Wella Professionals collaborated with more than 20 world renowned stylists, including Wella global creative directors Eugene Souleiman (care and styling) and Josh Wood (color), to identify the emerging hair styles of 2014. These uniquely identified trends are adapted within Wella Professionals globally recognized platform, TrendVision. Inspiring the hairdressing industry for more than 11 years, TrendVision is an event known for pioneering salon trends for women and offering stylists the chance to express their creative abilities by interpreting the Wella trends in an international competition.
This year, Wella Professionals is embarking on a fresh TrendVision era, introducing a revised program format that invites hairdressers into Wella’s world of innovation and inspiration. Rather than deploying one annual theme with four corresponding trends, Wella will now unveil two seasonal movements: one representing spring/summer and the second reflecting autumn/winter. Additionally, within each of the movements there will be three collections created, each offering a unique interpretation of the trend.
- Seasonal “Pret a Porter”—Obtainable looks that enable stylists to bring the trend to life, creating professional color, cut and style in their salons.
- Editorial Trend Styles—Showcases the styles seen on the catwalk as translated through the fashion industry.
- Haute Couture—The highest level of creative expression designed to showcase and to inspire a full spectrum of creativity.
Spring/Summer Trend: Urban Native
Defined as a techno-savvy, but nature-connected woman, the urban native is de-cluttering, slowing down and listening to body and mind, while reconnecting with life.
From a styling perspective, the spring/summer 2014 trend offers a “deconstructed, very natural feeling to the hair with textures where they should be. Hair isn’t ironed flat or over-styled—it’s natural, pretty but a little bit edgy. The style is much looser and much cooler, which reflects the personality of the girl who wears it,” notes Souleiman.
From a color point of view, the Urban Native movement shifts the hair color palette by transitioning away from bright and intense colors into soft corals and bleached pastels—a look that Woods says is “very soft pastel that almost has a washed out quality.”
An easy introduction to the feel of Urban Native is Souleiman’s interpretation at Peter Som spring/summer 2014, where the hair highlighted a natural balance of texture but was designed with a city girl in mind. Souleiman kept the hair looking effortless and cool, focusing on the beauty in imperfection. The hair was scraped back with no parting, then tied in a quick knot at the back and deliberately left looking unfinished.
Autumn/Winter Trend: Borderline Beauty
The Borderline Beauty movement breaks down boundaries and introduces a new definition of beauty where grays and muted tones, combined with a handsome aesthetic, underscore the notion of a rebel without a cause. It crosses the line toward a more unusual aesthetic and forges access to an almost impossible beauty ideal, exposing an unfamiliar vision of the future.
From a styling point of view “there is almost a no-nonsense feeling about hair and the attitude is more definite. It has a kind of stronger, rebellious attitude and with that comes new values of beauty,” notes Souleiman.
When it comes to color, the movement leverages gray as a catalyst next to brighter colors, Woods notes of the Borderline Beauty color, “there is the feeling of a dichotomy between something handsome and something very beautiful. There is a sense that you can have really muted tones against something very solid and what’s interesting and feels really new, is this introduction of gaey. Gray as a recessive color can make even natural colors look quite different.”
The trend was depicted perfectly on the Jeremy Scott autumn/winter 2014 runway as the hair look broke against fantasy and moved toward a renewed fashion look that was androgynous, raw and unpredictable punk. The hair was dramatically slicked back to create the illusion and texture of wet hair but in a natural, believable way, delivering bold, yet effortless results evoking the rebellion of Borderline Beauty.
