Blaze hair workshop at Hair X

Mana Dave and Kelly Latu of Blaze salon, Newmarket, welcomed guests in the hair industry to their educational seminar on Sunday afternoon as part of New Zealand’s inaugural hair expo, Hair X…

Mana Dave and Kelly Latu of Blaze salon, Newmarket, welcomed guests in the hair industry to their educational seminar on Sunday afternoon 3rd June as part of New Zealand’s inaugural hair expo, Hair X held at Auckland’s Hilton hotel.

"We’ve built our business up quickly, based largely on our expertise in colour," the charismatic Mana told us after his friendly welcome. So aptly, the Blaze team shared tips on creating some avant garde and more user-friendly colour looks.

"If a client comes to you saying I want to look different but you can’t change my haircut, use colour!" says Mana.

Considering the audience is made up of competing salons, it is in a very open spirit of sharing that each stylist at Hair X gave away their hot tips. Being the token non-hairdresser in the room I was aware of all of the valuable info flying about above my head and could see it being readily absorbed by those all around me. Next year I would like to see another day of seminars for the public, with language aimed at the consumer rather than professional, and maybe salons could pick up some new clientele from the workshops, too.

Blaze had the great idea of drawing large posters showing the colour techniques around the room, so stylists could take photos with their iPhones and read them later. Hairdressers, being creative visually, often say they are very visual-learners rather than word-learners so I thought this was a brilliant idea.

Below: Stylist Suze with her model’s ‘hair rose’ effect.

Below: Kelly Latu sewed a coloured hair weft together at the centre and wrapped it around the 1920’s-styled model’s forehead to create this ‘hair scarf’ look. Kelly twisted a hot tong to create curls and used Redken Rough Paste, which dirties the hair a bit, to give a matte finish. She works the paste in with fingertips and massages it into the curl then pinned the curls up with U pins for a 1920’s look. Kelly said the Blaze team loves this look so much they almost made it their uniform…

Below: Caleb Pritchard says, "The quiff is the New Bun!"

Below: Debbie models a strong demarcation line of high fusion orange they call "the shine line."

Below: Michaela’s model Lucy has a two-tone pink bob inspired by the Chanel collection. A hot tip for pastelized tones is before you apply pink or violet balance out the porosity. Use Redken CAT Spray to fill out imbalances found on blonde hair shafts.