The Hair Expo Gala night is a night like no other in the Australian calender. It’s where the pool of Ozzie hairdressers come to watch the best Australian and Over-Seas talent showcase their work and put on a show.

The show starts with current Australian hairdresser of the year Jayne Wild. Jayne and her talented teams theme was the current Global Financial crisis,  It started with Tramps, with rubbish, and some amazing Dancers all dressed down. Their first Model collection came out to play Musical chairs , bringing in themes of competition.  I felt their was theme of body image, with the clever use of Asian dolls very much like Mark Ryden Huge heads with big eyes, the team around me loved this. As current hairdresser of the year I felt her show was great, showing an amazing display of fancy hair, and bringing the Pzazz of an opening show. The Finale with all models and dancers letting go of gold in their palms was a nice touch. Money greed, fashion. Seems very fitting. RECESSION GLAMOR.

The second show and final show was from the international famed, award winning team of TONI&GUY. Toni himself came out on stage and talked about their global brand and their proud history. It was very touching a sad to hear of his younger brother dying. Toni has not been in Australia since 2002 and it was nice to see him live at Hair Expo.

And so starts the Toni&guys experience, Toni&guy are a slick team that can reproduce global trends, and that was what it was tonight, well rehearsed, cool, inspiring in areas but I personally thought the shows theme was a little disjointed, the hair was much better from Toni&guy team, I loved the 70′s 80′s themed with big crimped hair, shoulder pads and with a little too much label M product placement. I think they were trying to please everybody with the 80′s looks crimped funked up (that’s the technical term) and then into geometric flex again 80″s with today’s twist and banging electro, the boys on Scooter’s mod-style . Then a avantguard roman Samurai meets some dark Gothic dungeon piece, amazing hair but couldn’t find the link.   And finally into a ballet themed dance, I think it was the ballet meets Alice in Wonderland. The hair again was amazing and whilst tweeting i felt somewhat in awe of the work that i was seeing. Toni&Guy have an amazing team, none better than Jason Ward who i will be interviewing tomorrow, Jason was on stage showing his amazing colour talents. He is also nominated for colourist of the year on Monday night. So good luck. I know how much work that goes into these shows, and so to everybody who was involved thank you for entertaining.

All in all, it was a great night, i always enjoy catching up with friends in the industry, and tonight was no different, hairdressers and a free bar is a little dangerous. But i have come out inspired and looking forward to the rest of the long weekend, i have a feeling its going to be long, but loads of fun. – Stevie English

Check out the images from Jayne Wild’s Show

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Check out the images from Toni and Guy’s  Show

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