Tuesday, April 25, 2006 - Channelling Donatella

One of the more interesting aspects of the job I find myself on at the moment is that the team works with a different international hairdresser each day. This is unusual as the team is usually fixed for the duration of the shoot. To be a (photo) session hairdresser takes a huge amount of skill (over that of your average High Street Crimper) but also dynamic results need to be achieved fairly quickly. Now we all have tricks of the trade - for the session hairdresser life would not be the same without the humble doughnut (a mesh nylon ball) that you wrap hair around to give the illusion of greater volume or shape. Working with hairdressers who are top of the game in their own salons, often find the transition to a session shoot quite difficult. Generally their standard is far lower and it is our job to push them to make looks that are worthy of editorial coverage. For this job, enough fake hair has been dyed, cut and generally manipulated to keep Cousin It happy for years.

Today the guest Spanish hairdresser is on the set. She is a delightful happy woman but just one minor flaw, she is channelling Donatella Versace as her style icon. There is so much collagen pumped into her upper lip that I keep thinking she is going to trip over it. Now there are also badly done cheek implants and a buy 10 get the 11th free course of Botox that she has willingly under gone. She didnt hold back when striving to achieve her look of hero worship. The flowing Latino brunette has been replace by what can only be described as Polenta yellow hair and the orange tinge of liberal slashing of St. Tropez.

To compliment her hard work she has dressed herself in turned hem Capri jeans with Candies (high heel open toed mules with Diamante buckles) and a white knock off Chanel box jacket. As I mentioned at the beginning of this description she is lovely but you can understand my difficulty in trying to keep a straight face when discussing the intricacies of style to her.

I try (although not always successfully) not to be the Fashion Police however all of this, on a 50+ woman, it was too much for me not to share it with you.