Meet Johanna’s Featured Artist LIVE team

Shimmering mermaid-esque strands, a quartet of see-through wigs, thread adorned styles and an abundance of braids…the hair at Featured Artist LIVE painted a picture of the diverseness and creativity of Johanna Cree Brown but she’d be the first to tell you, she didn’t do it alone. Johanna’s core team dedicated five days a week over three months to the project. They created hundreds of wefts to form a floor-sweeping, head-turning holographic wig using a technique that took Johanna no less than 4 years to develop. They hand-stitched partings, sourced models and even got to grips with a 6-foot water tank, let’s meet them…

Louise Foard 

Louise was my first assistant on the project and is very in tune with my concepts, shadowing me throughout the day and contributing to both the surreal and editorial preparation. Her role was to be my extra pair of hands for each element – from the see-through and holographic wigs to the editorial looks on models, ensuring they were executed to the correct standard. This included overseeing the positioning of the wigs and the construction of the parting, braid work for the editorial shoot and finishing details on each look– basically, she was briefed to understand each element of the hair design and be able to step in for me at any stage.

Jessica Foard

I appointed Jessica team leader on the holographic hair, which was on the live model. This wig was created using hundreds of wefts – the team worked on it five days a week for three months as it’s a difficult material to handle. It took me years to create a seamless finish with the holographic hair – the method is a trade secret!

Jessica hand-stitched the parting for the wig, and led the team in bringing together all the wefts, piecing them together for a seamless finish under my direction, resulting in the extra-long length achieved.

Wai Yin Mok

Wai dedicated hours to seamless hair preparation for the surreal exhibition, working with the holographic and see-through hair to form wigs with intricate partings.

Harry Wiffen 

With his interest in fashion, I put Harry to work sourcing fabrics to use in the test shoot we did earlier in the day. He was involved in scouting for models, taking to Instagram to find the right faces to fit the project – and found Sonny, the male model who was cast for the event. On the day he also helped prep the water tank and assisted on the editorial shoot set-up, helping to finish and rework the hair and tweak as needed to capture the end look.

Rich O’Brian 

Rich is new to my team. He first assisted me at the V&A Fashion in Motion show and I was so impressed that I asked him to come on board for Featured Artist LIVE. I had created a series of four see-through wigs for the black mannequin installation and Rich was in charge of positioning these, tidying up the finish and ensuring the partings all sat seamlessly. He tested the impact of the wind on the hair to capture just the right amount of movement. Rich also managed the preparation of the tank, testing the water levels to best show off the holographic wig, which was partially submerged. Rich also experimented with the smoke states, to capture the right balance and feel of the surreal exhibit.