This week from Monday the 6th to Thursday the 9th, the 1st International Premium Beauty and Health Show (PB&HS) was held in Tokyo Big Sight exhibition center.
There are many trade shows related to beauty and it’s always interesting to go and discover new beauty products and machines. It’s also an opportunity to try them for free or get free samples, as each booth propose PR campaigns.
As for interesting products, I have posted a few things already on Instagram. Instead today I would like to write about the hair show that was held during PB&HS by Asia Beauty Academy.
What’s Asia Beauty Academy
ABA is an association founded by a group of hair salons across Japan, aiming the expansion of “black hair culture”, unique to Asia, by educating beauty instructors on Japanese hairdressing basics standards, beyond national borders.
Many famous Japanese hair salons recognized by the Japanese beauty industry are part of ABA.
ABA gave hair shows on 2 days during the trade show. I went to see 2 of them on Monday.
ABA hair show
Each show had 2 parts:
- concept stage
- collection stage
Concept stage
The concept stage was a bit like a seminar, led by 2 salons, Mashu from Osaka and Sara based in Fukuoka and was common to the 2 shows that I have seen.
On this stage, we learned how a woman’s hairstyle can be thought as a matrix of 2 axes:
Each matrix can be expressed by haircut lines, hair colors and impressions:
Hard Warm:
Cute, casual, pastel, round, soft, high-tones, sweet, gentle, line that goes up in front, pop, rounded bangs.
…missing picture, sorry… 🙁
Soft Cool:
High graduation, pale tones, movements, light, airy, fresh, A-line, soft, texturized, cool.
Soft Warm:
Shine, long, heavy, volume, deep, brown, low graduation, chic-kawaii, rounded, glamorous.
Hard Cool:
Shine, sleek, contrast, straight, sharp, one length, cool, stylish, edgy, strong.
The 4 haircuts were simultaneously performed on stage based on the theory. These styles were more wearable, suited-to-everyday-life versions of the extreme styles from the models seen before.
Here are the 4 styles with each of them including one editorial version and one everyday version.
It was interesting to see how we can “plan” a hairstyle according to the atmosphere or mood that we want to create, using the hair colors and haircut elements as tools.
Collection stage
The next stage was pure entertainment!
AFLOAT stage
At the very famous Tokyo-based hair salon Afloat’s stage, the hairdressers were dressed in super Mario! The show started with the Marios curling model’s hair on Super Mario’s music!
In fact, the models were the sexy Cyberjapan Dancers, recently rising in popularity across Asia in nightclubs and events!
Once the gowns removed, the girls started dancing on the stage in sexy outfit, which made many male visitors happy 🙂
The second part was haircut and hair updos on street dancers.
It was very lively and fun! Long curly hair, light tone color, glamorous and sexy look are Afloat’s specialty.
SNIPS stage
The next show was performed by SNIPS, a chain of salons from Niigata.
With the theme “anti-feminine” SNIPS focused on creating short styles only.
ASCH stage
The Nagoya-based salon ASCH gave a very simple but high-quality show with 2 short haircuts and 2 updos.
LIM stage
Last but not least, my favorite show of course performed by LIM!!
It was just so beautiful and moving from the beginning to the end.
At first, a video was played on the screen with short messages mixed with visuals, showing how much this salon cares about people. They are not just cutting hair on clients’ request, but they truly respect people’s lifestyle and they make sure the hairstyles fit them. Only a few text messages but it was well and beautifully communicated.
The whole show was performed on live jazz music, which also made the difference compared to the other stages!
The first part started with bold and blunt haircut: hairdressers cutting off long hair to short bobs. Blunt cut bob is the trend right now in Japan.
The second part was more diverse with different textures, length, and colors. I love the short bangs we see on the screen, which LIM is very keen on!
The styles were very sophisticated, with beautiful textures.
I also loved everything else: how the models were dressed all in black while the hairdressers were in navy. The super cute and romantic off-white gowns the models were wearing during the haircut as well as how the models marched and posed very straight!
To summarize, it was a wonderful exciting show. Each salon, at least for the ones I know, made a good job expressing its own world and concept, which is very unique and defined. The sophistication of Japanese hairdressing is amazing: they are not only professionals who cut hair, they are artists who transform and create new textures, planning, working down to the smallest detail. They have the ability to create beauty and make sensation. They are very inspiring!
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