Richard Kavanagh is on a mission to better connect New Zealanders with global hair trends.
Auckland stylist Richard Kavanagh is privy more than most to what happens backstage at the international fashion shows. He's just back from time as a team leader creating looks for the likes of Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton and Prada.
Now in a new role as creative director for the Rodney
Wayne salon chain he will be schooling its 650 staff on how to bring a more fashion-forward edge to their work.
It's not about replicating exaggerated runway styles, but about better picking up on the trends that underpin them. Kavanagh will get the message across by coming up with seasonal style collections and by mentoring staff.
While all the big hair companies spread the word to their affiliate salons about what's hot from overseas, Kavanagh is in the rare position of having been on the spot.
His forecast for summer hair is for effortless, relaxed looks, with a floaty romantic feel. Wave and curl feature and even straighter styles have "a bit of a bend". Fringes are grown long for versatility, worn down or pulled back.
Colours are soft, with blondes having a grown-out, lived in look, often with pastel tones. Textures are dusty, powdery and matte, evoking a bohemian traveller.
But Kavanagh is already thinking ahead to the winter collection he will come up with next year, drawing on his work over the past month in New York, Milan and Paris. When he is next overseas he will keep the Rodney Wayne team in touch by blogging about show looks, with a quick "how to" to reinforce that they are also part of the same fashion industry.
Customers will soon get extra attention too, with the new approach extended to ensuring salons have the right sort of magazines on hand to "inspire and aspire to" and music playlists to set the scene.
"I do hair like I play music, it's kind of a dance," he jokes. If it's a dance it must be a jig, a controlled frenzy like the atmosphere backstage when a model's hair needs a complete restyle with just minutes to go before a show starts.
That happened when Kavanagh spotted a frizzy haired disaster at Marc by Marc Jacobs and sorted it out before hair maestro Guido Palau swooped.
Kavanagh has been on Guido's hand-picked team for several seasons and now works on hair test sessions with him when final show looks are locked in - that is unless they're restyled on the run. He is getting to know the top models and designers, but says some fashion folk are best observed at a safe distance: Anna Wintour "she scares me". Donatella Versace swoops in with an entourage of stylists: "She's tiny, you feel like you could pick her up and put her in your pocket," says the not-so-tall Kavanagh.
Jean-Paul Gaultier he describes as a "sweetie", but says at Yves Saint Laurent he was unnerved to be eyed over backstage by "the very intense" designer Stefano Pilati, but later twigged they shared Japanese-style tattoos.
Kavanagh has a bodysuit of floral and water designs that stretches from his wrists down his body to his thighs. He began "collecting" tattoos in his teens and his arms now carry the names of his three children. The bodysuit has taken five years of painstaking work, with Adam Craft of the Tattooed Heart in K Rd still adding colours.
Its Japanese flavour follows an interest in the country sparked first by Kavanagh's studying karate and now extending to design.
With a V at his throat left unadorned, the ink art can be covered with a shirt, but working in a T-shirt backstage at shows, Kavanagh was routinely referred to as "the guy with the tattoos".
He came up with his own name for top model Freja Beha Erichsen who quietly told him backstage that she was sick to death of hearing her own name being called by the circling photographers. "So I said, 'I'll call you Bob'."
"That's what she was all season."
Seeing "Bob" waiting in the lineup to do the final turn at YSL in a stunning cobalt blue dress brought home to him how amazing some of the shows were. Mostly he only had time to look at the models from the neck up.
"But there are moments when I kind of step back, like at YSL, and say 'oh my goodness'."
His favourite hair this season included the pompadours at the Vogue show in New York, a basketweave look with a medieval mood at Alexander McQueen, the jazz-era influence at Prada and the sweeping front style, twisted back at Louis Vuitton. Close to the head shapes were prevalent and a number had a wet look, slicked back with gel and mousse.
That will translate next winter into defined polished hair with a shiny, slick finish and a slightly androgynous feel. Kavanagh, who began hairdressing straight from school and spent a decade in salons before moving into freelance work, says his job at Rodney Wayne will allow him time to continue with show styling, editorial work and as an ambassador for the Redken company. He wants to build on Rodney Wayne's existing customer-focused approach and strong in-house training, but give the salons a more "connected" feel to draw in new customers without alienating satisfied existing ones.
The company's original proposition was to deliver urban, fashion-focused hair to New Zealand women; now its founder has brought Kavanagh in to reinforce that and fashion's international connection in a relevant, achievable way. With 5000 customers a week, he has the potential to turn plenty of heads.
"The thing about cool fashion is that it's effortless," says Kavanagh - or at least should look like it.
