For those who are lucky enough to be selected to go through to the second round judging, the judges' panel is widened to include photographers, makeup artists, clothes stylists as well as a lot of people from the trade and consumer beauty press. So my advice to clients is to impress your fellow hairdressers with the first round entry. To create the ultimate winning collection you need to broaden your appeal to impress the magazine editors and others who are not quite so closely connected with the art of hairdressing.
This takes us back to where we started when I mentioned the importance of planning a theme for a shoot. On the one hand you do need to take into account the way the hair awards are judged, but at the same time you have to have the confidence to do what you think is right and let others decide whether they agree with you or not. I think the worse thing you can do is to over-analyse previous winning collections. Of course it is important to take note of changing trends, but don't do what one hairdresser did and pin the previous year's winning Toni & Guy pictures up on the makeup mirror and copy the hair (I should add that this was not one of my clients)! Have faith in your talents and do what you believe is right. The whole point of a well-planned shoot is to give yourself the creative space and freedom to produce your best artistic work.
Copyright Martin Evening 2008