ladies have been slipping into slinky gowns and sexy shoes, not to drive us men completely wild, but to compete with each other?? Don’t they know that when a man compliments a woman on her dress, he is thinking, “I wonder how easy it is to get her back OUT of that dress?”

Evan Rachel Wood

Michelle Pfieffer

I think it’s time you told us what YOU think! All you powerful women, tell us the truth:

A. Do you dress totally to please yourself, do you not really care what others think or say, do you love your style no matter what?

B. Do you dress to make the other women in the room jealous, to be the most fashion-forward, to turn other women’s heads and make them wish they had your sense of style, fearlessness, budget, or figure?

C. Do you dress to turn men’s heads, with all other attention strictly collateral damage?

 

Ellie Kemper

Gillian Jacobs

As a man who’s been in the beauty industry a very long time, I have some very definite opinions on what I think the answers will be. I listen to women making sure they’re not wearing the same hairstyle, the same designer, or even the same color, to dinner or a party. But now I wonder, who is that for?

Whatever the answer turns out to be, here are the things to always remember: 

• The color of your dress is as important as the color of your hair – it must compliment your skin tone and your personality.  
•  If you feel comfortable in what you’re wearing, you’ll feel sexy in it.
• Make sure your hair is as sexy as your dress, and that your makeup compliments both.
• Remember that it’s a TOTAL look, and leave no part undone.

Now, tell us whether you’re an A, B, or C, and next week we’ll let everyone know just who our poll tells us women are dressing for. At the Elle Women in Film luncheon, I think we all know it was very much B.

Until next week, ciao!

The Many Stylings of Brad Pitt, or It’s OK to Change Your Look…

With just a bit more facial hair...

Brad Pitt: The Golden Movie Star Years

Brad Pitt is a chameleon when it comes to his hair – both his facial hair and that on his head. Granted, he often is required to do so for movie roles, but a retrospective of the many stylings of Brad shows that he also does so for himself. 

I think this is the perfect opportunity for us to encourage our male readers that it is OK to make changes – there’s nothing to be afraid of. Brad Pitt will get to look back and remember all of his different hair personas, but what about you? 

Darker, with goatee

At his blondest, and more bearded

Hair is the perfect thing to experiment with because you can always go back. As you can see from Mr. Pitt, you can experiment with a variety of personalities, and then look back at some point and be happy that you didn’t look the same for all those years.

Long and clean shaven

Hair shorn, with a hint of facial hair

The great thing about changing your hair is that it’s not a big investment; it’s not a car or a house, and it’s a quick change. You might like it, and prove to yourself that change can be good. We experience it every day in the salon; when someone does make a change, the reactions are almost always on the positive side: “Wow, you look great! What did you do?” Whether it’s a new cut or haircolor or highlights, whether you add a mustache or a goatee – almost any facial hair – the reaction if someone hasn’t seen you for a while is invariably positive.

Blonde again, and beardless

At Cannes this year, au natural

I myself am always changing, either my facial hair or I’m cutting my hair, letting it grow; it’s good to be different in life, it’s good to experiment. Be daring, be experimental, change your hair, and look for the reaction. And as I said, it’s not something you can’t change back to its natural way. So take a chance, buddy. And if you come into the salon for a change, we’ll do before-and-after pictures so you can look back at your transformations, just like Brad Pitt.

How We Love the Girls with Curls…

Andie MacDowell

The old adage of always wanting what we do not have never holds more true than when it comes to hair – I see it every day. Brunettes who want to be blondes, blondes who want to be redheads, women with silky straight hair wanting a head full of curls, and the girls with the curls wanting stick-straight hair. And it’s the ladies blessed with naturally curly hair that I want to convince the most to make the most of what they have. Look at Andie MacDowell – she’s made a career based on her mass of curls. 

Most of their complaints revolve around the facts that their hair is not shiny like their straight-haired counterparts. This is because the cuticle of curly hair is more open, so less light bounces off of it and instead penetrates the hair. But with the right shampoos, conditioners, and finishing products, curly hair can look just as shiny -- and even sexier – than straight hair.  

Corinne Bailey Rae

Curly hair takes a bit more effort and care to find the right product to match whether the texture is coarse and curly, fine and curly, frizzy and curly, or some combination of all three, like Corinne Bailey Rae. Some need products that relax the curl, other need products that define the curl – but no one needs products that make their curls look dry or “crunchy.” 

I like to cut curly hair wet, but it cannot be cut in the same manner as straight hair because it can look bulkier, so as a stylist there is more of a feel to the cut – it is freestyle cutting rather than precision cutting. In fact, it is very much like sculpting in that I have to feel as I cut in order to build volume where it’s needed, or take away bulk. 

Taylor Swift

Violante Placido

When it comes to color, highlighting curly hair is trickier, because traditional highlights can get lost. Highlights in curly hair must be much chunkier so they can be seen, like Taylor Swift and Violante Placido. Before I highlight curly hair, I study it dry and select the pieces where I can see that light should be.

AnnaLynn McCord

Vanessa Hudgens

When all is said and done, curly hair that is cut, colored and highlighted well can look like the mane of a lion – look at AnnaLynn McCord. When it’s cut well and treated properly, even when it’s unkempt it looks sexy, like Vanessa Hudgen’s crop, or Jordin Sparks long curls. It’s definitely more voluminous, it has more movement, it looks alive.

Jordin Sparks

So, to all you ladies blessed with curls, look for special shampoos for silkening curly hair and finishing products that are specially formulated for curly hair, curl defining creams, silkening oils, and for the very coarse curls, find an illuminating gelade that makes the hair glisten. Most importantly, find the right stylist. Not everyone know how to handle curly hair. And my recommendation for everyone, especially those with curly hair, is to always go in for a consultation, bring in pictures, and have a target in mind before you let anyone touch your hair.

Until next week, ciao!

Try Before You Buy…

Ashley Hebert

In this week’s post, we have another crop of celebrities who have made major hairstyle changes, and it reminds us that “buyer’s remorse” isn’t just for cars. Certainly, if you’re not happy with your new look, a talented stylist and colorist can change your hair if you change your mind. But I often suggest, when a client is contemplating a drastic change in cut, color, or both, that trying on wigs is really a relatively foolproof way to “try before your buy.” I’ll bet some of the beautiful ladies in today’s blog wish they’d been able to “test drive” their new style before they committed. 

Take, for example, Ashley Hebert. Her new Cleopatra cut does not flatter her the way her former cut and color brought out her skin tones and softened her face. The new cut is too severe, the bangs too heavy and bowl-like, and her darker color too one-dimensional. She looked prettier with longer, lighter hair – younger and sexier. The new cut and color age her, and only teenagers want to look older.

Rose Byrne

Oh, Rose Byrne. So very gorgeous in her “before” haircut, and not so much in her new cut. The precision-cut bob would have been more dramatic with blunt-cut bangs, but this style just doesn’t quite “cut” it. The picture really says it all.

Jessica Szohr

Jessica Szohr also didn’t do herself any favors. Granted, her black hair is unnatural and very flat, and she would look much better with a deep brown shade with some dark dimensional highlights to break it up, but it’s really the cut that’s at issue. Her “before” style was a great shag, wispy and sexy with a lot of movement, very rock and roll. Her new bob looks bushy and coarse, and just doesn’t do anything for her; it looks too much like a wig. Better to have left well enough alone.

Fergie

Miss Fergie, what is with the roots? She went to the bother of cutting off a good bit of hair, even though it appears to be nothing more than a shorter version of the same layered cut, but why is it that she still has a head full of dark roots? Should we be pleased they’re not AS DARK as her “before” picture? As a Master Colorist, these roots just look like a mistake to me. I want to fix them every time I see a picture of her.

Kristen Stewart

Kristen Stewart is sporting a head-full of nearly waist-length black extensions to play Snow White in a movie, but all that length with no layers or a bit of wisp around the face really accentuate her inverted triangle facial shape. And strangely, her brows are darker in her “before” picture when her hair is a deep chestnut. Someone was asleep at the chair and forgot to match her brows to the extensions, so the light brows make her face look strangely unfinished – she’s lost the “frame.” 

This leads right into my usual caveat that I cannot stress enough: The makeup has to be there all the time, even if it’s just a little bit, as simple as a flick of mascara, a bit of blush, and a slick of lipgloss. Maybe it’s just your signature red lipstick. Whatever it is, you need that little bit of something to look put together, and make that great cut and color work for you. 

Carrie Underwood

Love Carrie Underwood’s bangs. They’re not too thick, they’re nice and sexy, she looks fantastic with all that movement around the face after wearing the same style for so long. It also draws attention to her eyes and covers a high forehead. This one is a total keeper.

Audrina Partridge

Audrina Partridge jumped on the ombre wagon a bit late in the trend, but it’s very pretty on her. Frankly, she looks good in both pictures, and the style is essentially the same, but the lighter hair does give her more of a glow and is sexier in that beach girl, boho way. This is the kind of change you can reverse, and that you can play with seasonally, going darker in the winter and brighter in the summer.  

  

Emily Browning

Emily Browning carries off quite an avante garde look, and it works rather well for her. We’d commented on her “before” hair in the past as being unflattering, making her already round face look rounder. With some judicious snipping and a very pretty shade of periwinkle blue, her cut is transformed into a choppy shag that accentuates her eyes doubly with the bangs and the blue hue. It’s a very striking look. You don’t have to commit to actually dyeing your hair such a shocking color – this look can be created with colored extensions so the it doesn’t have to be permanent, and you don’t have to explain your blue, green or purple hair to your boss.   

Lilly Collins

Lastly, we have a dramatic change in color and cut with Lilly Collins, daughter of musician Phil Collins. She has thick, healthy hair, but the red was too overpowering and washed her out. It would have been much more flattering had she been a medium brunette with that red as highlights. But now Lilly is a deep, mysterious brunette with a Holly Golightly fringe, and she’s changed her brows and makeup to match her new color. The deep, cool tones of the brown are much more flattering to her skin than the coppery red. Marvelous choice.

Until next week, ciao!