Beyond Hair

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With New York Fashion Week happening (and the European shows coming up soon), I’d like to help you make sense of the reality of the runway—particularly runway hair.

Courtesy of RedkenBottega Veneta Fall/Winter 2010; Hair by Guido for Redken

More importantly, how you can adapt runway styles for your own hair, because even just a small hair change can give you a great lift and help you feel good about yourself and your beauty.

I’ve done hair for fashion shows for many years, so I see firsthand the visions of what the designers are trying to portray. There are hundreds of fashion shows out there every season, and often the ones that get press are the more extreme, avant garde ones. That’s when you get women saying, “Who are they kidding? I’m never going to wear my hair or makeup like that.” Those shows are pure fantasy—look at them for fun and for inspiration.

I do lots of shows, from avant garde to more commercial, and I would say that about 65 percent of the hairstyles I do for runway shows could be worn by a lot of women. They can be adapted for everyone’s lifestyle.

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What happens is, the term “fashion show” makes women shut down. It’s easy to get intimidated by the way fashion is presented with the model, the clothes, the lighting. You may see the model and think you’ll never look like that. Of course you won’t—no one really looks like that. The model only looks like that because she’s had experts working on her for three hours. Yes, she’s young and thin—but we’re talking about the hair. Everyone with hair can have a version of runway hair.