What have I gotten myself in to?? Was the first thing that popped in to my head my this week, when i finally started realizing how big of a project this was going to be. Am i being negative here?? Nah, well on that note...I would be Tara, the "new-by" to the business, the baby of the salon, one of the "apprentices" at Byu-ti, I always seem to find myself in awe of the girls I work with. They are all so creative and literally AMAZING at everything they do! They are such a pleasure to be around and I am so lucky to have them as my mentors. Everyone brings something different to the table. First of all, everyone of us have such different personalities, most of us are a bit crazy. (But I guess when you're in this business you kind of have to be.) We all come from different back-grounds and have our own stories. But in the end we have quite a few things in common, art, hair, and drinking (which by the way, is how this whole thing started).
Basically Andi already explained the whole Renee's thing and how this fantastic idea all began. And I'm going to have to say that as we were leaving the bar that night I was right there with her in thinking that this was just one of those ideas we'll put in the back of the closet. So when I got to the salon the next morning Lesley started talking about it again. About how it was such a great idea (duh!), what steps we were going to take next and that she was completely stoked to get started on it. And I tell ya, that Lesley, she's a pusher! But in the best possible way! I think it was by the next day that Andi had already gotten the ball rollin'. And better yet, got everyone at the salon on board! I'm so excited to get this thing moving!! Being at the salon completely inspires me!
Today we had a bit of free time. So Dawn decided to bust out the curling iron and throw out a few fancy do's on us. Lucianna got the oh-so lovely mile-high 80's bangs. And for me, Farrah Faucet hair. I'm going to have to say that I felt more like Peggy Bundy than Farrah. Especially after I went to the car and pulled out a neon pink belt. All that was missing was purple spandex pants and some heels. As we were sitting there though, we just started brainstorming on how many different ways we could take our decades. Arent you all excited to see what happens... :)
I'm a bit nervous, a little intimidated, and completely excited at the same time!! Well I guess thats it for now, till next time....
*Tara*
1.20.2007
Meetings?!?
Strange as it may seem, I simultaneously crave and fear leadership. Through overwhelming encouragement, I am trying to steer this project into the general direction I had originally intended. After all, what good is scratching an itch if you wind up scratching the wrong spot?
So I have been asked to lead our first “FORMAL” team meeting about the project on Monday. Suddenly, I am flashing back to time served as a Junior Lutheran board secretary. I mean… should I be taking minutes? Err... All in favor??
I struggle with both wanting and being afraid to release ownership, and make this a creative commune. However, it’s in the best the interest of the project to have SOMEONE making sure there is a congruent flow through the project, and dammit, I had to open my big mouth, so I guess I’ll be planning this meeting.
It is MOST important for me to make sure each stylist is adequately challenged and yet feels supported (not smothered) by the overall concept, or as a wise man once told me, “The End in Mind”. Everyone should feel free to stretch their minds as far as they’d like, but be aware of the overall feel of the shoot.
There are so many aspects to consider. How accurate do we want wardrobe to be? Are we talking period recreation or period inspiration? What do we want to use for a backdrop that will separate each decade from the others, but still tie it all together? So far, we’ve decided that the shoot should have a definitively modernized flare, and be suggestive regarding wardrobe. We thought we’d like to shoot against solid vibrant colors, tying in a mostly monochromatic wardrobe, which will make the hair and make-up POP and be the focus of each photo.
So (deep breath) I am planning to focus the meeting on the following things. In an hour.
~ Finalize All Decade Assignments: We’ve had this mostly done for a few days, but you know these creative types. ;)
~ Brainstorm Ideas: If someone has a bangin’ concept for a decade they are not doing, we want to make sure all the brilliant concepts get heard.
~ Bios and Headshots: For the newly forming HundredYearsofHair.com (or 100YearsofHair.com – we aren’t sure yet.) We’ll be posting a headshot-esque pic of each of us and answers to 7 questions we chose to provide some insight into our individuality.
Name, Hometown, Favorite City, I Find Inspiration In…, I Look Up To…, I Do This Because…, Before I Die I Will… Wait till you read THOSE!!
~ Review Decades: We’ll cull through the research I found online and in my books. I have assembled 3 packets of research. One is all Kevin Aucion’s work, naturally, another is from a book called Fashions in Hair, and lastly, a website www.kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/decade70.html Good ole' Google Image searches were pretty handy too. I just typed in "fashion" "Icons" "models" and got exactly what I was looking for.
~ Proposed Shoot Date: We are looking at the first weekend in April. YIKES!
~ Next Steps: We will meet again in 2 weeks. Each stylist will be responsible for creating and sketching or making a collage of THREE different looks for each decade. That way when we have our model casting call, we are not already married to just one concept for a decade. The stylist will pick their model and choose which of the looks they designed to use. Who knows? If we find models and looks versitle enough, we may be able to do more than one look per decade!
Whew. I’ll let you know how it goes.
XOXO
Andi
1.19.2007
A WHOOSH of Inspiration..
Yesterday we were looking in the thesaurus for a word to replace cheesy. Why? Because Andi (the force behind this whole project) described her and the girls with it. Cheesy? Hmm, I thought. These girls are anything but cheesy. They are, in my opinion, quite the opposite actually. Hi, I’m Natasha, one of the sisters that run this salon. I’m word sensitive these days I guess because even the word salon is making me want to search the thesaurus for a better one.
I honestly don’t know where to begin. All I know is that, if you have a dream. Put one foot in front of the other and move toward it. What I’m learning is that when you move towards your dreams, even if they aren’t totally clear, the world bends and twists in your favor to deliver something WAY beyond your wildest dreams. That’s what Byu-ti is to me, way beyond my wildest dreams.
We opened a small two-chair salon two years ago and quickly knew that we had bigger ambitions to fry and opened our ten-chair haven known as Byu-ti Hair Therapy. What’s happening over here is sort of like a mini Big Bang. An explosion of creativity is taking place.
Daniela (sister), Dario (husband) and I brainstormed on what kind of business we wanted to build and what came of it, to keep it really simple was our tag line, GIVE GOODNESS. We decided when hiring our team to focus on the “good” of the person rather than their fancy training and such. What has been born is a group of women that can move me to tears when I think about them. They are each dynamic and magnificently beautiful in their own way. Weird, because when we started thinking about the kind of team we wanted, the one thing we kept stating was, we wanted to highlight their ‘individuality’. We wanted a team but we didn’t want a box to fit them all in. Good thing, BC there wouldn’t be the slightest possibility of fitting this group into a box.
We have seven stylists currently, two apprentices and Daniela and I. We’re all ladies, although we do not discriminate. It just worked out that way.
So, back to 100 Years of Hair…Los Angeles falls into a quiet slumber through the holiday season as Hollywood basically goes on holiday. This is the time when most salons take on a slightly negative tone due to all the down time and lack of money being made. Not these girls. These girls smile everyday whether they’re busy or not. They drink wine after work and come up with ideas to keep the creative juices flying.
Andi shared her 100 Years of hair concept with the ladies and they’ve literally gone running with it. I can feel the sizzle of creativity bursting on a daily basis at a time when I was worried they may begin to get a little down.
This week we have our first meeting as a team, rather than the excited explosions that happen in the staff room daily. I’m looking forward to see what each person contributes to this project. I can tell they’ve already contributed so much, from concepts to research to simple enthusiasm.
It’s a dream to witness these girls in action. We will keep you posted and probably entertained on the process. Stay tuned…
I honestly don’t know where to begin. All I know is that, if you have a dream. Put one foot in front of the other and move toward it. What I’m learning is that when you move towards your dreams, even if they aren’t totally clear, the world bends and twists in your favor to deliver something WAY beyond your wildest dreams. That’s what Byu-ti is to me, way beyond my wildest dreams.
We opened a small two-chair salon two years ago and quickly knew that we had bigger ambitions to fry and opened our ten-chair haven known as Byu-ti Hair Therapy. What’s happening over here is sort of like a mini Big Bang. An explosion of creativity is taking place.
Daniela (sister), Dario (husband) and I brainstormed on what kind of business we wanted to build and what came of it, to keep it really simple was our tag line, GIVE GOODNESS. We decided when hiring our team to focus on the “good” of the person rather than their fancy training and such. What has been born is a group of women that can move me to tears when I think about them. They are each dynamic and magnificently beautiful in their own way. Weird, because when we started thinking about the kind of team we wanted, the one thing we kept stating was, we wanted to highlight their ‘individuality’. We wanted a team but we didn’t want a box to fit them all in. Good thing, BC there wouldn’t be the slightest possibility of fitting this group into a box.
We have seven stylists currently, two apprentices and Daniela and I. We’re all ladies, although we do not discriminate. It just worked out that way.
So, back to 100 Years of Hair…Los Angeles falls into a quiet slumber through the holiday season as Hollywood basically goes on holiday. This is the time when most salons take on a slightly negative tone due to all the down time and lack of money being made. Not these girls. These girls smile everyday whether they’re busy or not. They drink wine after work and come up with ideas to keep the creative juices flying.
Andi shared her 100 Years of hair concept with the ladies and they’ve literally gone running with it. I can feel the sizzle of creativity bursting on a daily basis at a time when I was worried they may begin to get a little down.
This week we have our first meeting as a team, rather than the excited explosions that happen in the staff room daily. I’m looking forward to see what each person contributes to this project. I can tell they’ve already contributed so much, from concepts to research to simple enthusiasm.
It’s a dream to witness these girls in action. We will keep you posted and probably entertained on the process. Stay tuned…
1.18.2007
Hairdressers Gone Wild: The Story of Us.
A few weeks ago, I found myself having a glass of wine after work with a few of the girls at Renee's (a divey little courtyard-bar right next door to Byu-ti, our salon). Amidst the smoke and cool beachy air we began to wax philosophical about all kinds of crap, Art, mostly, and more specifically OUR art.
Byu-ti is fairly new to the Los Angeles salon scene, though the owners Natasha and Daniela have been in the biz forever, quite prestigiously so, in fact. So all of us chickens are just beginning to move past watching each other blow-dry hair and lay foils and into the important stuff: like drinking wine after work.
We all come from very different backgrounds, with expertise in fields ranging from the very theatrical to the cleanest editorial work you've ever seen. Thrilled to be working with one another (no, really!), we've been able to swap ideas and keep the creative streams flowing.
It's been the most positive, creative atmosphere I've ever experienced. Sappy? A little, sure. BUT I LOVE THESE PEOPLE!!
So it's no surprise that we are all looking for ways to stretch each others ingenuity muscles; including each other in pet projects, encouraging individual big dreams (and I mean takin'-over-the-world BIG). Most of us were creatively stagnating, if not stifled all together, and this new environment felt like a run on the beach after a 14 hour plane ride. We began to rope each other into ongoing projects where we saw we could utilize (not fear) our sisters’ strengths, and as a result began to produce some flawless and truly inspired work.
Yet, even, with all these divinely artistic minds steaming up the joint in and day out, making marvelous works of wearable art, sometimes a girl gets an itch she just HAS to scratch.
This is my itch.
Back to Renee's... On my second glass of wine I started to talk to Tara and Lesley about my yearnings for the theater. "Maybe I'll just do a couple shows this year---just to satiate myself". Lesley, our prized red-head, confessed that she, too, being of-and-about the stage, missed it. We began to talk about the current trends being reminiscent of this era or that, and how everything continually circles back around. Still, we missed the framed fragments of time captured only on stage.
How great would it be to tell the story that every era has a play in modern society! Think about this: you go to your stock Hollywood party--- undoubtedly; you will see there some girl who could be Twiggy in line for the bathroom, or a Diana Ross incarnation lingering by the bar. Why not show how innovative the old tricks can be with just a teensy bit of new-millennium spice?
In fact, why not just do a WHOLE photo shoot dedicated to nothing but artistic satisfaction??
So the three of us agreed we would talk more about it (sober) and wandered off home. As much as I hate to admit it, the part of me conditioned to be disappointed was already convinced that this was just another one of those La La Land nights of big talk and no action. I made up my mind then and there that I really wanted to do this project, for me personally, as a sense of completion and a way to instrument all the things I’ve learned along the way to my current employment.
As it turns out, the girls didn’t forget about it. On the contrary, Lesley and Tara had a couple of the other girls buzzing about the idea when I came in the next day. We liked the idea so much, that we kept going with it, and as it happens when magic is meant to happen, it ignited some inspiration in each of us.
And it just kept going.
Gosh, how we had wished for something like this to be available to us when we were just beginning--- even 6 months ago, before we landed in our comfy little nest. How INSPRIRING it would be to be new to this dynamic industry and be able to take apart a project like this and understand every detail of what goes into it. How wonderful, the idea of inspiring someone else to recognize, utilize and renew decades gone by. All we want is to encourage someone else to take a concept and revive it-- to make the act of conceptual creation their own (and whole) world.
So that’s what we are doing here. We’re giving you a very very pretty and high-tech toaster. You will see it as it is assembled, and you’ll be able to study each limb as it joins to form a body.
We will give you notes, resources, timelines, schedules and sketches. We will show you where models come from, and how every person in this process is imperative to its success.
Stand by for the play by play…
XOXO
Andi
Byu-ti is fairly new to the Los Angeles salon scene, though the owners Natasha and Daniela have been in the biz forever, quite prestigiously so, in fact. So all of us chickens are just beginning to move past watching each other blow-dry hair and lay foils and into the important stuff: like drinking wine after work.
We all come from very different backgrounds, with expertise in fields ranging from the very theatrical to the cleanest editorial work you've ever seen. Thrilled to be working with one another (no, really!), we've been able to swap ideas and keep the creative streams flowing.
It's been the most positive, creative atmosphere I've ever experienced. Sappy? A little, sure. BUT I LOVE THESE PEOPLE!!
So it's no surprise that we are all looking for ways to stretch each others ingenuity muscles; including each other in pet projects, encouraging individual big dreams (and I mean takin'-over-the-world BIG). Most of us were creatively stagnating, if not stifled all together, and this new environment felt like a run on the beach after a 14 hour plane ride. We began to rope each other into ongoing projects where we saw we could utilize (not fear) our sisters’ strengths, and as a result began to produce some flawless and truly inspired work.
Yet, even, with all these divinely artistic minds steaming up the joint in and day out, making marvelous works of wearable art, sometimes a girl gets an itch she just HAS to scratch.
This is my itch.
Back to Renee's... On my second glass of wine I started to talk to Tara and Lesley about my yearnings for the theater. "Maybe I'll just do a couple shows this year---just to satiate myself". Lesley, our prized red-head, confessed that she, too, being of-and-about the stage, missed it. We began to talk about the current trends being reminiscent of this era or that, and how everything continually circles back around. Still, we missed the framed fragments of time captured only on stage.
How great would it be to tell the story that every era has a play in modern society! Think about this: you go to your stock Hollywood party--- undoubtedly; you will see there some girl who could be Twiggy in line for the bathroom, or a Diana Ross incarnation lingering by the bar. Why not show how innovative the old tricks can be with just a teensy bit of new-millennium spice?
In fact, why not just do a WHOLE photo shoot dedicated to nothing but artistic satisfaction??
So the three of us agreed we would talk more about it (sober) and wandered off home. As much as I hate to admit it, the part of me conditioned to be disappointed was already convinced that this was just another one of those La La Land nights of big talk and no action. I made up my mind then and there that I really wanted to do this project, for me personally, as a sense of completion and a way to instrument all the things I’ve learned along the way to my current employment.
As it turns out, the girls didn’t forget about it. On the contrary, Lesley and Tara had a couple of the other girls buzzing about the idea when I came in the next day. We liked the idea so much, that we kept going with it, and as it happens when magic is meant to happen, it ignited some inspiration in each of us.
And it just kept going.
Gosh, how we had wished for something like this to be available to us when we were just beginning--- even 6 months ago, before we landed in our comfy little nest. How INSPRIRING it would be to be new to this dynamic industry and be able to take apart a project like this and understand every detail of what goes into it. How wonderful, the idea of inspiring someone else to recognize, utilize and renew decades gone by. All we want is to encourage someone else to take a concept and revive it-- to make the act of conceptual creation their own (and whole) world.
So that’s what we are doing here. We’re giving you a very very pretty and high-tech toaster. You will see it as it is assembled, and you’ll be able to study each limb as it joins to form a body.
We will give you notes, resources, timelines, schedules and sketches. We will show you where models come from, and how every person in this process is imperative to its success.
Stand by for the play by play…
XOXO
Andi
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