THE FUTURE OF HAIR
Forget about hair trends straight off the runways of New York or Paris. The future of hair is all about saying goodbye to the old one-size-suits-all approach to cutting and colouring, and making individuality the focus.
Gone are the days of rising and shining two hours early every day to wash and style your hair with an arsenal of tools and products. According to Rodney Wayne’s new creative director, Newton Cook, there has been a noticeable demand for more low-maintenance cuts and styles – and it’s a trend we’re set to see much more of in the future.
“I think over the past couple of years, the biggest change that we’ve seen is that people want more low-maintenance, more natural colouring of their hair,” says Cook.
“In saying that, it’s not necessarily the client’s natural colour; it looks almost like they’ve just stepped off of the beach, and their hair has just been lightened by the sun.”
Rather than a one-dimensional approach to colour, Cook says an increasing number of clients want their colouring to look natural. “It’s not just one global head of highlights any more; it’s not just one all-over colour. They want more dimension and texture through the hair.”
Fortunately, achieving the ever-popular ‘sun-kissed tresses’ look is easy to achieve in salon thanks to new techniques and products.
“Previously we used to use a lot of back-to-back foiling and everyone would use the same kind of structure with their foiling process. Today, colour is a lot more bespoke.
“It’s a lot more hand painting and placing colour in the places you want it to sit, rather than just everywhere.”
He says that while balayage is still one of the most popular in-salon colouring techniques, the way it is done now is dramatically different and customised to suit the individual more so than ever before.
“The other important change is that clients are more aware of the health of the hair,” he says.
“While they want their hair lightened, they don’t actually want it to feel like it’s been coloured. The bespoke nature of new balayage techniques adds natural texture to the hair, but we also want to have the integrity and the shine of the hair.” Cook says we tend to judge the health of our own hair by its shine and lustre. “If hair doesn’t have a sheen or gloss to it, you instantly think it looks dry and it doesn’t look healthy.”
One way to combat the damage that often comes hand in hand with hair lightening is new in-salon treatments and colouring services that have been formulated with shine- and health-enhancing ingredients. “And then we’ve got really great bonding systems, such as L’Oréal Professionnel Smartbond, which actually helps to repair and strengthen the hair as it is being coloured,” says Cook.
As well as adopting a lowmaintenance approach to hair colour, Cook says we also want fuss-free styles and cuts. “It’s still very much the ‘I just woke up like this look’,” he says. “People are a lot more time-conscious these days. They don’t necessarily have a lot of time to style or do their hair every morning.”
As a result, cuts and styles that can get us through two or even three days of wear are increasingly popular.
“Whether it’s a look that you can straighten and it will stay like that for the next three days, or perhaps it’s a look you can curl and the curls start to look better day after day, most of us want looks that don’t take a whole lot of time to create.”
Cook says for most of us, the days where we would get up hours earlier to wash our hair every day, blow-dry it and then style it are in the past.
“Maybe we’re blow-drying our fringe when we wash our hair, but there’s a growing number of people who are leaving the rest of their hair to dry naturally. It’s a very natural kind of feel; it’s more effortless so you don’t have to do a lot of styling if you don’t want to.”
Most of us want hair that is largely fuss-free, but we also want to be equipped with the tricks, tools and products that make creating salon-worthy locks at home achievable.
“It is all well and good to walk out of the salon looking and feeling great, but I think a lot of women struggle with trying to reproduce that salon look at home,” says Cook. “But there are actually a lot of new tools, new colours and new products that are helping to make that easier.”
“PEOPLE WANT MORE NATURAL COLOURING OF THEIR HAIR.” NEWTON COOK
Cook says it’s easy for a stylist to put a curl into hair in the salon, but it’s not necessarily easy for the client to recreate the same look at home.
He points to the Dyson Airwrap and ghd oracle, which both launched in New Zealand in late 2019, and can be used at home to create a plethora of styles including salon-worthy curls and waves. As helpful as these new at-home styling innovations are, Cook does believe it’s an important conversation that every good stylist should be starting with their clients.
“If a client wants a certain look, their stylist really needs to be saying: “Okay, this is how we can create it at home. Are you prepared to put in the
“EVERYONE IS QUITE UNIQUE IN THEIR STYLE IN NEW ZEALAND.”
NEWTON COOK
time and do this at home for your hair to look like this all the time? Do you want to go for something that’s going to be more maintenance and do you want me to show you some of the tools and products that can help you achieve this at home?”
He says at the end of the day, your stylist is a professional who should be giving you the professional advice you need on maintaining your look. “They should be giving you the advice so you know what products you should be using and so you know how often you need to come into the salon to achieve the cut and colour you want.”
Cook says it’s about establishing trust so you’re excited to head back into the salon each time. “It should never be about getting a haircut that you’ve shown your stylist a photo of, walking home, feeling amazing, but then your wash your hair and you’re stuck on what to do with it next.”
Cook says for those after a change, whether it be a cut or colour wise, heading to the salon with a handful of pictures of styles and colours that you like is a great place to start.
“It’s also a good tool for your stylist to actually realise the path they can take to achieve a particular look,” he says. But he adds that it’s also the responsibility of the stylists to educate their clients on whether a particular look is realistic or not. “Is the look going to suit the client? It might not; and that’s up to the stylist to chat with the client and think about how they can customise and adapt the look to work for the individual.”
As we move towards a more bespoke and individual approach to hair, it feels like the days of turning to the high-fashion world for style and colour trends are numbered.
While that might be the case, Cook says that New Zealand has always embraced individuality and hasn’t necessarily followed trends as they have trickled down from the Northern Hemisphere. “I feel like New Zealand has always had its own individual style,” he says.
“I think that while we still want to stay up to date with trends from the likes of Paris and New York, we’re always trying to adapt them to the uniqueness of our clients’ hair types and what they want.”
He says that the days of a one-size-fits-all approach to hair are well and truly behind us. “We’re so diverse in our culture right here in New Zealand. In the past we used to try and give everyone the same cut or we used to give everyone the same colouring service, but it really doesn’t work for somewhere as diverse as New Zealand where everyone is quite unique in their style and image.”
Cook agrees that hair is really an extension of our personality for many New Zealanders. “I think we look at ourselves and think, ‘How do I feel? What look is going to make me feel more like myself?’” he says.
“For someone that might be feeling like I just want to wake up and do nothing with my hair – that person is probably going to just embrace their natural curl and texture. Or someone who’s quite edgy with their style, they might opt for quite a blunt cut that is really going to complement their own unique sense of style.”
He says in New Zealand it’s very rare to walk around and see everyone with the exact same haircut, colour and texture out on the streets.
Cook says there are plenty of new innovations coming through both in salon and out of salon that are going to make it easier for us to achieve the hair of our dreams. Yet as far as the future is concerned, he’s personally excited about the embracing of individuality and diversity. “I’m really excited for clients to come in and want more natural hair, which is what I really started to notice in the last half of 2019,” he says.
“Once you’ve educated your client on maintenance, and what suits them and how they feel about their hair, I think you’ve got to the bottom of those questions, then you feel like [you have] such a good relationship with your client that they feel excited to come back and see you.
“They are excited about the new trends and things they can achieve with the help of their stylist.”
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Our wardrobe isn’t the only thing we tend to overhaul once cool autumn arrives. A new approach to our hair often beckons. Here’s the easiest hair trend to embrace this season. mindfood.com/hair-autumn