Tress Relief

In our January article on hair repair, we highlighted some of the main causes of damaged hair and suggested some products to help your clients maintain healthy hair at home. “Failure to use products designed to prevent or treat damage is a key factor in distressed hair,” says Dennis Clendennen, Aveda session stylist and owner of Dionysus Salon~Spa in The Woodlands, Texas, and Dionysus Hair in Houston. He recommends shampoos and conditioners with gentle cleansing, moisturizing and strengthening benefits and styling products that detangle, replace protein in the hair, smooth the cuticle and offer protection from heat styling.

Here are some additional retail products that can help relieve your clients’ damages locks:

Pureology EssentialRepair InstantRepair

Redken Extreme Anti-Snap

evo ritual salvation shampoo

Paul Mitchell Hair Repair Treatment

Oribe Royal Blowout Heat Styling Spray

KMS MoistRepair Revival Cream

Keune Care Line Vital Nutrition Leave-In Hair Repair

Aveda Brilliant Damage Control

Scruples White Tea Restorative Shampoo

TIGI Let It Be Leave-In Conditioner

Rene Furterer Karite Intense Nourishing Shampoo

Phyto Phytonectar Ultra Nourishing Shampoo

Nail and Spa Sakura’s Chic Nail Look for American Salon

The beautiful bejeweled nail look that graced American Salon’s new last page column, Final Cut, in our January issue was created exclusively for us by Nail and Spa Sakura, which has two locations in New York City. The nail spa uses Calgel, an odorless gel that hardens with the use of UV light, to create distinctive designs that last two to three weeks and protect the natural nail. The system comes with dozens of colors that can be custom-blended to create designs such as French manicures, reverse French, animal prints, fades and polka dots, with the ability to add glitter, holograms and rhinestones, in addition to hand-painted motifs. Sakura offers classes on the service for nail techs in English, Japanese and Korean. Here’s a basic description of how it works:

Nails are first prepped by filing the surface and pushing down the cuticles. Nails are then wiped clean so no residue remains on the surface. After each coat of Calgel, nails are exposed to UV light for three minutes to set the gel.

Finally, nails are painted with a standard clear topcoat polish to enhance the shine.

Photography: Babak (Final Cut). Nails: Junko Uyama for Nail and Spa Sakura

Nail and Spa Sakura’s Chic Nail Look for American Salon

The beautiful bejeweled nail look that graced American Salon’s new last page column, Final Cut, in our January issue was created exclusively for us by Nail and Spa Sakura, which has two locations in New York City. The nail spa uses Calgel, an odorless gel that hardens with the use of UV light, to create distinctive designs that last two to three weeks and protect the natural nail. The system comes with dozens of colors that can be custom-blended to create designs such as French manicures, reverse French, animal prints, fades and polka dots, with the ability to add glitter, holograms and rhinestones, in addition to hand-painted motifs. Sakura offers classes on the service for nail techs in English, Japanese and Korean. Here’s a basic description of how it works:

Nails are first prepped by filing the surface and pushing down the cuticles. Nails are then wiped clean so no residue remains on the surface. After each coat of Calgel, nails are exposed to UV light for three minutes to set the gel.

Finally, nails are painted with a standard clear topcoat polish to enhance the shine.

Photography: Babak (Final Cut). Nails: Junko Uyama for Nail and Spa Sakura

Raquel Welch Gets Wiggy With American Salon

For our new Viewpoint column in the January issue, I had the pleasure of interviewing actress Raquel Welch about the Corporate Impact Award the Raquel Welch Wig Collection and parent company HairUWear received recently from the American Cancer Society for their contribution of more than $1 million worth of wigs. (The wigs have been distributed to women who are cancer patients nationwide with the aim of helping them cope with their disease and achieve a better quality of life.) Here, Raquel shares how she got involved in wig-making and provides tips both stylists and clients can use for styling wigs.

Q: What made you decide to create your own wig line?

A: I didn’t really have the idea myself. As most actresses or people who work in fashion know, hairpieces, wigs and extensions are kind of an everyday thing. When you’re changing character or you’re on to the next thing, so many times you’ve had wig products to help you. [HairUWear] came to me and said they would like me to be involved in a wig line. I said that I never thought about it before, but I do wear a lot of wigs professionally, onstage, in my movies and sometimes for my appearances, so why not? I think it’s a good thing to have wigs more accessible to a cross-section of your average women so that they too can have these beauty aids to play with.

I also said I had never thought of wigs commercially before because I felt like they had gotten so dated-looking and didn’t seem to be very fashion forward. I said I thought we should style our wigs so that they’re not too “fantasy,” but still allow women to get into the glamour mode when they want to. I’m very hands-on. I have a stylist who works with me closely on the wig line who I take tear sheets to of my favorite hairstyles of the moment to recreate. I’ll say things like, “Don’t you love this Rianna look, isn’t that fun?” And he’ll say, “Oh yeah, we can do that.” So we do many contemporary styles, but also some for ladies who don’t want to make as much of a cutting-edge fashion statement. But I think more and more women are wearing wigs now, and younger and younger women, too.

Q: How many wigs do you own and how often do you change your style?

A: Oh gosh, I couldn’t even count them—there’s so, so many. I change my wigs quite often because there are so many fabulous new ones. We have the three-quarter falls, we have the hair extensions that are the clip-in straight strips and then HairUWear also makes Great Lengths, which is one of the premium individual bonded hair extensions that are used in the business. Then you have short wigs and blonde wigs and reddish wigs and dark wigs, long wigs and medium-length wigs. I was just upstairs playing around with the idea of wearing a kind of deconstructed shag, sort of very Klute-looking, but it’s not as perfectly quaffed. There are really lot’s of fun, youthful and convenient styles that you can throw into your suitcase and take with you or put on when you’re in a pinch.

What’s really exciting lately are the new lace-front wigs, which have a piece of hair lace—a very fine mesh—that comes right ahead of your hairline so that you don’t have to wear your hair forward to cover the where the wig starts. It really looks like the hair is growing right out of your head. It’s pretty amazing.

Q: Do you have any tips for women and stylists when if comes to wearing and styling wigs?

A: I think even if you buy a wig and it looks pretty darn good on you from the get-go, it’s very helpful for women to take their wigs to their stylist and ask them to just give it a dusting, in other words, take minuscule amounts of hair off the wig to help frame the face and balance everything. It’s impossible to buy a wig that’s produced for thousands of people and have it just exactly the way you want it. I think it’s important that stylists are able to do this. Of course, you have to keep in mind that it’s not going to grow back, so you have to do it judiciously.

One styling trick I use to help frame the face and keep my style from looking “wiggy” is to pull the front of my hairline out from underneath the wig in strategic places. Just use a little rattail comb with a metal tip on it. Because there’s more than one color in the hair that’s in the wig, it usually blends right in. Then if the wind blows or you throw your head back, you’re free to move around and you don’t have a telltale “wig helmet” on that going to be suddenly revealed and blow the whole image! You’d be surprised how often that works. I can get a way with it almost without exception.