By far the most dominant theme this season has been asymmetry. We’ve all seen how asymmetrical bobs and undercut styles have flooded high streets and clubs from Europe to the USA, Brazil, Australia & New Zealand. However, when an ultra-edgy look starts to become mainstream, there will always be those brave pioneers that kick back with a new wave. It’s hardly surprising then, that as we roll through the Spring/Summer 2012 season, short hair has been getting shorter and shorter.  Why? Because along with asymmetry comes a tiny issue… The grow-out! Basically you have two choices. Grow the short parts into the long, or cut the long parts short, and it seems that at least half of you are opting for the latter. Ok, so you might be thinking, hey, didn’t you talk about this last month with the release of the Sidecut / Undercut movie? Well sure, and here we are taking it a step further. With so many of you biting the bullet and heading for the post-undercut “all off” we’ve decided to produce a haircut, which gives you that much craved wild & crazy feeling of going super-short all over, without the harshness of buzzing the lot! The point we’re making is that with the right face-shape and attitude, super-short hair doesn’t need to feel masculine. In fact, if you get it right it can be one of the most eye-catching and stunning looks to go for. Our model Mina, with her fabulous bone structure and icy platinum hues, is the perfect candidate to demonstrate the Ultimate Minimalist look.

The key is to add lots and lots of texture while cropping the hair radically close. The effect allows your stylist to tweak and tailor the cut to fit your individual head shape and features – Clearly, just buzzing it all off would be far from bespoke! By adding this kind of micro-texture, you can still use styling products to sculpt your style in a few subtly different ways. You can wear it sleek & shiny with a glossing serum, or mess it up with wax or matt sculpting clay for a fresh, effortlessly tousled look…

There’s a reason why so many skincare advertisers recruit short haired models… for that fresh, youthful, effortlessly stylish vibe. Our tip for wearing your hair this short is to steal some products from the boys! Contemporary high-end styling products for guys are designed to support texture while keeping super-short hair ‘touchably’ soft… and most of them go for neutral fragrances these days, so nobody will know your secret!  Whether you’re moving on from an undercut or you just love super-short chic. This cut is the perfect solution for anyone looking for a strong androgynous summer crop, with just enough of a feminine edge to keep it cute… Are you ready to take it all off!?

Because this extremely short haircut requires very little styling, the cut has to be perfect! …and if you’re a stylist, don’t let that intimidate you, check out our full length tutorial movie. – Showing you how to achieve this look with confident clipper, razor and scissor work, we help you to create fabulous texture & softness in super-short hair. The techniques you will learn can be adapted to enhance a multitude of short cuts. Giving you the confidence to shine when it comes to short hair for your clients.

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Concept/Photography/Hair: Neil North MA.
Make-up: Cornelia Page.
Model: Mina.
© Neil North & totalRestyle.com (All rights reserved.)

The sidecut phenomenon has been awesome! Stretching well beyond the predicted one season wonder, the look is rapidly becoming a classic around the world. One might even say that the sidecut has been the most edgy look for long hair since the heady days of punk and the new-romantic movement. Unlike the shaved looks of the 70′s & 80′s, the sidecut has become almost mainstream in the infancy of the 21st Century. Even for women working in the notoriously conservative echelons of customer services. (At least in London, Copenhagen & Stockholm.

However, variations on the sidecut or “half-shaved” style have been in vogue for a few seasons now, and many of the first to embrace the look are ready to try something new… So what’s next? Grow it out or take it further, and let your style evolve into something even more funkalicious? That was the dilemma for our model Marta, who originally buzzed one side of her hair for another editorial job. Marta and I discussed a few ideas about the next step for her sidecut look. “I thought about shaving it all off” she told us with a grin. My solution was to give Marta the “no-hair-feeling” she was curious to try, while keeping some length on top for her to play with. The result is this edgy undercut look that’s feminine, versatile and easily adapted for growing-out into a multitude of fabulous new cuts. Marta’s hair is naturally thick and bouncy. So by keeping her hair heavy on top with some clever cutting, we were able to use her gorgeous natural texture to style this ultimate rock-chick crop in two distinctive ways. From an effortlessly casual everyday look, to a full-on-glam statement party ‘do’.

Shaving 3/4 of your head takes real courage and might not make every long haired girl’s top ten list of fun things to do… but if you are ready for something totally fresh… and like Marta, you have the right attitude and facial structure to work a really strong look, this could just be the summer haircut you’ve been looking for in 2012.

Check out our full length tutorial movie, showing you how to achieve this look with confident clipper-work and multiple techniques for creating texture & shape in thick hair. As well as a quick and easy way to make a rocked-up quiff that’s perfect for nights out.

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Concept/Photography/Hair: Neil North MA.
Make-up: Cornelia Page.
Model: Marta J.

© Neil North & totalRestyle.com (All rights reserved.)

Why..?
With all the dominating headlines about the Euro Zone crisis, the Euro has taken a bit of a kicking recently. Personally, I think it’s a pity. Even though I’m originally London based, I always liked the idea (at least) of a single currency in Europe. However, when we sat down and looked at the figures, we found that by changing to pounds now, we can make our products cheaper for you by approximately €4.50 & $5.50 without ruining ourselves on the exchange rates… So why wouldn’t we go for it? We think it works out better for everyone.

Check out our newly priced in-depth tutorial movies, on our movies page.

2012 looks set to be the year of retro glamour. From the recent movie adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (featured last month.) To Michelle Williams’ portrayal of iconic style legend Marilyn Monroe, in the movie “My Week with Marilyn.” We don’t really do politics here, but if we did, we might talk about the global economic slump sending us scurrying off to our perceptual time-machines to escape the present. Whatever the reason, there is a huge nostalgia for times past in cinema right now. So we thought we’d shamelessly jump on the vintage band-wagon and bring you a contemporary uniform layered haircut, topped off with styling inspired by 1950′s Hollywood glamour.

When we met up with our model Roza. Her gorgeous vanilla highlights had begun to dry the ends of what was otherwise fantastically beautiful hair! The solution was to take more than a third of her length off to get her hair back into top condition, while giving her a cut that is both contemporary and very versatile.

When we think of uniform layers, to some it invokes the idea of somewhat dated, bobble-hat looking haircuts… and that’s exactly the effect you might get if the hair is club-cut slightly too short but not short enough on a hair type that is totally unsuitable. So what is the secret?

The key is to establish the correct length, It’s got to be long enough to have that gorgeous soft bounce or crop it boy-short. Cut uniform layers in between those two extremes are you’re seriously risking wooly hat territory! Why? Because uniform layering is a great way to add volume for a chunky look. The technique works really well to beef up typically fine Northern & Eastern European hair types, and definitely works best on slightly wavy hair, where it encourages that natural bounce in mid-length cuts.

The trick with Rosa’s vintage look is to keep the ends of the hair soft and textured without deviating from that very structured uniform layered haircut. This creates perfectly blended layers throughout the head. The entire haircut is cut open without clipping the hair into sections. Cutting without formal sectioning is a wonderfully free and sculptural way of working that allows the stylist to relate every hair to every other hair on the head, for perfect symmetry and balance. Check out our full length tutorial movie for step-by-step details on this cutting method. As well as some great tips on fast hot-tool styling to create photo-shoot-ready vintage curls.

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Concept/Photography/Hair: Neil North MA.
Make-up: Cornelia Page.
Model: Roza Anna.

© Neil North & totalRestyle.com (All rights reserved.)

Usually it would be a bit early to start thinking about the next Autumn/Winter season. That is, if it wasn’t for the hype around a late 2012 cinema release of the latest adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby. That trademark look of the mid-1920′s, with sleek bobbed hair, red lips and pale & interesting skin tones, couldn’t have come sooner for those eager to backlash against the rise of fake tan and hair extensions. As the beauty pages of fashion mags around the world explode with flapper-glamour, we thought we’d do some research to see how they did it back in the day.

You could be forgiven for thinking that getting an undercut is about the most contemporary thing you could do. Well it pretty much is, but that doesn’t make it original… By piecing together traditional barbering techniques used in 1920′s hairdressing and combining them with contemporary methods, we’ve taken the iconic look of the early 20th Century and updated it for the 21st… With a combination of old-skool clipper cutting and contemporary scissor work, we’ve created a look that will hold it’s shape, almost without styling and a hemline that swings like the Charleston!

Our full-length step-by-step tutorial movie showing you how to create this classic cut is:
Available for download here.

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Concept/Photography/Hair: Neil North MA.
Make-up: Cornelia Page.
Model: Stella S @ totalRestyle.

© Neil North & totalRestyle.com (All rights reserved.)

Ever wished that you could transform yourself like an xmas party superhero – from chic corporate goddess to wickedly wayward party vamp with a few spritzes of hairspray in the office toilets? Our next tutorial movie features presenter/model Zoe going for the ultimate in versatile holiday-season party hair… Clever graduation allows this classic A-line shape to be worn sleek & chic as well as wonderfully wild. The secret lies in the subtly powerful graduation that defines this haircut. The clever part is packing all of that fabulous graduation in, without compromising the quintessential concave-bob outline. A great staple for advanced students and graduates to learn, for those clients who want a strong, classic cut with superhero tendencies. The full ‘Quick-Change Bob’ tutorial movie is now available to download.

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Concept/Photography/Hair: Neil North MA.
Assisted by: Justin Van Wade.
Make-up: Cornelia Page.
Model: Zoe @ totalRestyle.

© Neil North & totalRestyle.com (All rights reserved.)

Model Makeovers…
Last month we sent out 100 invitations to aspiring models and agency new-faces. Offering a completely new look that would be tailored specifically to accentuate their face-shape, features and personality. Our challenge was to create not only a new look, but to develop a totally new professional image for our chosen girls… No pressure then! Just as well we’ve done this kind of thing before. Out of the 100 girls invited to make an application, almost all responded, making the job of selecting the final 10 candidates even more tricky… So who are the lucky 10? Well, you’ll just have to wait and see, but I am delighted to introduce our first model… Ellen, a new-face and classical vocalist from West London won us over with her commercial look, creative background and fantastic profile.

Ellen’s transformation…
We wanted a look that was going to make Ellen stand out from the crowd and highlight her classically commercial beauty. I also felt that it was important to reflect her creative personality with the new look, so I wanted to produce a haircut that had a little bit of quirkiness and individuality – A look that Ellen could make her own, both personally and professionally. When I suggested to her that we chop all her long hair off, Ellen was really positive about it (having had her hair cut short previously.) It takes a great deal of courage and trust for a model to cut so much hair off, so it’s always vitally important from a stylist’s perspective to get the final shape just right for the individual. In Ellen’s case, her bone-structure and hair type were just perfect for a close-crop and when we realised that she also had the right attitude to pull it off, we just had to go for it!

The Technique…
The key to ultra-feminine, super-short hair is texture, texture, texture. There literally isn’t a single straight line in this haircut. Every tiny section is chipped into and shattered through, even where the hair is less than a centimeter long, it still retains a feminine softness. This texture is created by free-hand razor cutting and by cutting the longer sections in a criss-cross pattern, effectively adding double the texture when point-cutting the tips of the hair. Finally the top sections are sliced through, again using a free-hand technique, to create a soft kick to the root sections. Shaping the hair in this way allows Ellen’s own natural waves to create movement in the new cut. Ultimately producing a look which is very easy to manage and will retain a flattering shape as it grows out.

A special-feature movie of Ellen’s makeover with step-by-step tuition for stylists is now available for download on our video page.

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Model: Ellen.
Hair: Neil North MA. / Make-up: Maiju Emilia.
Photography: © Neil North & totalRestyle.com (All rights reserved.)
Additional Retouching & Digital Artwork: Neil North MA.

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Concept: Neil North MA., Maria Mattola & Krista Mäenpää.
Hair: Neil North MA. / Make-up: Krista Mäenpää.
Assisted by: Emilia Outila.
Photography: © Neil North & totalRestyle.com (All rights reserved.)
Additional Retouching & Digital Artwork: Neil North MA.