When Errol And STIL Hit Shanghai

by KELSEY | CREATIVE PROJECTS

The creative sparks flew!

Every year, thousands (around 40,000, to be exact) of hairdressers from China, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea and beyond descend upon Shanghai for the Asian Hairdesigner Festival. This incredible three-day event, a riot of shows, seminars, shopping and feasting, is organised by the Asian Hairdesigner Association (AHA) as a showcase of the new hair trends and techniques from amongst its illustrious members. Alsoring featu in this year’s line-up, as guests of AHA founder Eric Zhao, were Errol Douglas MBE, plus colourist Christel Barron-Hough and her photographer husband Alex, co-owners of Chelsea salon STIL. Both teams delivered a seminar and show that injected a shot of London cool into the mix. Creative HEAD was in the audience…

STIL

The Concept

What made you accept an invitation to appear at the AHF in Shanghai?

Alex: This was an opportunity for Christel and me to come together to create something specifically for STIL – a photographic collection and a film that would then feed into a seminar at the AHF. It felt very different to when we both work for other brands, and we have to work to their brief. This was a blank canvas for us to get creative and push our boundaries.

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 were absolutely fantastic – talented, lots of attention to detail and incredibly hardworking, 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.

The Show

And then came the show… It brought the house down!

Christel: The show 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 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.

Errol

Shanghai is a long way from London! Why did you make the trip?

 When I got the invitation from Eric Zhao, I didn’t hesitate. The AHF is one of the most successful gatherings of hairdressers in this region, it’s been going since 2006 so it has a really successful heritage. Even though I have lots of clients who come from China, and I know a lot of hairdressers in the country, I’d never been before. When the chance came up, it was a ‘Hell yes!’

How did you go about deciding on the theme and content for your seminar and show? What ideas did you want to share with the audience?

 My show was called Motions and is loosely based on my most recent photographic collection – Frame. We pushed the ideas that were born in Frame to the extreme, so they had maximum impact on the stage, translating the hair looks I’d created and reinventing them for a live show.

You used some incredible outfits on your models. How did this come about and how important is it that every detail reflects your brand?

It’s impossible to separate hair from fashion when you’re creating a show. Every detail reflects an overall look and it’s so important to make sure every element is totally cohesive. I wouldn’t necessarily say the Errol Douglas brand has a definitive ‘look’ because for us, it’s about always evolving and adapting, reacting to trends and interpreting them in our own unique vision. For this show, I worked with Christina Davies, a highly acclaimed designer from Central St Martins who I’ve been collaborating with recently. She’s really going places. Her instinct for fabric, fluidity and texture brought to life with body-sculpting clothes and knitwear has a real contemporary feel.

Talk us through the looks you showcased during your seminar…

During the seminar, I wanted to demonstrate two of the looks I’d be presenting in my show and how I bring those very futuristic, avant-garde concepts to life. It’s important for me as an educator to make sure people can see and understand my vision. Step one is the foundations of the looks, so before anything, I talk through the structure needed to hold the hair. The starting point for the seminar was right back to basics, demonstrating how you create a corn roll that forms the base to sew in the hair. I worked intricately with hair pieces, which were made specially for the show and included hours of pre-show work. The main way I make the hair maintain a realistic edge is I don’t use too many pins, choosing instead to mainly weave or sew the pieces together. Also in the seminar, I taught how visually to create a shape, plus the importance of pre-planning and always stepping away from your model to check the shape is coming together how you want it. You should never create a hairstyle that just gets placed on without thinking how it suits the model and you also have to make sure you’re using appropriate products for the prep.

… And the looks for the show…

During the seminar, I’d already demonstrated the techniques of two of the looks, which we then recreated in a bolder, stronger way and stepped things up a notch to create drama and a spectacular vision for the evening gala show. Overall, I was really pleased with how it all came together. The looks were super dramatic, incorporating extreme flowing lengths and bold, eye-catching colours in crushed pink and a striking azure blue. You have to be super careful with placements when you’re doing colour fades. It’s not easy to do and all the hair pieces were sewn in by hand.

Which part of the show/seminar gave you personally the most creative satisfaction? Was it a particular moment, or did you find the whole process creatively satisfying?

There’s definitely something satisfying about the whole process of designing and staging a show. Bringing a small, creative vision to life on a huge stage to a global audience is hard to beat. There’s not really a moment to sit back and enjoy the show yourself as it’s so busy backstage getting the models prepped and out on the runway, but it is a great feeling when you take to the stage yourself at the end, seeing the happy faces and soaking up the applause. For me too, it’s a great buzz when you know your models feel amazing – you can see it in their faces and how they walk. That satisfaction of ‘it’s done’ and knowing that we’d executed the show beautifully  without a foot wrong, was my highlight.

How do appearances like this help build the Errol Douglas brand?

They help massively. Errol Douglas is an international brand and I’ve always been dedicated to sharing the amazing reputation of UK hairdressing around the world. This year alone I’ve taken part in major shows in Australia, Portugal and Korea. Each country I’ve ever visited has its own take on their homegrown industry and I love learning and taking elements away with each new experience, in turn sharing my experiences and knowledge too. Being curious and interested is the secret to staying power, it’s a big world out there and there’s so much to learn from it.