So the countdown is on, it’s almost fashion week, and yes beauties, I’ll be there!

The Beauty Scholar will be bringing you all the trends and news from the fashion heavyweights strutting their stuff in Sydney from April 30 – May 4.

I’ll also be stepping into some rather large four inch heels and acting as the Editor-at-Large for iconic hair company VS Sassoon at MBFWA (that’s Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Australia in case you were wondering…FYI…OMG – acronyms are so in right now! )

But alas, despite the fact that this hair-raising honour has been bestowed upon me, I’m having a bad hair day – well…week.

What’s a girl to do? I can head to fashion week with a head full of horror tresses. So my remedy? Get some tips from the pros of course!

I was lucky enough to get the hair gospel from Emiliano Vitale, a true hair guru and the Creative Director at E-Salon, a leading style shack in Sydney’s Northern suburbs.

Here’s hoping Emiliano can save my hair, I’m hopeful though…he did just get back from New York Fashion Week, so this guy knows his stuff! Here goes!

First of all I was dying to know the three hottest trends Emiliano saw coming down the runways at NY Fashion Week, I had to have some insight into the looks of the season, if my hair was to become hot (or at least tepid) again!

What did Emiliano suggest as the key looks?
“Messy knots and chignons,” “polished ponytails with a twist”, and “undone curls” – (check out the pics below). Love it! And sounds easy enough right?

Well Emiliano warns not to get too undone with those curls, explaining to me that they were more whimsy than frizzy. He elaborated saying the undone curls he saw on the catwalks were “definitely NOT [of] a ‘frizzy’ texture, more a brushed out texture with a slight curl definition” nice!

So with these ideas in mind, I had to know, was there one key styling tool that he saw as a must-have?

Emiliano made it pretty clear, “A good dryer is always key to good styling” he vouches for The VS Sassoon 2200W Academy Tools Dryer, and I can too!

As Emiliano explains, “[it’s] made in Italy to true professional standards. It features a salon grade long life AC motor for faster, salon quality styling and drying and is perfect for achieving those polished ponytails with a twist.”

I’ve had a good old play with this dryer beauties and I have to say it’s impressive. It’s even left my Parlux in the bathroom cabinet for a while! Here’s what this dryer looks like, it’s pretty too!

But even with a good dryer in hand, I had to tell Emiliano of my concerns, could I, and all the other everyday beauties REALLY pull off these high fashion looks?

When I asked him if he thought runway and high fashion trends translate well to every day wear and at home styling?
He said, “It depends entirely on the look and what you are hoping to recreate. I think that perhaps 90 per cent of the time, runway hair is the easiest hair to recreate at home. It’s the other 10 per cent that seem to be quite OTT and Avant-Garde. These looks are not meant to be recreated at home, rather interpreted and used as a reference for that everyday look, and to capture trends.”

Ok, got it, so undone curls and polished ponies are achievable, but I’ll have to tread carefully with anything too GaGa-esque or OTT…(I told you acronyms were cool right now!).

Lesson learnt, what else should I NOT do then? Hmm. Emiliano helped me out by illustrating what he thought was one of the most common mistakes women tend to make with their hair.

“The biggest mistake is in the styling; generally it is because they don’t have the right tools and products. I understand the idea of wanting product-free hair, but the problem here is that hair does not naturally have the ability to hold certain types of curl and body. Everyone needs a little bit of help, and with the right products you can create the desired styles.”

Yay! So I no longer have to feel guilty for that bathroom cabinet bursting at the seams with hair products then? Yes! Cop that Mr. Beauty Scholar… it IS reasonable for me to have ten types of thermal protectant spray.

After my chat with Emiliano I was feeling enthused about trying some new styles to rock at MBFWA, but I had one last concern. Dry hair… my hair seems to be sapped of moisture when winter starts to hit. And with the cold winds and icky weather we’ve been copping lately I was a little concerned.

So how did Emiliano suggest I combat that?

“Using key products that maintain hydration in the hair. The best product I find is Nectar Thermique by Kerastase. It is a leave-in product which moisturises and protects the hair.”

Excellent, thanks Emiliano, I’ll be checking that one out.

Finally, since Emiliano is THE MAN, and had been so full of wisdom about what to do with my hectic hair, I had to ask him to look into his crystal ball, (or maybe his crystal hair-dryer?) and tell me what he thought we might be seeing in the way of hair trends at Fashion Week in Sydney.

His predictions? “definitely the ‘undone’ bun or ‘undone’ knot – these were the key looks from NYC, which are translatable all over the world.”

Brilliant! Now I’ll be off to try to recreate this look so I’m truly part of the fashion pack next week…better go find that VS Sassoon Academy Tools Dryer to start with I think!

If you’d like to know more about Emiliano Vitale and the famed E-Salon check out their website here.

For more info on that ripper of a dryer I mentioned see the VS Sassoon page with all the info.

Wish me luck beauties! I’m off to try and rescue my hair before next week. Four days and counting! Fashion week here we come!

xxxBeautyScholar

Over the Easter long weekend I decided that my locks needed a bit of a touch up. Here’s what my hair looked like at the beginning of my John Frieda experiment, not a bad colour, but kind of dull and dry looking:

Luckily enough, I’d been asked to try out a new permanent hair dye by John Frieda, a brand that I’m a bit of a fan of (look forward to some more reviews soon of their styling products I’ve been using!). Their new hair dye is a foam formula, not a completely new concept, but innovative nonetheless. The colour I chose was 5R Medium Red Brown.

Before this one I’d never coloured my hair with a foam dye, I’ve always gone the traditional route of cream colourants. I am however an avid believer in home hair dye. My mantra is that if you do it yourself, you have no one else to blame! (Well maybe a friend or your mum, if you have help!). Happily though, I didn’t blame anyone for anything when it came to the John Frieda Precision Foam Colour. It was easy, quick, and gave my hair a lovely touch up it had been needing for a while.

Above is what the packaging looks like for this product, simple and classy, which is what John Frieda stuff normally looks like. Best of all there were plenty of pictures of the hair colour on the box, with swatches on the top, sides, front and back. One of my pet hates with home colourants is when there is only the tiniest pic or swatch of the colour and some over airbrushed pic of a model with the ‘supposed’ colour on the front of the box. Give me big swatches please! The more info the better.

As for what was inside the box, it had a groovy little pump activator that goes into the formula bottle which I’d never seen before, I was intrigued! The other things inside the package were the base formula itself (the developer) and the colour that you squeeze into that, as well as a nice sized conditioner for after colour care, no little packet here, you get a mini bottle of the stuff. You also get gloves (and this was another thing I loved about this dye) – and JF spare no expense on these, they’re nice slim fitting rubber type ones, not those huge plastic bag type things you often get with other home colours. Don’t you just hate those? I always throw them away and use my own anyway!

But not with these babies, I was so excited about them I took a picture for you:

 Sad huh? I get excited about rubber gloves! Oh well, just wait for the next pic.More excitement!

After you GENTLY mix the formula together (no shaking with this one girls – don’t worry this step is well explained in the instructions) You get a nice formula that looks like this one:

 As always it looked really dark in the bottle, but they’re never that bad once you apply them to your hair. I was a little concerned that there really wouldn’t be enough product to cover my long hair with this, but boy was I proved wrong. Because this stuff foams up as you apply it and it comes out of the bottle, it just keeps on coming and coming. Something about that magic little pump thingy that I mentioned earlier. It really was quite cool. I had more than enough for my hair and plenty left over. This was a nice change from cream formulas where I’m usually frantically trying to squeeze the last little bit of product out of the bottle to cover my whole head. Best of all, it had no strong smell. I actually didn’t even notice a smell at all until I’d finished applying the dye to the whole head and it was so mild, I couldn’t believe it!

Next step? Well, you just wait 20 minutes for the magic to happen.

Then you simply rinse out, apply the conditioner and then rinse out again. Voila!

Freshened up hair with the ease of applying a bit of mousse to your hair and waiting a while.

Here’s a final pic of the colour so you can see how it turned out. Don’t mind the dark red bits, they’re still my Featherheads hair extensions that I mentioned in a post a little while ago (if you’re interested in them, check out the write-up here). I did take the feathers out and put them back in after I had finished colouring.

To give you a better idea of the shade I thought I’d whack the box next to my head so you can see how it was true to the box colour too (LOVE that!). It was glossy, even colour and it didn’t stain my skin or scalp at all.I went with a shade that was close to my existing colour for the best result, so the shade change wasn’t huge, but the condition of my hair was much better after colouring, a lot more shine!

John Frieda Precision Foam Colour retails for $22.99 and is available from Priceline, Target, Woolworths, Coles and leading pharmacies nationally. You can give them a buzz by calling 1800 468 318 if you have any trouble finding them. The John Frieda Precision Foam Colour is available in a range of shades for blondes, brunettes and redheads too!

Let me know if you try this stuff beauties, I was really happy with it and will definately purchase for my next hair touch up!

xxxBeautyScholar