SHANGHAI PEARLS

The Asian Hairdesigner Festival (AHF), held annually in Shanghai, is a vibrant showcase of new hair trends and techniques delivered by leading salon and barber shop stars from across China, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea and beyond. Injecting a shot of London cool into the mix? Colourist Christel Barron-Hough and her photographer husband Alex, co-owners of Chelsea salon STIL, whose edgy, immersive multi-media presentation – created bespoke for the trip – promptly stole the show. Creative HEAD was there…

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX BARRON-HOUGH

Nick Irwin

The Concept

You created an incredible photographic collection and film for your trip, which featured a collaboration with session stylist Nick Irwin. How did you incorporate his ideas into your work?

Christel: I’m inspired by Scandinavian film-making and the interplay between light and dark, which directors such as Ingmar Bergman use for dramatic effect. I wanted the collection to play around with shadow and blurring, so it reflected that landscape. Nick was very excited by the looks we wanted to create and added his spin by making things a bit more editorial, not-so-perfect looking, so the wigs were placed so they obviously looked like wigs, for example.

The Prep

While in Shanghai you had to rely on a team of assistants you’d never met before. How did this impact on your prep?

Christel: Often when you work on shows abroad these days you will inherit a local support team and sometimes the language barrier can be a challenge. But the beauty with hairdressing is that we all speak the same language when it comes to creating looks and styles. The team in Shanghai was supplied by the event organiser, Eric Zhao, and his Asian Hairdesigner Association and they were absolutely fantastic – talented, lots of attention to detail and incredibly hard-working, which made our experience very pleasant and enjoyable.

The Seminar

Talk us through the looks you showcased during your seminar…

Christel: I chose to do one look that was quite creative and inspired by fashion and another that was more commercial,but that also had personality through creative colour. We do a lot of Scandi-bobs in the salon because they’re so wearable, but the creative placement of the fuchsia shades brought out a more playful side and hopefully gave inspiration to the audience. My second look, featuring a mesh that I melded onto the head, is something I’ve seen Eugene Souleiman create a version of, but I had watched a documentary about hat-making and I found it interesting because they were talking about silhouette and sculpting. So that’s what inspired me to show something that played around with different textures, with the top super-sleek and the hair a bit more deconstructed at the back and a mesh in different colours sculpted onto the head to keep everything super-tight. But this was also about colour placement because I wanted to continue the theme from our photo-collection of things working but also not working at the same time, so I left the roots, kept the ends really bright and chose the red to contrast with the pink and yellow of the mesh.

Immediately after the seminar, Alex photographed both models backstage.

The Show

Christel: The show on the last night of the AHF was driven by the original creative shoot that was shot in London. We presented a total of five models and the concept was highly focused on personality and colour, which was complemented by the content playing on the screens.

Alex: We knew the film was going to play out on a series of enormous, curved screens on the night of the show, so we decided to showcase each look as if it were a portrait. We filmed each model in really slow motion because we wanted the audience to think that each portrait was a still image before realising that tiny details were moving. We wanted the film really to draw people in and create a more immersive experience. And it was also a feast of colour because we had different models on different screens – there was stuff that was yellow, stuff that was orange, there was colour everywhere. Opening your brand up to new territories and markets is always positive, especially to your peers and the trade press. It’s important for us to share our concept and vision for our brand outside of the UK. With our backgrounds in education and production/image making this is a great platform to bring it all together and share what inspires us at STIL.