Emerson Salon – Capitol Hill Seattle

Emerson Salon recently had the great fortune of receiving a visit from Kevin Murphy’s Session Styling Assistant, Felicity Davis, to share some styling techniques with us. She styles for Vogue magazine and travels the world creating iconic hairstyles of every type for shoots and runways.

The goal of the demonstration at Emerson Salon was to show off some different finishing techniques that we can accomplish on female clients who have fine shoulder length hair. This hair type can be a challenge to style due to its inconsistent ability to hold a soft curl or wave once styled. Further, sometimes using an iron curler on this hair type is just not sufficient to hold an all day classic style. With a lot of red carpet and magazine hair lately evoking the soft volume of 1930’s style movie starlets like Veronica Lake or Lauren Bacall achieving this look is essential.

The first of our two beautiful models for this demonstration was Lisa. She has naturally wavy/curly hair and has difficulty with frizz and style longevity.

• First, Felicity washed Lisa’s hair with Maxi Wash. This is not a clarifier or chelating shampoo with a higher ph level. This product uses alpha hydroxy to exfoliate oil and product buildup out of the hair cuticle in order to prep the hair for the style. This may take 2 -3 times at the bowl to start to create the correct “egg white” lather that indicates clean hair.
• Then, Felicity applied Born Again Essential Treatment and lightly rinsed. This moisturizes and repairs the hair using conditioning agents derived from Olive Leaf, Shea Butter, Omega 3 and Omega 6.
• Once the hair was towel dried, Felicity used Staying Alive with berdok root and Bodyguard Hydrating Lotion with peruvian bark in order to better protect the hair during the styling session. In addition, Anti Gravity setting lotion using lavender oil was also applied in order to eliminate flyaways and hold the curl. (If this sounds like a lot of product, its ok! Kevin Murphy’s line is designed to be weightless and is performance based.)
• Then, the hair was hand dried until bone dry.
• The hair is divided into 8 sections (2 on each side and 4 in the back). Each section is curled with a smaller curling iron and then set on the Kevin Murphy brand curlers that uses a ball and elastic to secure it in place. Once the hair cools for 5-10 minutes, the curlers are taken out.
• The curls are finger separated and then brushed out with a natural boar bristle brush. This brush is used to back brush under sections to create volume and then, Session Spray is applied lightly to the hair and then worked slowly with the brush into a smoother wave.

Our second stylish model was Lara who has fine, straight hair that has issues with creating volume. For years, it was common practice to beat one’s hair into straight submission with serums and flat irons. Felicity calls this the age of “slip technology” where the hair’s cuticle is forced down for smoothness. Now, volume is more trendy and current, and this is the look we wanted to achieve with Lara.

• To get ready for this, Felicity prepped Lara’s hair with Maxi Wash and Born Again Treatement for protection during the styling session.
• Once towel dried, Anti Gravity is applied liberally and hand dried.
• The hair is then twisted, iron curled and set vertically on the Kevin Murphy rollers, secured with a pin curl clip. Felicity called this her signature “Zulu Curl” and we loved it!
• The style was finished similarly to Lisa’s, but refined with additional pinning on the short pieces of the bang area. A little session spray and working with it with the brush is all was needed to make this glam style.

Felicity’s tips were super helpful and its always good to get a fresh perspective on how to make our clients look fabulous! Thanks Felicity! (If you want to learn more, keep reading this blog or go to the Kevin Murphy website for more product information or styling tutorials.)

post by D’Arcy