City of success

Overall winner Mana Dave's creation. Photo / Supplied

Stunning colour work saw Auckland hairdressers win five of the six medals at one of the country's leading hair competitions. The overall winner of the Wella Trend Vision Awards was Mana Dave from Blaze salon, who will travel to Berlin in November to compete against stylists from 72 other countries.

With him will be the Young Talent gold medallist, Lisa Yu-Chen Wang, from Jan Waite Hairdressing, who won the same award in 2006. This year she softened a futuristic cut with pastel blonde layers of colour.

The competition demands all round excellence, with entrants having to submit a styled photograph of a model, then reproduce the cut and colour in front of top judges who mark them on technical difficulty before further points were given for the overall presentation of the idea when their model took to the runway.

Dave, a popular winner at the show in the Civic Theatre's Winter Garden, melded violet highlights into the dark layers of an undercut asymmetric style, designed for versatility. Worn forward it's a crop with an extreme fringe, pushed back and it converts to a bob, winning praise for its finish, polish and creativity.

He praised the awards for recognising the skills of colourists. "It is fantastic to have a competition that not only profiles colourists, but now makes them equal to people who can shape hair. That's what I love about it."

Dharma's Sara Allsop took the silver medal with pre-Raphaelite red curls and Belinda Boddington, from Shape salon in Wellington, won bronze.

A crowd favourite was the Young Talent silver medallist Devo Wegana, from Vada, whose architectural cut had vivid red colour panels that beautifully echoed the fabric design of the World dress his model wore. Bronze place-getter Rebecca Corlett-Wood of Hype showed a masculine look, with glossy black hair fronted with a matte grey crest.

A separate People's Choice award voted on by hairdressers and the public was made to Sam Sua'a, from Spectra in Palmerston North.

Each of the competing stylists interpreted their choice of one of four key themes from Wella for 2009, which have been introduced to salons this month as part of the company's new Personalised Trends programme. This helps hairdressers pinpoint the looks their clients would best suit. The trends are Virtual Life, which Mana Dave interpreted to celebrate playful creativity; De-Lush, for feminine styling with soft curls and volume; Intersexion, exploring the lines between masculine and feminine styles; and Utopia, a mix of soft and sharp lines combined for futuristic simplicity.


Hair scares
Two-thirds of women have left their hairdresser unhappy with the result, a New Zealand survey has found. In most cases the problem has been miscommunication between customer and cutter when trying a new style. Of the unhappy punters, 33 per cent left the salon feeling embarrassed and for 16 per cent it ended in tears.

Researchers questioned 500 women for hair company Wella before introducing its Personalised Trends service to help avoid disasters. Wella stylists will be further trained in how to match hot hair styles and colouring services with customer needs and hair types.

The survey found many women looked to celebrities for hairstyle inspiration and wanted advice on whether the styles they liked would suit them. Jennifer Anniston's shaggy bob was cited by an amazing 55 per cent of women as a look they had tried. The heavy fringe worn by the likes of Kate Moss has been tried by 27 per cent and Posh's bob by 21 per cent of the group.

Current style inspirations are Rihanna, Katie Holmes, Agyness Deyn and Isla Fisher.