When it comes to hair trends there are only two words that matter this year: Messy and Embellished. Combine the two and you have a winning look.

From the runways to the red carpet, everyone is wearing their hair imperfect and adorned.

The Dolce Gabanna winter show sported florals and crowns adding a feminine and whimsical feel to undone hairstyles. Pulled back into easy buns or braids, embellishments elevate the hairstyles.

Photo Source: Style.com

To get the look, start with dry hair. Mist a beach styler like Pureology’s Sea Kissed Texturizer all over and scrunch until product is dry for added volume. Pull hair back gently allowing for flyaway strands. Secure an elastic band in a low pony.

NOTE: Use a gentle touch so style doesn’t look too sleek or stark.

Braid the remaining hair and secure with another elastic band at the ends. Hold the tips of your hair and push elastic band towards your scalp (To get a visual of this effect, watch the tutorial link below) This will give your braid an imperfect effect. Wind braid into a loose bun and secure with a bobby pins.

Like the affect but not sure about using an actual crown? Check out this quick tutorial on using your own hair to create a crown

Minka Kelly and Jaime King (below) use rhinestone embellished accessories to add glamour to their flattering, yet simple styles on the red carpet.

Photo Source: Flickr Commons

For a quick tutorial on how to create an undone, embellished bun in under ten minutes, check out this video.

Fringes are a front-runner in 2015’s haircut category. We’re seeing them worn on short, medium and long lengths. Whether worn wispy, full on or side-swept, bangs can flatter every face shape.

Photo Source: Flickr Commons

What hair trends will look best on you?

Wide face – A longish, side-swept fringe will add length to your face.

Oblong face – Try a full-on or blunt fringe to cut the length of your face.

Oval face – Since this is the ideal face shape, any style can flatter. Go bold and try a mini-bang. They are hotter than ever when worn with hair longer than shoulder-length. Think, Beyoncé meets Audrey Hepburn.

Natasha Sunshine-Antonioni is a Hairstylist and Beauty Expert, Pureology Brand Ambassador and founder of www.Beauty-Snap.com – a quick tip beauty site for the woman on the go. Natasha’s had the opportunity to work on the tresses of celebrities and models alike including Molly Sims, Ivanka Trump, Stephanie Seymour, Eva Herzigova, Dean Mcdermott and Gael Garcia Bernal, as well as being featured on The Rachel Ray and Tori & Dean Shows. 

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Red carpet image via Shutterstock

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Before you can learn what hair style is optimal for you, first you must determine which category your face shape falls under – oval, round, square, oblong, heart or diamond.

It’s easy to want to cling to the latest fashion and beauty trends, but not so fast. Often, when we take on a new look that is a hit with celebrities and other fashionistas, we forget that what works for others may not necessarily work for us.

Everyone’s body is different, from the head down to the toes. Don’t let a dress, pair of stilettos or a frock wear you  – you wear it. The same goes for your hair. Instead of cutting and shaping your tresses to imitate the next person, why not adapt to your (and only your) face structure? That way, you’ll look your surefire best, 100 percent of the time. Learn what kind of face shape you have and how your haircut can complement it best.

1. Oval

In terms of complementing hair styles, the oval face shape is the most versatile one out there! You have an oval face shape if your face is longer than it is wide and your jaw line is slightly rounded, wider at the top than the bottom. With an oval face shape, you can get away with any kind of short cut, from a pixie to a bob to a chin-length do. You can also go long, but avoid going too long.

2. Square

If you have a square-face shape, you need to work on softening the angular structure of your face. Complementing hair styles include a side-swept bang, loose natural waves, a slightly-angled long bob, graduated long layers, choppy bangs and/or a center part to conceal the upper corners of your face.

3. Round

A round face is marked by a wide jaw and a structure that is nearly as wide as it is long, with a rounded jaw line. The best hairstyles include any that hide the roundness, rather than accentuate it. This involves giving the illusion of length. Long hair with graduated layers, gentle waves and long side-swept bangs is the best hair style.

4. Oblong

An oblong face shape is one in which the face is longer than it is wide, with the forehead, cheeks and jawline all the same width. The best cut will make the face appear more oval. Avoid any haircut that ends at your chin. Instead, keep hair long. Bangs help to shorten a long-face shape.

5. Heart

A heart-shaped face looks like an inverted triangle that is longer than it is wide. The jawline is long, pointed and narrow and the forehead is prominent. Chin-length bobs highlight your cheekbones, but try to avoid bobs that go above chin level. Incorporate wispy bangs swept to the side to directs attention away from the forehead and to the eyes. Long, wavy hair is also a great complement. The key is to avoid emphasizing the forehead or narrowness of the chin.

6. Diamond

A diamond face shape is longer than it is wide with a pointed jawline, but not as pointed as you would witness in a heart-shaped face. A diamond-shaped face is highly angular, somewhat bony, widest at the temples and not as common as the other face shapes. Get a longer-than-the-chin haircut to slim down the face and avoid any shorter, fuller hair styles that emphasize the wideness of your face. Keep the weight of the hair at the ends (neck or lower). A pixie cut, when done well, can actually highlight your cheekbones and give you a unique look, but anything in between a pixie and a longer style can have the opposite effect. Avoid short bangs.

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Photo Credit: John Benson, Gage Sigmore, Gage Sigmore, iamzavtra, Lunchbox LP, Maegan Tintari, BitchBuzz

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For the woman who covets the fun and funky braid hairstyles of her youth and has no idea how to pull it off, here are some great braid styles.

Short braids, long braids, loose braids, tight braids. The procession of best braids in my mind reads like a Dr. Seuss picture book, with an assortment of lovely styles on parade. Tragically, my braiding skills are about as adept as a cat diving into a pile of yarn—something happens, and it usually involves a lot of tangles. Maybe because this skill has always been completely beyond me, I’ve always loved elaborate braid hairstyles.

Or maybe my early obsession with braids is 1000% because of this.

Throughout my life, the second I had longer locks, I was asking someone to braid my hair. But as I got older, I started dialing back on the Heidi-inspired braid hairstyles. Yes, this was partially due to my own braiding skill level (see: cat/tangled/yarn), but it was also because I was working. As a woman in a TV writer’s room, you already walk in with a giant “Judge Everything about My Appearance” sign over your head. Fun and quirky hairstyle went the way of my soul, crushed under the heel of Hollywood.

And for the record, if you’re proudly sporting elaborate braids in the courtroom or under your surgeon’s cap, rock on. But for the woman who covets the fun and funky braids of her youth and has no idea how to pull it off, I am you and you are me. Because as I got older, my braids became smaller. Subtle. A wisp here, a strand there. They practically disappeared.

And then my niece Katherine was born.

Katherine, you see, is a braiding savant. If she were a chess player, she’d be Bobby Fischer. If tennis were her game, she’d be Serena Williams. Now that she’s a teenager, she can spend a few minutes in front of the mirror and emerge looking like she wandered off the set of Lord of the Rings.

In case you doubt me, I recently showed her a picture of the Khaleesi braids from Game of Thrones. She appeared a half hour later, sporting this braid hairstyle.

It is possible that she has dragon eggs hidden somewhere in her closet.

Katherine and her nimble teen fingers have become my ambassador back into Braid Land. So I recently asked her to share her thoughts on braids, her favorite styles, and to remind us why braids are completely awesome.

ES: Katherine, tell us why you think braids work so well as a hair style.

Katherine: Well, I like braids because if I’m not wearing a fun outfit, I can wear fun hair. French braids are the best because you can tweak them, making them messier, tighter, or whatever you want. You can really make them your own.

ES: Good point. How do feel when you’re doing braid hairstyles?

Katherine:  When I do them myself, I feel proud. And it’s fun when my friends like them too, because it makes me want to share them. So I really like to do my friends’ hair too. It’s something I can do to help them to feel good about themselves.

ES: That’s such a good reminder for us Olds—fun hair makes you feel good. So let’s talk style. What’s your favorite braid for long hair?

Katherine: I have pretty long hair right now, so I like to wear it up out of my face. French braids always work well, because I can wear them with a bun or a pony tail. It’s great for summer. Lately, I’ve really been into the Fishtail braid. Here’s a great video showing you how to do one.

Also, I think a really great style for longer hair is the corset braid. It’s a big more formal and subtle, and I think can work well on grown-ups. Here’s my favorite video showing how to do it.

ES: Love it! So what is your favorite braid style for short hair?

Katherine: I really like the headband braid for short hair. And you don’t even need a lot of hair to do it. Here’s a video that shows you how to do a really cool one.

ES: What about a braiding style like cornrows? Can you do that on long or short hair?

Katherine: You can do cornrows on both! Here’s a good video on how to.

ES: Say you were going to wake up 35-years-old tomorrow. What style would you choose?

Katherine: I really like the nested side braid. It’s very simple and you can wear it for any occasion.

ES: Even at the office?

Katherine: Why wouldn’t you want to feel good about yourself at work?

ES: Excellent point, Katherine. Excellent point.

photo credit: chantel beam photography via photopin cc

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Vidal Sassoon is remembered by how his pared-down artistry freed fashionable women.

The recent documentary tracking Vidal Sassoon and his enormous contribution to fashion is indeed a visual art form largely because of the British visionary who ushered in a movement – one as influential as the new directions demonstrated by a Monet or a Picasso.

Sassoon’s expressionism amounted to swapping the heavy heating and dressing for cleaner, geometric barber techniques which freed women in an age of cumbersome Lady Schick bonnet hair dryers, tacky Dippety-Do hair gels and bobby pins for curling, manic back-teasing and chemical hairspray shellacking – resulting in a renewed appreciation of natural simplicity.

The message was received and embraced by style arbiters from London to Little Rock.  What could be a stronger statement than a precise angular cut? The lady was now wearing the glossy blunt hair rather than the hair entering the room first.

Like the documentary movie poster, featuring Nancy Kwan of Flower Drum Song fame, Sassoon revealed a newly chiseled star with black tresses complementing a new aesthetic: the cut. Its execution allowed little room for failure, separating the boys from the men when it came to barber acumen with a pair of  sheers. While Kwan was one of the first signature bobs, Sassoon got on the map when flown into Hollywood in 1967 to cut off Mia Farrow’s long blond strands into a boyish pixie for the film Rosemary’s Baby (a change not embraced by her love interest, Frank Sinatra). As the LA Times describes, it was a $30 haircut that Sassoon calculated ending up costing around $5,000 including airfare. But it paid off as the Twiggy look was a great option for women with ultra fine hair and great bone structure.

Now that the legendary stylist has died of cancer at 84, those he greatly inspired remember his artistic genius, mentoring gifts and business savvy. Not only is he credited with reinventing the 20s bob as modern and ultra chic, but popularizing the hand held blow dryer and opening a chain of salons worldwide, starting with his shop in Beverly Hills in 1970 which prompted him to move his headquarters to Los Angeles. He also created a successful product line – the first to deliver salon styling tools to the neighborhood market.

At his training academies, he performed his techniques for protegees eager to master the wash and wear precision cuts conforming to the head, and later, blow drying methods to keep the look sleek and decidedly unfussy.

He also will be remembered as someone who turned hair stylist into celebrity stylist due to his associations with rock stars, art stars, top fashion models and designers. This was a leap for a kid who dropped out of school at 14 at his mother’s urging and began working in a salon. At 20, he served as a volunteer soldier in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and later said “it gave me a sense of dignity and the confidence that helped structure my future.”

After his military service he returned to London to work and sprang into the limelight when producing the geometric Beatles-esque blunt cut for designer Mary Quant- a hot innovator credited with inventing the miniskirt.

“If you don’t look good, we don’t look good,” was his famous line from a 1976 TV add. Hair stylists – once service industry slaves – were now elevated to the high ranks of the fashion world because of Sassoon’s marketing genius.

British stylist Tracey McAlister, co-owner of Cowboys and Angels Salon in San Francisco’s Union Square, started her training with Sassoon as a teenager and admits to getting goosebumps when learning he had died. “My mum phoned from North of England yesterday,” she shares. “He used to do her hair.”

McAlister remembers doing Vidal’s hair. “I used to shampoo it at the Sloane Street salon in London when I was 17 when he would come in and see everyone and he was marvelous, a fabulous soft spoken guy, sweet and handsome and a really nice person. We all wore these dodgy brown overalls until he married Beverly and she opened her Sassoon jeans company and then we all got to wear jeans and we actually had waist-lines.”

Training with the Sassoon teams in New York, Chicago and L.A,. McAlister started with the company in 1981 and worked at the first salon on Post street in San Francisco. “They sent people like me to the states because the education got really bad in London due to everyone being intro drugs and coke and it lost itself, but it was restructured and brought back and became strong again,” she recalls.

John Lee was also part of the early inner circle with Sassoon at the first downtown San Francisco salon on Post. The now middle-aged, reformed party boy has warm memories of learning from his mentor and friend. “My brother, Ron and I had hair down to our waists and were known as the ‘Vidal twins’ by everyone,” recalls the stylist, who continues specializing in the variation on the bob at the Street salon. “We partied a lot in the old days and all of us were very close,” he says, remembering Sassoon as a kind person whose enthusiasm was infectious.

Lee and Vidal Sassoon

Lee also speaks of the indelible mark his mentor made in no fuss art direction in hair styling, arguing it has permeated modern looks of today, not just in the cut, but in the more subtle coloring techniques.

“It’s all much less intrusive and the results are more sophisticated,” he says, pointing to an image of a model on the wall at the salon. Those images reflect the Sassoon take on the cut, dating back to the first celeb guinea pigs like Quant and Farrow. Stylists have always appreciated and applauded clients brave enough to take risks.

Lee carries a thick photo book with him containing memorabilia from the 80s, shots of him with Vidal and with his identical twin and various women friends from the old salon.

“I really miss all of the original people and wish we could get together again,” he confides, glassy eyed. “Maybe now, we will.”

Images: Asyuare; Hintv; Dipity; Oyster

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As we hurtle towards Labor Day, the sweaty summer season is only going to get well, sweatier. Here at EcoSalon, we’ve given you wardrobe and make up ideas to beat the heat, but how about some tips to tame your tendrils?

There has been a notable anti-straightening iron movement for the past few years in hair in favor of more natural-looking textures. The loose and beachy waves du jour are the perfect accessory to summer’s carefree looks, but when it gets truly hot and sticky out there, even the most perfect waves experience wipeout.

It’s tempting to want to chop it all off. But there’s an undeniable predilection for repunzel-like long locks right now. Thanks to layered cuts that add movement and volume to longer hair and celebrities, like Demi Moore, turning the ridiculous notion of age-appropriate hair length on its head, hair that reaches the mid-back is beautiful for all.

If you’re determined to remain sane and hang on to your mane in this summer’s epic battle of hair versus humidity, how about trying herringbone or fishtail braids – a sophisticated, on-trend solution to keeping your hair out of your face.

There are lots of tutorials on how to do fishtail braids online, I liked this sexily-voiced one. The trick to keeping the effect cool girl – not school girl – is to wear them deliberately loose and messy, teasing out volume on top and a few strands to frame your face.

A side swept style complements every face shape by helping to offset unsymmetrical features. A deep, statement making, retro part will perform the same trick. For a finished look, pull a piece of hair from the underside of the tail and wrap it around the elastic as many times as you can, securing it with a bobby pin or adorn jauntily with eco hair accessories.

I’ll attest to finding it a bit fiddly at first – it’s one of those things that gets easier with practice, which is just as well because come fall, those braids are getting decidedly more polished (check out hair guru Orlando Pita’s guide to creating Doo Ri’s fall catwalk look seen above) along with a return to sleeker hair textures.

It seems that fashion’s frisky self-referential cycle has become so short that even the pin straight hair of the mid-nineties, straightened then to accompany Tom Ford’s seventies redux, is now considered vintage and ripe for reinterpretation.  So before you arm up with your straightening arsenal – dryer, irons, paddle brush – dressed in high-waisted flared pants and once again wrestle your locks into long, straight, face drapes à la Jerry Hall (pre Mick), it’s time to embrace your natural texture, twisted, twirled and braided into summer’s hottest trend, tended tendrils.

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I have never had a bad hair day. Also, if you look out your window, there are unicorns dancing about on rainbows. Why? Because we’re in fantasy land! My days are mostly made up of bad hair days, primarily because I work from home and am rather – unmotivated to style my hair. Seriously, the other day I ran out to the bank and happened to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, but without the cute hat.

But you don’t have to suffer bad hair syndrome! Check out these sweet, quick hairstyles for when your hair won’t cooperate – or when you’re just too unmotivated to do more. (We’ve all been there.)

Ponytail

How to do a ponytail? This action is so second nature that it’s almost difficult to describe – gather hair with both hands, hold with left hand, snap band into place with right, pull through, and smooth. Ponytails, which were clearly invented as a gift from the gods, are the staple of gym workouts, hot days, and even the red carpet. All hail ponytail!

Braids

Technically, a braid, or plait, is three or more strands of hair interwoven to create a textures length of hair. Called the “ultimate hair do for summer,” braids are making a big comeback for both red and home carpet events. They add awesome texture to plain ponytails, messy buns, and up-dos.

Pigtails

A grown woman’s relationship with pigtails can be complicated. Frankly, I’m not a fan of them on anyone over the age of 12. But millions of pig-tailed women would disagree. Loose, messy pigtails can be a cute look some women. Check out these “grown-up” pigtails that can provide an elegant edge to a childhood classic.

Messy Twist

Has this ever happened to you? Without thinking about it, you throw your hair on top of your head – and find that you’ve somehow magically created a professional updo that could only be replicated by a team of expensive stylists. Sometimes carelessly putting your hair up in a comb or band can create a look worthy of hours in a salon chair. Check out the “lazy-girl updo” featured here.

Chignon

Chignon can be the last word in elegance, but they can be a little more complicated to create. For a comprehensive guide to chignon, check out these excellent tips for an easy low updo. Want further inspiration? These messy chignon are an excellent choice for a hot summer’s evening, because they still look great even when they start to fall apart. And who can argue with this “hair off the neck” elegance?

Images: fauxto_digit, obo-bobolina, littledebbie11, Sarah G…, Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia Commons

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