Off with a BAng!

RAFW MAC GALA DINNER HAIR:

The MAC gala dinner was an extravaganza of Haute Couture with 10 different dresses all made from paper and designed exclusively for MAC NYC by Zaldy (Ru Paul’s costumier apparently).

I was called upon to hair direct half of the looks, while my good friend and Redken hair director Mr Todd Arndt of Vogue Nationale in Brisvegas looked after the other 5.

My five looks were: Spaghetti Dress, Heart Dress, Main Dress, Pencil Shavings Dress and Geo Dress.

For each look, it was important to keep the hair looking Very couture inspired and also to have a sense of the essence of the dress in it.

For the Spaghetti dress we set the hair on a 1” curling iron after preparing it with loads of Touch Control 05 Mousse. Then the back of the head was section off from ear to ear and a long weft of hair was clipped into the models own hair and fishtail braided. This braid was then wound around the models head on the left hand side and clipped under the curls at the crown. The rest of the hair was brushed out into a glamourous movie star wave before being rouched up into a short shape and fixed with bobby pins. The effect being a short floaty flyaway romantis looks with a strong wave falling over one eye. The look was finished with a top secret Redken product which is still in development (hint: dry shampoo).

The Heart Dress required that we fix some small paper hearts to the head. So, I pulled the hair into a really clean and polished french pleat which gave the hair the look of having a seam right up the middle from the nape to the top of the head. And then working with a triangle shaped fringe section, the hair was set on a 1.25” curling iron with Redken Hot Sets 22 before being brushed out, backcombed and then brushed into a pompadour. After pinning the pompadour into place, we finished the whole look with Redken Workforce 09 while smoothing the surface of the do with a fine bristle brush. Then we fixed three paper hearts to the side of the head.

The Main dress posed the greatest challenge as he reference we had was an amazing triangular bob that was created especially for a stills image. Days and days of testing different shapes to get the style to work in three dimensions and we finally decided on pinsetting a long wig and then clipper cutting the bootom to create a dramatic angular bob. Then we changed our mind on the day… in the end we went for a neo japanese look inspired by geisha and sumo bit with a soft flyaway romance to the hair, the hair was prepped by spraying Redken Woolshake into the hair before blowdrying with a round brush. This gave a pliable texture with a matte, powdery finish. Then the back of the hair was separated by making a vertical parting from the high point of the head to the top of each ear. This back section was pulled up into a clean ponytail at the crown and then pulled through the hair elastic to make a bow shape. The left over hair was wrapped around the base of the ponytail and pinned into place. The same was done on the left hand side of the head, only the hair from the right hand side was incorporated into this pony to give it a bit of extra density. The top was then rolled into a kind of elevated chignon which served as a base to pin the large paper hat to. The haie was left floaty and flyawya to add a sense of romance rather than following the traditional style for this type of shpae and having it highly polished and wet looking.

My favourite hair from the whole show was for the Pencil Shavings dress. For this look, we applied Redken For Men Stand Tough styling gel section by section onto the hair. Then with a clean low side parting on the left hand side the hair was combed from left to right into a strong finger wave which waved onto the face and back to the ear. The long hair was then gathered at the back of the right ear and twisted into a figure eight chignon. The hair was then smoothed with the ail of a comb and lacquered into place with Redken Forceful 23 stronghold finishing spray. The final touch was to mit Redken Vinyl Glam all over to create a patent leather like shine.

For the Geo dress the hair was blowaved poker straight with Redken Satin Wear 02 ultimate blowdry lotion and then flat ironed poker straight. A large triangular fringe section was separated out and the rest of the hair was pulled into the perfect ponytial at the nape with not a hair our of place. The fringe was then combed forward and rolled tightly around a small piece of mesh before being pinned into a short geometric bang and finished with Redken Workforce 09.