It was a night of pugs, cats’ ears and milk bottles at the Central Saint Martins BA graduate show. Creative HEAD’s Charlotte and Hannah joined the fashion elite at the college’s new King’s Cross site in London.

Graduate designer Erin Hawkes was the big winner on the night, after being awarded the prestigious L’Oréal Professionnel Designer of the Year award for her ‘90s hip-hop-inspired collection, combining baggy skater pants and oversized, cream bonnets.

Other highlights included Natalia Mencej, whose male models each carried a pug under their arm (Charlotte nearly screamed with delight!) and second runner up Selena Gili’s produced structured metallic skirts.

The L’Oréal Professionnel Portfolio Session Team created understated, elegant looks for the models including Lana Del Ray-style loose, angelic waves, a slicked-back loose chignon and a French plait.

Spotted on the front row was milliner Stephen Jones, fashion journalist Suzy Menkes, Fashion East founder Lulu Kennedy and menswear designer Christopher Shannon. Ooh we do love a fully-stocked FROW!

It started with a fibre optic afro and ended with a lilac-tinged, mink blonde. The former was from session stylist Peter Gray and the latter from the L’Oréal Colour Trophy 2012 winners, Westrow of West Park in Leeds – both impeccably styled and just two of the 80 or more looks that were showcased at last night’s L’Oréal Colour Trophy. For any hair lover it was a night of pure indulgence. Add to the mix the style, banter and theatrics of the night, enhanced by the dry wit of compere Rick Edwards from Channel 4, singer Ruby Goe (who sang during RUSH Hair’s artistic show) and DJ Becky Tong (Pete’s daughter) on the decks, it certainly wasn’t your typical Monday night.

Held at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane, the Creative HEAD team joined the 1000-strong crowd for what was the 57^th annual Grand Final. Following a champagne reception and oohs and aahs aplenty over everyone’s attire, we got settled in for the opening show. Peter Gray and his team did the honours with their Rebel London performance, assisted by the L’Oréal Professionnel Session Team. A total of 14 looks – styled by Dazed and Confused fashion editor Katie Shillingford – proved to be mind-blowing.

After that immense show, a delectable three-course dinner and RUSH Hair show followed. Entitled Triptych, the show’s three sequences were inspired by all the elements that make the UK fashion scene so exciting – hair, music and urban glamour, with some gorgeous Peter Pilotto and Amanda Wakeley numbers to boot.

And then it was time to reveal the fate of 131 competitors across four awards. Check out our news coverage to find out the winners: http://www.creativeheadmag.com/salon-news/westrow-wins-loreal-colour-trophy-2012/

Red-hot style advice, hands-on technical learning, and invaluable backstage insight… sounds good? That’s what the stars of Creative HEAD’s 2011 It List experienced at a special mentoring day, served up by session queen and ghd creative director Zoë Irwin. Our special projects manager, Joanna, headed along to soak up all the action – arriving just as our It List champs Dan Spiller, Leigh Keates and Leanna Sutherland (we missed you, Sophia Hilton, come home soon!) poured a morning-full of learning into three stunning looks based on this season’s biggest trends.

As well as having Zoë at the helm, ghd art team member Steve Robinson and creative educator Janine Jennings were also onboard to help guide our A-team through some methodical moments, and reveal up-to-the-minute techniques as seen at ghd shoots and shows.

If you’ve read Zoë’s blog here at creativeheadmag.com, you’ll know how serious she is about referencing, so our It Listers left with a brilliant must-read book list. They also picked up some excellent advice about working with the consumer and trade press, responding to a photographer’s brief, and the essential tips needed for day-to-day shooting. It was proper mentoring from a hairdressing pro, the stuff of dreams for any ambitious hairdresser – and it all came true for our It List A-team.

Here’s to you, Zoë, and to ghd, for delivering an inspirational, unforgettable day. Check out the July/August issue of Creative HEAD for more pics!

What better way to spend a sunny afternoon than hanging out at Camden Lock in London.

Our Hannah went on down to HOB Salon in Camden to see what the Wella Professionals team has been doing to celebrate the countdown to the London 2012 Olympic Games. The team has joined forces with Olympic silver medallist Sharron Davies and have been travelling the country to visit some of the top salons in the UK.

Currently in the middle of its Olympic Games tour, the team will be visiting six salons in two weeks – still to come is Cheynes Hairdressing in Edinburgh on 31 May and Francesco Group in Birmingham on 1 June.

Selected hairstylists from each salon have been creating Olympic Games-inspired styles for Sharron and yesterday was the turn of HOB Salon stylist Andrea Martinelli. Andrea’s inspiration came from traditional Olympic olive-branch hair decoration, adding his own touch to make the look more wearable, which Sharron loved.

And when the Olympics begin the team will be providing Olympic mums with a bit of pampering, with styling and beauty sessions taking place at the Wella Professionals World Studio London. Aw bless!

Editorial assistant Charlotte headed to The Blow Bar in Islington to try out the newly launched Screen Siren blow-dry master class.

The salon, which specialises in the blow-dry, found more and more clients wanted to learn how to recreate the salon looks at home. Owner Emma Rees told us: “We really are responding to client demand. Teaching people how to achieve that perfect salon blow-dry at home is appreciated by our clients.”

The Screen Siren class teaches you how to create the perfect Marcel wave in the privacy of an upstairs room of the salon, where classes are kept to a maximum of six people and all equipment is provided.

And it’s surprisingly easy to focus on the task at hand, despite the champagne on tap. It’s a great opportunity for friends to do something together, or for clients to meet new people and get to know their stylist better.

And the results? Not bad for a first timer! A few more goes and Charlotte will have created the perfect ‘S’ bend!

We kicked off our weekend in serious style on Friday night at the Soho Hotel, where Tangle Teezer founder Shaun P and his team were celebrating receiving a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation. For those in the know, the awards programme is highest official stamp of approval for British businesses, with previous winners including the BBC and Boots.

After just five short years in business, and need we mention a setback on Dragon’s Den, Tangle Teezer is now stocked in 80 countries. This month it also heads Stateside, where CVS Pharmacy, which has more 7,000 stores, will distribute the trusty detangling brush across 41 states.

As the champagne flowed we delighted at the stories of how Shaun developed his idea for a new brush. “I had a client with really long hair that knotted no matter what care I put into prepping it. I eventually mastered this technique, that combined zigzag movements and slight tapping with a comb to remove knots,” said Shaun, who formerly worked as a globe-trotting colour technician at Sassoon and senior technical director at Richard Ward Hair & Metrospa.

Frustrated that there was no brush on the market that he could reach for, Shaun remortgaged his flat and set about creating the Tangle Teezer. “It has a reverse psychology, the teeth are positioned in a completely different way and it has no handle, as it’s only meant for detangling – never styling,” he said.

In October 2007 his business officially launched. “In the beginning my mum and I would sit packaging all the brushes as it cost more for the manufacturers to do. We’d have the sorest thumbs from assembling all the boxes,” he said.

Today, Shaun leaves all the packaging to his three British-based manufacturers, which have distributed more than 2 million brushes to date, a total of 56,000 a month. And with a few more innovations and designs in the pipeline, those figures will no doubt go up and up.

Michael Van Clarke – Most Wanted Business Thinker 2011 and recent Salon Smart speaker – has just returned from Dublin having spent a day in theatre with the talented Dr Maurice Collins, probably the world’s leading hair transplant surgeon. Want to know what he discovered? Read about his experience here…

Many clients have enquired about hair transplant procedures and I too have a few less hairs on top than in my youth, when my full swinging bob would attract ‘is he or isn’t he?’ comments as I strode along, a mickey take on the ’70s Harmony hairspray ads, for those old enough to remember. My brother Nicky was practising on my hair at the time and hadn’t yet moved onto full layers!

Anyway, my only understanding of hair transplants was the old dolly head plug version, which left a lot to be desired. I wanted to be updated on just how refined this process could now be.

The purpose-built centre in Dublin is state of the art and oozes a sense of caring and excellence. The underground car park with lift allows total anonymity for high profile clients. We started at 7.45am with a full boardroom briefing on the patient, who had flown in from Asia especially. The meeting involved a team of about 15 surgeons, nurses and technicians. It’s vital that everyone knows the exact programme, as with this sort of surgery you don’t get a second chance.

Everything is carried out under local anaesthetic. Maurice was previously a head and neck surgeon, and in the operating theatre a strip of scalp is removed from the back of the head between 1cm to 2cm high and 26cm across. This is the donor piece. This wound is closed with staples and stitching, and the patient moves to the TV room beside the labs where he can sit upright and relax.

The donor section of scalp is then taken to the lab where a team of highly skilled technicians working at banks of Nikon microscopes slice the flesh into single hair wide rows. Another group of technicians in the adjoining lab then separate these into the individual hair follicles.

The harvest is graded into single hair, double, triple and quadruple hair follicles. The average works out to about 2.2 hairs per follicle, so 100 follicles will yield about 220 hairs – 3,000 hairs is a fairly standard procedure. This is, of course, dependent on the thickness and quality of the donor hair at the back. Everything is recorded, counted and posted on the wall for everyone to see. It’s important to know the numbers.

Another surgeon has prepared three micro scalpels tailored to the depth of the scalp and in three thicknesses depending on follicle size. In the TV room, he then sets about making incisions into the scalp, taking care to adjust the angles so that the hairs lay in a natural direction. Only single hair follicles are placed around the hairline and some are scattered with a deliberate irregularity to mimic nature’s way.

A further team of technicians then begin planting the individual follicles one by one into the prepared holes. The full operation can take 10 hours and the patient must stay upright, so cannot go to bed, for 12 hours after leaving.

I sat in on two post-op consultations from the surgery and I was amazed to see how quickly the healing was taking place. One man was in his 30s, the other in his 70s.

I also attended a consultation with a female patient who had been taking Regaine to thicken her hair. I personally don’t like the idea of lifelong drug use but this is mild and externally applied. The results were dramatically different from earlier photographs I saw.

I know as a hairdresser the amazing difference hair makes to self-esteem and Maurice is a real artist who’s created an amazing centre. I feel comfortable now recommending clients to him.”

Couldn’t get a ticket for this year’s sell-out Salon Smart? You missed a belter! But fear not as we have a rather wonderful little taster here. We couldn’t squeeze it all in, but this mini-movie will show you what a fantastic line-up and crowd we had. Just make sure you have 28-29 April 2013 free in your diary!

http://www.creativeheadmag.com/salonsmart/salon-smart-2012-all-the-action/