Creating a collection, designing a salon, growing a business. It all starts with creativity. To jumpstart their genius, many top stylists start with

Transcription

1 Creating a collection, designing a salon, growing a business. It all starts with creativity. To jumpstart their genius, many top stylists start with a mood board a very personal collage of sketches, photos, key words, magazine tear sheets and more. Here s how mood boards work for 5 hair biz visionaries. Could they also work for you?

2 Oribe Legendary session stylist and founder, Oribe Hair Care For Oribe, every story starts with one image. It could be a scene from a movie or an iconic photograph. Six months before Backstage Las Vegas, an Oribe-hosted workshop and avantgarde runway show for more than 600 salon owners and artistic directors, the artist began his mood board for the event. His theme, he decided, would be Grotesque Glamour, and the first image that came to mind was of Penelope Cruz in the film Nine, seated in her bedroom, makeup smeared, looking like a modern Fellini siren cool, vampy, sexy, amazing. That rawness led to images by Picasso, Matisse and even Warhol. Next came images of Divine, the drag star who appeared in many of John Waters films. Divine s face is a battle of colors and angles just like those paintings by Picasso, Oribe says. From Divine it was a hop, skip and jump to Lady Gaga, then on to images from comic books, which Oribe finds are full of exaggeration. Onstage in Las Vegas, Oribe s mood board came to life in segments entitled Backstage Girl, inspired by Divine; Blonde Bombshell, informed by Lady Gaga, Madonna and Warhol s portrait of Marilyn Monroe; and Comic Book Villains. I think of hairdressing as an art form, though I realize a lot of people don t, Oribe says. I think that s what gives me the confidence I have. There is no right or wrong.

3 Antoinette Beenders Aveda Global Creative Director Whether she s concepting Aveda s latest ad campaign, putting together an independent collection or planning a live show, Antoinette Beenders uses mood boards to collect her thoughts and help bring the ideas in her mind to life. I m a sponge, says Antoinette. I love going to galleries, museums and fashion shows. I carry my iphone with me everywhere and I love to take pictures and soak up what s around me. Antoinette always has a finger on the pulse of what s new, trendy, exciting and downright wacky in the world today. She s inspired by words, feelings, models faces, art, current events, movies, fairy tales, fashion, magic, nature you name it. You can only hold so many ideas in your head at one time. So I use a mood board to blurt everything out, she says. For Antoinette, the process of taking a concept from inception to fruition is organic. Sometimes she ll work on three or four different boards at one time, building them months prior to a shoot. Once a board is complete, Antoinette selects a photographer who she believes best represents the esthetic or style of her concept. Only then does the board completely come to life. For her Punk Couture collection (top right), Antoinette focused the board on her models faces, then included fashion imagery, mostly in black and white. To complete her board, she added words like Blade Runner, Mad Max, Goth and white frizz bob. The idea for a show featuring alien-like creatures in bald caps (bottom right) was triggered by something that happened when Antoinette first arrived in America. I received a card from the government, she remembers, that said I was a Non-Resident Alien. The card was immediately tacked to a new mood board!

4 See the entire Dada dolls collection! search: artdada Mark Hayes Sassoon International Creative Director For an intellectual like Mark, inspiration comes in many forms, but he generally starts his mood boards for collections like Sassoon s Spring/Summer 2010 Dada Dolls by reflecting on the current socioeconomic climate. I wanted to focus this collection in the realm of art, Mark explains, and Dadaism was an art movement born out of the turmoil and carnage of World War I. So I felt it would be a rich source of inspiration. Rich indeed. Creating the story behind any collection is a very liquid, very linear process, and it s different every time, says Mark. But a great thing about Sassoon is that we re a group of eclectic people. Someone is always bringing something new and interesting to the table. For Dada Dolls, the team began by looking at Dadaist artwork, then progressed to examining the Dadaists themselves namely sexually ambiguous photographer Claude Cahun, known for her self-portraits, and artist Hans Bellmer, who posed fragmented dolls in a series of eerie tableaux. These poses ultimately informed the models poses in the Sassoon collection. Hans was fascinated with the idea that dolls represented life but weren t quite alive, comments Mark. It s that unnerving feeling I wanted to portray in the collection with the mannequin-like poses and the clean makeup and graphic brows. Color plays a huge part in every Sassoon collection, and for Dada Dolls, Mark posted the poetic fragment, A rose is a rose is a rose, by modernist poet Gertrude Stein, a.k.a. Mama Dada on the mood board, along with images from the Rose Exhibition by American Artist Cy Twombly. The original name for our collection was going to be The Rose, but we decided to use it as the name for the color technique instead, says Mark. We designed the technique so that at the core, the color is this beautiful intense violet, which gradually gets deeper as you work outward. It creates a surprise as you comb through the hair. For Hayes, the mood board is a companion and a weathervane on the journey of creating a collection. It takes a few months to put a board together, he comments, and during that time I m kind of tormented with it. But I think in the end, it lets you know if your concept is working or not.

5 Ted Gibson Owner of Ted Gibson Salon in NY and Washington, D.C. Ted Gibson uses mood boards in a slightly different way, namely, to manifest what he wants to happen in his life. I call them Vision Quests, says Ted. Whatever my heart desires, I cut it out and put it on a board. A year ago, Ted pasted a photo of Vogue editor Anna Wintour on his mood board and adorned her with angel s wings because he wanted her to take me under her wing. Since then, Gibson has done the fashion queen s hair twice in his salon in D.C. Three years ago, he created another mood board featuring Oprah front and center. I wanted to be on her show in the worst way, he reveals. Within a year, he had appeared on her show twice, during which time, the pair chatted like old friends. Look closely at the Oprah mood board and you ll also notice a Range Rover, the word casa and Post-It notes containing the words body care and tools. Ted explains. The lease on my Range Rover is up this year, I closed on a house in upstate New York last week and I added body care and tools to my product line. The Anna Wintour board features logos for Target and ULTA. I finally got my products into Target, he says, and now I m working on getting them into ULTA. Ted doesn t yet own the gold Cartier watch that appears on one of his boards, and his net worth isn t close to the $300 million that appears. Yet, he insists, he attains at least 45 percent of his mood board goals. And what about those snow-capped mountains on the Oprah board? They represent more vacation time, he laughs, which hasn t happened yet! At least not until he s worth $300 million!

6 See the complete Bardot step-by-step on page 154 Sam Villa Sam Villa Signature Series Tools and Education Prepping for a photo shoot can be overwhelming for some stylists, so Sam Villa recommends using a mood board to clarify your goals and communicate your vision to other participants in the shoot. My new DVD is called The Bardot, he explains, and the first thing I did when preparing for the cover shoot was to Google Brigitte Bardot. I studied all of the images, paying close attention to the hair, makeup, wardrobe, body language and characteristics. Next, Sam jotted down the words and phrases that came to mind as he was doing his research, words like textured volume, sex kitten, sexy not sleazy, come hither, vintage yet modern. Then he hit the fashion magazines, finding inspiration in collections that featured gathered fabrics that created texture. I thought about the kind of haircut I could create based on that kind of texture, says Sam, who gathered his images and content, affixed it all to a board, assessed the result and felt good about his direction. I used the board on set while shooting the images for the DVD cover and then scanned it into my computer to use as a resource, says Sam, who has since referred to the digital version of the mood board on location, on the road and anytime he needs inspiration. want to create your own mood boards? 1. Start by jotting down key points, ideas and concepts on a piece of paper. 2. Flip through inspirational magazines like Italian Vogue, V and BOMB and rip out images relating to step #1. Remember, there are no boundaries, so tear out anything that evokes a feeling or inspires you. You can also go online and Google your topic and print out images you like. Don t worry about being too organized when it comes to creativity, the more chaotic the better. 3. Edit the visuals down to those you find most appealing, realistic and that relate to the subject. Affix them to poster board with Prestik, a reusable adhesive that allows you to change or move images without tearing them. 4. Attach key words and phrases to your board. 5. When the board is complete, brief all other participants before the shoot, show or other project to help them prepare. 6. On the day of the shoot, show, etc., post the mood board where everyone can see it and start the session with a review to keep everyone on point.