Number 2 : The HAIR Issue
An issue with hair, the hairy issue… Your crowning glory, your bouffant. It shapes our identity and how the world perceives us. Luscious flowing locks, 80’s chemical perms, Brazilian blow-wave, buzz-cut number 1,2,3 and dread-oh-dread… no hair? no problems! The constant change and desire to manipulate and control hair is as old as the ages. The appearance of our hair is so important to us that the hair care industry is estimated to be worth $58billion in 2015 alone – that’s a lot of pots, potions, dyes, hairspray, shampoo, conditioners, gums and glues! This issue explores all aspects of hair. Body hair, fake hair, wigs, weaves, beards, ‘fros, eyebrows, moustaches, digital fur, medieval hair, animal hair, hair products, art hair, hair that looks like food, man hair, lady hair, no hair, hirsuteness and bunny hair. Dead yet alive, and the tie that bonds all mammals, hair is a haughty, hilarious, heroic and horrific topic to explore. Now if you will excuse me, “waiter dear, there is a hair in my soup”.
www.bite-meee.com
big wig Katrina Tran
maximus@bite-meee.com
hipster stache Jason Schlabach
medius@bite-meee.com
best in show Bettina McIlwraith John Meade Stanislava Pinchuk Kathryn Lefroy Max Olijnyk Oriana Reich Nicole Rose Marlon Rueberg Studio Shoplifter Peter Sutherland Wendy Syfret Shauna T/ PAM The Hotham Street Ladies Ben Thomson Lorenzo Vitturi Elle Waldmann
Sookoon Ang BLESS Pippa Brooks Cleo The Bunny Susanne Deeken Khrob Edmonds Emily Eldridge Josh Gardiner Gasius Mona Hatoum Ren Hang Sarah Illenberger Milo Kossowski Sarah Lee Jesus Manongdo Kiah GM
special thanks Arnault Castel
All text and images Š2014 the artists, authors and their representatives. No material whether written or photographed may be reproduced without the permission of the authors, artists
and
publishers.
The
opinions
expressed
in
this
publications are those of the authors and artists and not necessarily of the publishers.
IsbN: 978-988-13320-1-1 Published in Hong Kong. Printed by Asia One Printing. Copyright Š2014 Bite Me Katrina Tran, Jason Schlabach
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‘mane’ and ‘tail’ titles Monique Goossens
Apple, from Tutti Frutti, 2011-2013 Sarah Illenberger
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postcards from Cleo
diana yen
This is Cleo The Bunny, sharing some snaps with us on her tour of healthy eating and mutual love of kohl-rimmed eyes. #cleothebunny
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Cleo says, eat your greens.
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Beauty Hairbrush Z, BLESS 13
Hair {Tangled}, Stanislava Pinchuk (MISO) Photo credit : Alex Mitchell 14
My hair fell out when I was a teenager - {horrible!}. It was always very tangled, with these huge spots between it so that’s sort of a diagram of tangled hair, for me.
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Opposite page, this page, following spread: Impenetrable (S version), 2010, Mona Hatoum Black finished steel and fishing wire 112 3/16 x 112 3/16 x 112 3/16 in . (285 x 285 x 285 cm) © Mona Hatoum Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin and Paris 17
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The Day, Sookoon Ang
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Mean Yellow, 1997, John Meade Industrial plastic bristle, 50.0 x 33.0 x 33.0 cm Photo: Andrew Curtis Courtesy of the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
Silvia , 2014 , John Meade Cast aluminum , automotive coating, horsehair, linen thread , 52 x 48 x 18cm Photo: Andrew Curtis Courtesy of the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
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Milo Kossowski
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Sleeping Beauty 2012, Photo by Shoplifter 26
Your work has been so intrinsically linked to hair, why hair? It might sound eerie and creepy to many but I have always been fascinated with hair and particularly hair once it´s off the body since it can outlive us and doesn´t decay. Psychologically, I guess it all started with my grandma Magnea´s cutoff braid of her own hair. She kept it in a drawer in her vanity table and I would tiptoe and peek at it every time I could, I was about 7. Now I have my own cutoff braid from when I was about 12 years old, resting in a coffin type of a box. Conceptually, I am fascinated with human hair because it draws out the creative part in a person when it comes to deciding how to tame this bodily vegetation. My work has been very attached to the notion of vanity and people´s relationship to their own image.
What are you looking for when you begin a new piece? Since I work in many different formats such as installation, sculpture and wall pieces, drawings and performance, it´s hard to give one good answer but usually it has to do with a feeling or visual stimulation in relationship to a material or an object. I am comfortable with the uncertainty and work from a curiosity in manipulating and transforming the meaning of the material into something new or different. I like playing with the texture and color, but it’s usually also linked to a particular feeling each time, like lonesomeness, harmony, vulgarity, calmness, euphoria but a common thread is the notion of a contradiction. Creating something that can be simultaneously beautiful and grotesque.
We loved your work with Bjork, specifically on Medulla – can you tell us a bit about the inspiration and idea behind creating this work? Bjork had seen my exhibition where I used hair to make braided wall murals and asked me to collaborate on her new album cover. The album´s only instrument is human voices, and she wanted to have a certain character to her image on the cover where she would be wearing only hair. The word “medulla”, we also found out, is the name for the innermost strand of a hair, so that certainly made sense. I found a woman in Iceland who makes so called “memory flowers” that are made from human hair. I had been fascinated with these (branches of) flowers since I was a teenager. It´s an old craft very few people know nowadays, it´s tradition goes way back to the 1600´s when people would keep the hair of a deceased person to make ornaments from it, in memory of a loved one. So Asta Bjork at Harverk created the flower like branches out of human and horse hair that I then mixed together with the basket woven hair pieces and braids and Bjork´s own hair.
Studio Shoplifter
You are originally from Iceland, how much of your hometown informs your work or does geography not matter to you? My roots run deep and are firmly planted in my psyche, it’s almost impossible not to be inspired by your past, especially when you come from a place like Iceland. The isolation that was more evident when I grew up had a big impact and I started creating things out of boredom! I also think that because we don’t mirror ourselves too much in other countries when growing up there, Iceland being an island with no borders to another place but the sea. In Iceland I always feel reminded of nature even though I’m a city kid from Reykjavik. The wind, rain and snow toss you around pretty much constantly and I feel like an organism clinging onto a beast’s back in the middle of the ocean because the nature is so “alive and kicking”. It is intense and it seeps into the work, sometimes consciously sometimes unconsciously but it is always there because the artwork is you and I happen to be Icelandic. Then I moved to New York when I was 25 years old and there I have lived and worked as an artist since and the different elements toss you around here, culture, excess, fashion, moods, basically a wild variety of everything you can dream up, and that has also become a great inspiration. I am very grateful for both places and find the combination perfect.
So who has the best hair, living or dead?
Dolly Parton, no contest ! 27
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Hair sculpture for Bjork’s Medulla album , 2004 Human and horsehair f lowers by Asta Bjork at Harverk Photo by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin
Cooper and Gorfer collaboration with Shoplifter and Kria Weather Diaries exhibition at Nordic Fashion Biennial 2014 Photo by Cooper and Gorfer
Raw Nerves (3D printed sculpture and synthetic hair) 2014 Photo by Marianne Bernstein 29
Drew Hair, Peter Sutherland
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Miami 2012, Peter Sutherland
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Proactive Mutation, Shauna T/ PA M Photo: Max Doyle
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Proactive Mutation, Shauna T/ PA M Photo: Max Doyle 35
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dalston anatomy
lorenzo vitturi
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Disguise
ecoration in
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Mouth-watering moustaches and scrumptious beards hide our true identity. No one will ever guess, it’s
the hotham street ladies
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Rosie
Every six weeks, my hair suddenly shifts from George Clooney to Alan Partridge overnight. I suppose it would be interesting to see which salt-and-pepper-haired screen icon it takes after next (Dumbledore?), but I’ve never been able to stick it out long enough to find out. When that fateful day rolls around, I text my friend Rosie and book in for her next available appointment.
by max olijnyk
Rosie works from a shop on the first floor of a boring looking building at the top of Gertrude Street. She splits the rent with a few other hairdressers, which seems like a very modern arrangement. They don’t call themselves anything; it’s just a place to get your hair cut. It’s nice up there – just a functional concrete-floored space with chairs, mirrors, some nice plants and pictures. It feels like a studio.
Rosie is funny. That’s my favourite thing about her, I think.
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Of course, she’s also really clever and cool and great at cutting hair (listen to me!), but I really like that her humour sort of shrouds everything that she does. With hairdressers of old, I’ve watched their techniques - the angle of the scissors, the rotation of the clipper attachments, shit like that – as if I’m taking notes to become a hairdresser myself one day. With Rosie, I just forget about that stuff and listen to her funny stories. It’s relaxing, because I know that we’re going to be hanging out for the next forty minutes, and neither of us can really do anything about that, so we may as well say some funny stuff. Or at least that’s how I see it. I guess it’s just work for her. I ask her how her music is going (Rosie makes music, plus she makes bags). “Pretty good,” she tells me, “but I think my songs are too sad.” I ask her why she thinks this, and she tells me it’s because she played one of her songs to a friend one day in the park, and he burst into tears. “He’d just had a pretty big night though,” she says, and I spot a little smile for a second in the mirror, before she clicks back into standard deadpan mode. She tells me she played the same song to her ex-boyfriend and he thought it was too sad, too, but maybe that was because the song was kind of about him. I tell her that perhaps she’s playing the song to the wrong test audience, because a lot of people, like me, really like sad songs. She shrugs, then tells me it’s time to wash my hair. I like how she cuts my hair first, then washes it, so I don’t have to walk around afterwards with hair inside my ears and stuff.
“Maybe I just need to get a dog and get happy, then I’ ll write happy songs,” she says as she rinses my hair with warm water. I tell her that I don’t think that will change anything, because even though my dog brings me a lot of joy, I am constantly terrified that she will die, or disappear, or get sick because I did something wrong. The point is, some people are meant to write sad songs. “I guess, but I don’t think I’d worry about that,” she says, pushing back her glasses, “because I’ve killed plenty of animals.” Hair washed, we walk back down to the mirror for the finishing touches. As she dries my hair and chops little bits off, I ask her what animals she’s killed. “I killed my rabbit,” she tells me. “I left its hutch out in the sun, I was supposed to move it into the shade.” I ask her what she was doing while the rabbit was burning to death. “Probably watching Heartbreak High or something.” We laugh. What else? “Oh, I left some mice in an ice cream container.” Did she leave the lid on the container? She nods into the mirror. I say it sounds a bit like a gas chamber and she nods. “It was a bit. Then there was all the fish, but fish don’t really count. And lots of cats got run over, but that wasn’t my fault.”
“But anyway, now I want a dog. I never used to want a dog. I used to think all dog owners were…” …stupid? I offer, but she makes the L sign on her head, which comes out backwards in the mirror, “Losers.” I tell her I know what she means. Needy. We agree that some dog owners are like that, but not us. We’re good dog people. Rosie asks me what I’m doing now. I tell her my girlfriend is supposed to be making corn fritters for dinner, but she’s texted me to say we don’t have any eggs. I texted back that she should go and get some from the shop around the corner – I even added the chicken emoji. She responded with one word: ‘Sigh’. I tell Rosie this and she laughs. “What is she – Garfield?”
She’s finished with my hair and I’m back in Clooney mode. I thank her and set off home. I’m good for another six weeks. 45
JOHN WATERS
by elle waldmann
From left, American actors Colleen Fitzpatrick, Debbie Harry, Divine (1945 - 1988), and Ricki Lake in a scene from ‘Hairspray,’ directed by John Waters, 1988. Photo by New Line Cinema/Courtesy of Getty Images
I’ve been a fan of John Waters’ work ever since I first saw Hairspray as a little girl, growing up in sheltered suburbia. At the time, I was too young to know who he was or what other works had come before. In the decades since, my appreciation for the man, his dedication to style, and the film itself have all changed, but Hairspray continues to strike a chord of both curiosity and truth. Tracy Turnblad’s ratted bouffant battles against the lines of conformity, a society challenged by the brink of social revolution, and the ‘tyranny of good taste’.
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Like many, I got to know the other works of John Waters from that film onwards, in a double-ended continuum of time and taste; discovering the cult shock-films that preceded Hairspray and the relatively softer, almost family friendly movies and books that followed it. Living in an age now evermore desensitized to shock, I can only imagine the original impact of the work he and his Baltimore Dreamlanders created in the 70’s and 80’s, before anyone ever heard of Hairspray.
DOESN’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT HAIR
As a child, I didn’t know who most of the stand-out cast of Hairspray were (though Debbie Harry was on high rotation in the Walkman and I was innately drawn to Pia Zadora, the Beatnik Chick, ironing her locks and reciting Allen Ginsberg’s Howl), or that the director, due to those earlier works, had proudly earned himself such titles as ‘The Prince of Puke’ or ‘The Pope of Trash’, as William S. Burroughs had anointed him. Most of the blatant jokes and nuanced nods to counter culture and filth that were snuck into his ‘mainstream debut’ would have flown right over my pre-pubescent head. But today, I find myself even more appreciative of his artistic contributions that both celebrate and challenge the many shades of American culture, our own human foibles, and any prudishly preconceived notions.
Needless to say when asked to interview John Waters, I started imagining us discussing the film over coffee in Baltimore. He would be dressed in something by Rei Kawakubo, with the ever-present pencil moustache of course, and I would worry about what new angle we could capture that he hasn’t discussed in the past 26 years. He might greet me at his home (filled with art and decadent subversion) and following an initial chat, I’d suggest we walk around the city he is so fond of (and that Hairspray is set in a 1968 version of). With his vulgar yet caring wit, he’d regale with stories of his hometown and his favourite characters, while we have a drink at one of his preferred spots, and maybe he’d even be wearing his gold Comme de Garçon loafers.
Hairspray is a film and a story that, so far, has remained so powerful and extensively engaging that it continues to be redone and retold. From an original breakthrough film, to Broadway musical, Hollywood remake in 2007 (directed by Adam Shankman), and continuing community theatre productions, it is so widely relatable because
That interview never happened. And honestly, I can’t blame him. (Though John, if I may call you John, hope does indeed spring eternal...) His assistant very kindly explained that he just couldn’t talk about the film any more. He had also just wrapped up a fairly substantial book tour and was taking the summer off. I knew this because I had already read the new book, “Carsick”, and seen quite a few of his TV appearances promoting the work. He’d referenced Hairspray as a ‘touching shadow’ in the past but, really, who wants to talk about the work they did over 25 years ago.
it celebrates so many outsiders that almost everyone is included.
It’s not just Tracy Turnblad’s coming of age story – it is also a story that America still hopes for. It offers the viewer a strong social commentary from the comfortable reach of a not-todistant past, disguised in the melodramas of teenage trends and hair… lots and lots of hair. Outsiders win, intentions and character win, regardless of race, weight, or cross-dressing gender (in the case of Divine as Edna Turnblad).
So instead of harassing the man for another interview about his breakthrough film now decades old, I thought I would just imagine one. The conversation that follows never took place but it’s a homage comprised from existing quotes that he has already said or written in the past 20 years (all sourced). I don’t want to put words in the mouth of John Waters that weren’t already there, just rearrange them. John Waters was not consulted, but I hope he’d at least be amused. In the words of the man himself,
“Fiction is the truth, fool!”
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EW: Hi John, you seem to have always taken great pleasure in shocking people and disrupting their cultural comforts with your unique brand of filth.
JW: Filth is just the beginning battle in the war on taste… 2
EW: Yet when it comes to taste, good or bad, you never seem to come across as judgmental or condescending.
JW: The real good taste is appreciating all kinds of taste and learning from bad taste and using it as a spice… to fight the tyranny of humourless good taste, but at the same time pay respect to what you’re making fun of. 3
EW: Was Hairspray an intersection of that humour?
JW: There was a war going on about taste. You know, Hairspray is really a movie in bad taste, I don’t think that would be debatable. It really couldn’t have crossed over more. 4
EW: But that was also the breakout role for Ricki Lake. How did she end up being cast?
JW: Through a casting woman named Mary Calhoun, and Ricki had been turned down for a job at the Gap a week earlier. She was still in college and she came to us, and as soon as she walked in, I knew it was her. I mean here was a fat girl, and she was definitely fat then, I mean, she’s not now - she was then. And she was up there... we use the term chubster...I needed a teenage girl that could dance and that’s the thing. 6
EW: Insider or outsider, so many of us equate our hair with a part of our identity and throughout your career you’ve tapped into that in such an interesting way in your films…
JW: I always wanted to be a juvenile delinquent but I had a hard time because with this hair, even then, it just didn’t work. When I was seven years old and with a pompadour… I had thin hair. I had a bad hair life… I just had limp hair, always. 9
EW: So you decided moustache instead?
on
the
EW: Given that she’d stolen another role in the movie from Divine, did they get along well?
JW: Divine taught Ricki how to walk in high heels – Ricki had never been in a pair before. (Laughs) Ricki kind of freaked out when we bleached her hair. That bright orange stuff in Hairspray wasn’t a wig. It was her real hair. And Divine said “Oh, please, Ricki, how can you be worried about that? I’ve eaten shit, I swam across a river in drag in Female Trouble, I ate a rotten cow’s heart in Multiple Maniacs.” So, what could Ricki really say with this kind of trooper giving her advice? 7
JW: In a misguided attempt to steal Little Richard’s identity, I grew my pencil-thin moustache. At first it didn’t work right. It’s tough for a white man who isn’t that hairy to grow one. 10
EW: So what’s your secret? EW: The casting of the Turnblad and von Tussle families incorporated every sort of star at the time; new, old, popular and cult. Tell me about that.
JW: It was an accident. Divine in the original was going to play both the mother and the daughter, like The Parent Trap, which might have had a different outcome if I had done that. 5
EW: So much has changed since you made that film, but a lot of people are still faced by the same issues or prejudices, perhaps just not so blatantly. Do you think if Hairspray were made today for the first time it would have the same impact?
JW: Now everybody wants to be an outsider… now we should be insiders. That’s more perverted because everybody wants to be an outsider. 8 48
JW: It’s Maybelline… Believe me, I’ve tried expensive, smearproof eyebrow pencils, but they’re too thick, too indelible… I always carry one in my pocket, keep another in my car, and have backups in each of my homes. 11
EW:
Is there anyone now who you think is rocking some interesting hair these days?
JW: Tavi Gevinson inspired me by dying her hair grey when she was just a kid and causing a sensation. But lets go further… 12
EW: What would you have me do to my hair? JW:
Don’t ask me, I’m queer but I’m mentally ill. I don’t know what you should do. 13
EW: That’s very diplomatic yet politically incorrect of you, perhaps a perfect John Waters answer. Do you have any last words of wisdom for our readers? JW:
You, too, can have an iconic signature. It’s not about money; its about a look. 14
EW:
It was a pleasure speaking with you John, thanks for your time.
JW: Good god... the miracle of Hairspray never ends. 15
REFERENCES 1. Waters, John. Role Models. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Page 164. Print. 2. Waters, John. Role Models. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Page 274. Print. 3, 4. (2014, August 5). John Waters: Behind the Pencil Moustache. World Movies Australia, Crow’s Nest, New South Wales. Television Broadcast. Available online: w w w.youtube/com/watch?v=_ HpJaQ IGoDo 5. Waters, John. Inter view. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. New York: 28 June, 2010. Television. Available online: w w w.thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/kpz62f/john-waters 6. Weber, Eric. Film Article: Hairspray. Turner Classic Movies. Online Article. Available online: http://w w w.tcm.com/this-month/article/145427%7C0/Hairspray.html 7. Jiminiz, Jay. “The Gospel According to John”. Next Magazine, 9 October 1998. 8. Waters, John. Inter view. RuPaul Drives. World of Wonder Productions. Los Angeles: 20 March, 2014. Available online: w w w.youtube.com/watch?v+I4I5JDICmcl#t=520 9. Waters, John. Inter view. The Daily Show. Comedy Central. New York: 22 April, 2008. Television. 10. Waters, John. Role Models. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Page 99. Print. 11. Waters, John. Role Models. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Page 99. Print. 12. Hyland, Veronique. “John Waters Gloriously Roasts The Fashion Crowd”. New York Magazine, June 3, 2014. Available online: w w w.nymag.com/thecut/2014/06/john-waters-pokes-fun-at-thefashion-crowd.html 13. Waters, John. Inter view. RuPaul Drives. World of Wonder Productions. Los Angeles: 20 March, 2014. Available online: w w w.youtube.com/watch?v+I4I5JDICmcl#t=520 14. Waters, John. Role Models. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Page 101. Print. 15. Waters, John. Carsick. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Page 43. Print.
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The Portable Solar Panel by khrob edmonds
It was happening right before our eyes. Not the slow ebb of hair back from a gradually growing forehead, but hyperpaced deforestation of follicles, as all over our friend’s head the remaining strands grew lonelier and lonelier. My friend - let’s call him Smithy - was 16, and by the time we finished high school, three quarters of the way to being bald. Before a man is a man, when in fact he is a young boy, baldness is a thing that happens to old men and either not noticed or not cared about. However, when puberty hits, hair in new places and hormone soup stir the curiosity:
Will it happen to me? If so when? How will I know? Who will tell me? The schoolyard wisdom is bandied about: “It’s caused by excess testosterone”; “hair genes are passed down your Mother’s side” and “frequent ejaculations cause baldness”. I never bothered to check on the scientific validity of these statements, as my Mother’s Father wasn’t bald. Besides which, I already looked so like my father that I assumed I’d be following in his hairsteps - a fairly serious widow’s peak, but basically still “be-haired”.
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Assured by my hirsute prospects, my teenage period of worrying about such things passed pretty quickly. In my twenties I proceeded to dye, bleach and do all the silly things you do to your hair in the vain search for your ‘look’. After one particularly scalp-searing bleaching, I wondered whether I was tempting fate by subjecting my pate to such punishment. I took it easy on the colour alterations for a while and one evening decided, while there was still a pretty good chance it would all grow back, to see what I’d look like... should the worst happen. Clippers in hand, I attacked. Finishing the job with a couple of razors, I discovered several things. Firstly, a bald head feels great. The smooth skin is like a sensor array, picking up everything from the gentlest zephyr to a hint of sunshine in the next room. (Sunscreen became part of my daily routine pretty damn quickly.) Secondly, I was oddly relieved to find I don’t have a funnyshaped head. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I might have an FSH until I was nearly done with the razors - having a covered skull all those years hadn’t really begged the question until that point. Fortunately, I didn’t look unusual. Nice to know. The third discovery was that I would actually feel OK if and when I turned bald.
I also found myself thinking back to my high school friend Smithy. I assume Smithy was cue-ball smooth before his 20th birthday, and I remember feeling a small tinge of envy. Dating in your teens is fun, but kind of pointless for the most part. In your twenties though, there are more long term repercussions to the dating game, and what a mark of character it must be to have sailed through teen baldification and come out the other side, unscathed and sporting the old ‘solar panel for a love machine’. I felt sure the ladies would see him and think “Well, that’s what he looks like – bald and handsome – no need to worry about what kind of hideous monster might be lurking under the nefarious flowing locks of those other potential mates.” Cut forward to my mid-thirties and I’m discovering two things happening amongst my brethren. First of all - there are those who are actually starting to lose their hair. If they’ve kept it this long, it’s starting to go first from their crowns, and many of them, I don’t think, have even noticed. No one’s gotten so bad yet that they’re looking at combovers or other equally hideous solutions. The other thing that’s been happening is I’ve had conversations I never expected to have – about hair loss prevention treatments.
Friends who have, quite frankly, exemplary heads of hair are starting to use concoctions designed to stimulate growth and prevent the follicles from letting go of their precious cargo. From what I’ve seen - it’s working for them, and I’ve given some serious consideration to doing it myself - isn’t it better to protect what you’ve got than try to Rogaine, sorry, regain something you’ve already lost? So having thought back through the various decades of my life and their corresponding thoughts on baldness, I have come to this conclusion:
For me, baldness is a test of character. It may not happen to you, but if it does, the way you react to it is everything. Prevention is one thing, but my feeling is that you should follow in the examples of Patrick Stewart, Bruce Willis, Jeff Bezos and Ben Kingsley - just run with it.
Toupees and plugs are just terrible ideas. I think. Ask me again in my forties.
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Vidal Sassoon “He didn’t create it for me, he created it on me.” Grace Coddington
by wendy syfret Vidal Sassoon, the celebrity hairdresser who transformed the careers of actresses and It girls, and the lives of countless other women whose names we don’t know but whose style we still pine for, isn’t just a name on a shampoo bottle. Out of the swinging 60’s of London, Sassoon came to define a generation who weren’t concerned with what other people thought and who sought pleasure and fun. The glamour belied humble beginnings, as Sassoon spent much of his childhood in an orphanage. His teen years were framed by the Second World War, where at 17 and too young to volunteer for the army, he served as the youngest member of an underground Jewish anti-fascist organization that broke up meetings of the British Union of Fascists. He was later called an “anti-fascist warriorhairdresser” by a British newspaper.
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After the war, Sassoon trained as a hairdresser and in 1954 he opened his first London salon. Post-war Britain was a remarkably changed place; the young people who became his customers had been children and teenagers during the raids and food shortages that plagued London. Suddenly the old ways of doing things seemed fussy to people who has been through so much, and his fresh and low key styles spoke to a city that found itself aching to be modern and reborn. Taking cues from the art and fashion that was flooding the country, Sasoon played to angles and shapes in his cuts. His interpretation of the bob would become one of the most important styles of the 60’s, rivaled only by miniskirts in its impact. It’s probably not a surprise that one of his early clients was Mary Quant, young London’s favourite fashion designer and the mother of the mini.
“When I looked at the architecture, the structure of buildings that were going up worldwide, you saw a whole different look, in shape.”
He took inspiration from his own changing city and recognized that the 60’s were destined to be a very different cultural landscape, “My sense was hairdressing definitely needed to be changing.” Short and angular, the hairdresser’s skills around geometric shapes created a cut that appeared highly styled and treated with product. In reality, it was totally product and fuss-free, making it not only easy to maintain, but also time and cost-effective. Suddenly, society girls and secretaries were indistinguishable and money didn’t set you apart as much as being brave enough to bare your neck to the chilly London weather. One of his early muses and the future creative director of US Vogue, Grace Coddington, commented that after years of backcombing and hair spray, “Suddenly you could put your fingers through your hair!” Coddington was one of many famous women who became part of the Sassoon myth before their stories were featured in glossy magazines. She was one of the first to wear his original five-point cut. While modeling for him in the early 60’s, he impressively cut her wild mane into a sleek helmet with a W cut at the nape of the neck and a pointed spike in front of each ear. Coddington is modest over her role in hair history, “He didn’t create it for me, he created it on me.” His ability to tame her seemingly impenetrable wall of hair is a testament to his skill, “It was an extraordinary cut; no one has bettered it since. And it liberated everyone. You could just sort of drip-dry it and shake it.” This ability to transform women into fashion reference points didn’t take long to become legendary. In the book and movie, Rosemary’s Baby, he’s credited with creating Rosemary’s famous elfin bob. In fact, when she says to her shocked husband, “It’s Vidal Sassoon. It’s very in,” the hairdresser’s reputation as a transformative force was literally a plot point in the story, marking a change in both Rosemary and her role in the novel.
1967: Mia Farrow gets a haircut by Vidal Sassoon while surrounded by photographers. Photo by Max B. Miller/Fotos International/Getty Images
The act of cutting Mia Farrow’s hair for the movie itself was a media circus: Sassoon was paid $5000 to appear in a photo call cutting the young star’s hair. The cut is credited, perhaps more than the movie itself, with launching Farrow’s career. Sassoon was already the most famous hair stylist in the world at the time, but it certainly did him no harm. Not everyone was a fan: following Farrow’s cut, Barbara Walters remarked to him that he was, “making beautiful women look like boys”. On her popular talk show, she gave him an award for his ability to make women look ugly. Sassoon, obviously miles ahead stylistically, playfully rewarded her with an award for retrogressive thinking. The exchange was light-hearted, but it perfectly defined his ability to see beyond the times and the public’s idea of a beautiful woman. His muses were boyish, yet still feminine and beguiling. They were multi-dimensional women who wanted to be free of fuss, but also not hide their personalities. They accentuated their best features with make up and fashion, and were bold enough to know that less is often more – with both hair and hem lengths. If the boys didn’t have to sleep in curlers and spend hours a month at the salon, why should the girls?
He made sure they didn’t have to sacrifice a moment of glamour for a lifetime of fun. 53
‘To Hair is Human, to Wig Divine’ by kathryn lefroy
Changing your hair is one of the most fundamental ways to project individual transformation to those around you, and perhaps this is nowhere more apparent than in the world of professional Drag performers. Holotta Tymes and Stephanie Nicole le Dream are two of San Francisco’s most notable Drag Queen personalities. Sure they have plenty of shoes and gowns cluttering up their closets, but between them they’d probably have enough hair to keep an entire Florida retirement village in weaves for the next ten years. Why? Because no amount of fake boobs, hips or bottoms will make or break a Drag persona as fast as a wig can. “We can put on all the makeup in the world,” le Dream explains, “and we can shove a whole couch cushion into our tights to give us hips, but when you think of a beautiful woman, the first thing you look at is her hair.” Holotta Tymes agrees.
“Your hair is really your picture frame. Your hair finishes you off.” For this reason, professional Drag performers spend many hours and many thousands of dollars on their hair. Hairpieces range from cheap off-the-shelf synthetic wigs, to full-head lace front wigs, which are made by hand-tying (usually) human hair to a sheer lace base. These give the illusion of a natural hairline, but each wig will set you back a few grand. Prior to the show, the wigs are set and then secured onto the performers head with either spirit gum or, if the hair is really heavy, super glue. It doesn’t sound like the most comfortable thing in the world – and apparently it isn’t. 54
“I usually layer two or three wigs at a time, so there’s lots of teasing, lots of hairspray and a lot of spirit gum to glue them all to my head,” le Dream says. “Wigs can give you headaches and cut into the skin on your head,” Holotta Tymes explains, “and it’s best to keep your hair really short underneath because getting the glue out of your hair after the show is way easier.” According to le Dream, “the worst thing that can happen to a Drag Queen is losing your hair onstage.” In one recent show le Dream was performing as Rapunzel – complete with fifteen-foot braid – and her wig fell off. “I was upset, but what can you do? You have to keep going.” For Holotta, who specializes in celebrity impersonations, the most frustrating aspect is when a celebrity changes her hair dramatically. “When Celine Dion went short she only wore it for about three or four months before they started gluing tracks in so her hair would be longer for her shows, and I’d just bought, like, twenty-five short wigs! And I was screwed!” There are no hard and fast rules that Drag has to be performed with a wig, but both Stephanie Nicole le Dream and Holotta Tymes agree that it often doesn’t have the same effect. “It’s much less sweaty when you’re not wearing a wig, but for me, I don’t quite feel right without one on,” le Dreams says. (Well, except maybe for the time she bleached her own short hair Miley-blonde and rode fellow drag queen Vicodonia around the audience like a Wrecking Ball.) “The wig really completes the character,”
Photo by Jimmy Gale / Stephanie Nicole Le Dream
Holotta Tymes insists. “It’s so impressive when the hair goes on and it just brings everything together.” She recalls being backstage for a big celebrity impersonator show in Las Vegas and nervously watching a new colleague get ready. “Even when all her makeup was done I had no idea who she was meant to be. But then she slipped on the wig and I was like ‘Oh my God! It’s Shirley MacLaine!’” Just with the addition of the hair, the anxious newbie suddenly became her famous predecessor. But the wig is much more than just a prop for aesthetic transformation – it’s a sort of psychological tool; the final element that enables these performers to quell their introverted male personalities and get out on the stage
as strong, powerful women. “I’m more of a homebody,” le Dream claims. “I like to work in my garden and I sew. I’m not so much of the club person, but when you’re out in drag, you kind of have to be. You can’t just sit in the
back and read Harry Potter… When I put on the wig I’m transformed – I carry myself differently.” Holotta Tymes, who has been working as a
Drag Queen for over twenty-five years and has performed in almost every major city in the US, still gets backstage dread before a show. “I just want to get [the show] over with… My male persona is much more of a shy person. I don’t like crowds. I huddle in a corner and observe.” But the minute she slips on a wig? “That’s the moment when I’m like ‘oh wow, there it is!’” 55
Many Drag performers endeavor to keep their personal and professional lives as separate as possible. Holotta Tymes clearly distinguishes between her male and Drag personalities and as soon as she’s offstage, she strips herself of hair and makeup. She stores all of her costuming – including her collection of about 2,000 wigs – in a warehouse away from her home that she rarely lets anyone else see inside. For her, performing in drag pays the bills. “I love it, but it’s also a way of making a living. It’s like any other job. Just with a different uniform.” Although le Dream tries to keep her drag and ‘boy’ personalities distinct, she has been surprised at the effect Stephanie has had on her male alter-ego, Jimmy, who works as a community activist for the San Francisco LGBT Center. “I have been HIV positive for the past six years, and being Stephanie Nicole le Dream I have been able to raise a lot more awareness. There are things that I would like to say as Jimmy that people don’t necessarily pay attention to, but when you go out there in six inch heels,
three wigs, and a sequined gown, people pay attention.” His work at the LGBT Center
includes helping people get tested, as well as finding them the counseling and support they need. “People at the bars I perform at often know what my day job is and I’ll often find myself sitting down and having long conversations about their sex lives – if it’s a new diagnosis or a breakup.” Jimmy is always taken aback at how willing people are to open up to him when he’s in character. He has also been astonished at the large female heterosexual following he’s developed over his nine years of performing. “So many women want to talk to Stephanie about their relationships and their breakups and husbands and boyfriends. I guess it’s like having girl talk. It’s fun.” But for Jimmy too, the wigs and the sequins don’t take over his life. “As soon as I get home all of my drag gets put in the garage. I don’t want to look at it. I lock her away when I’m done. Stephanie is a big part of who I am but I don’t want to be remembered for being a boy in a dress. I want to be remembered for making a difference to my community.”
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Photo by Holotta Tymes
Drag queen or not, I think we can all learn something from these two seasoned professionals. If you are one of those millions of people who don’t much like – but sometimes can’t avoid – being the center of public attention, forget conventional wisdom of picturing the audience in their underpants.
Instead, try summoning your extroverted alter-ego by slipping into something slightly less comfortable and gluing on a wig.
Male Pattern Hairness
by Josh gardiner illustration by ben thomson
It’s in my ears And in my nose It’s on the parts of me that no one goes My neck a carpet My belly button, a nest It just keeps coming Hey. God. This a test? Tufts of fuzz on the small of my back Short and curly tangles on butt, crack and sack Big thick long ones out the middle of moles Nobody can explain the meaning of those This hair, my hair Far out how it grows Like a hanging garden Underneath my clothes Sure, follicles fall out Let go like leaves from a tree But the rate that they sprout > than the rate they break free Tell me why my toes need hairs And why the hell can’t my knuckles be bare? These thatchy patches are everywhere Think Mr Twit, Cousin Itt, or matted shower plug Whatever you call this, this all-over rug It’s hirsute, it’s tenacious Persistent Ungracious You might laugh, and baldly Say I’m 99 part chimpanzee But hey, if you had hair like this? You’d be plucking like me
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How technology enabled Pixar Animation Studios to create Sulley, the hairiest creature ever, for the Big Screen. Imagine this, you’ve been asked to create the sequel to a major animation feature film. Flash forward and the sequel is actually a prequel and your main protagonist is a giant, fluffy, blue, make-believe character that is, wait for it, covered in 5.5 million strands of “hair”. It gets worse, you have to make him younger, fuller of life and he resembles nothing like anything in the natural world. Welcome to the world of digital animation film making at Pixar Animation Studios and Jacob Brooks. Brooks holds the natty title of “Groom and Cloth Lead” and worked on the lead character Sulley, said blue creature in question, in Monsters University. Readers may recognize Sulley, you certainly couldn’t miss him. He is enormous, and very hairy. “It’s like with any project, everything starts with a good reference and a lot of inspirational art. For something like Monsters University – fortunately for us, Sulley already existed in the previous movie. Obviously he was a little bit older, but we knew where to start from. We knew we wanted him to be younger and a little bit unkept, but we really wanted the hair to illustrate those characteristics,” says Brooks.
“Our hope was to recreate something that had the feel of not having been washed every day, kind of like a college student’s hair, but we didn’t want him to be gross and dirty.” When you see Sulley on-screen, he actually has about 2 million individual hairs in his fur. The technology used to create the fur on the character required painstakingly mimicking movement in real-life and transporting that to the small screen where groomers, artists and technicians like Brooks spent hundreds of hours rendering it in order to give the fur a realistic feel. Broken into three components, Brooks explained that the key steps of shape, texture and handling the motions which are the three biggest factors in determining the look and using technology to make it realistic to audiences.
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Jacob Brooks at work. Courtesy of Pixar Animation Studios.
Pixar’s propriety software allows groomers like Brooks, the ability to shape hundreds of curves around the characters body to give it a silhouette, which then allows it to link all the fur together to make the character’s body feel covered as you would expect. Next comes the layering and texturing via 3D painting software which allows hair to be manipulated – crumping it, making it scragglier and controlling the density. For Sulley, Brooks used references such longhorn, yaks, and sheep fur as inspiration for hair texture, always mindful of making it “too realistic”. “This is a big discussion point in our industry,” explains Brooks.
“For hair in our films, we are always after enough reality to make it believable and authentic. We don’t want it to make it look so real it distracts you, but we do want it to be familiar.” Hair seems to be such a huge identity to the character that to get it wrong, would have meant millions of disappointed fans, how did Brooks feel about that?
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“Sulley was our first hairy character in the first movie and he’s such an icon. He is indeed mostly dependent on his hair. For Sulley to be without fur would be like those odd breed of cats, you know those ones? You think that it’s a cat, but it feels a little bit creepy. I think that is what Sulley is without his hair, just a bit creepy! It’s the thing that makes him who he is. He’s nothing like you have seen before and it is a huge part of who he is.” With technology firmly on the side of the creative team, how did animating hair, as opposed to any other body part, stack up? “Hair is a challenge. Not the hardest but it can be hard. One key ingredient that heightens the difficulty level is how a character moves, for example, Sulley running in the wind, rather than walking on campus. In each case, you dial in the forces that is going to affect the look and for it to be believable.” “For the human characters, our (Pixar) humans never look overly realistic, but for hair, there is a definite level of realness we have to achieve. We look at a ton of references and try and mimic a lot of what we are seeing, so it reads like you would expect it to. Often with our hair, when you look at it, it has a level of sculpture to it. It is stylized into a different shape that is both cartoony and little bit real and somewhere in the middle is the best place to be. It’s always a delicate balance. We hope the audience actually never questions it. We hope they can feel it and not focus on it, but it feels right and that is our intention.”
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Monsters University: from hand sketch to finished rendering. Courtesy of Pixar Animation Studios. 61
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Drop Shadow Scrunch Whuuut, Gasius
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Susanne Deeken
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hair: Yoshitaka Miyazaki assisted by Satomi Suzuki base photography: Joseph Conway models: Annette Hultzsch & Gwyneth Tang special thanks to Rachel Clark contact: Angele at CLM on angele@clmuk.com 79
gone tomorrow words by pippa brooks photos by sarah lee I recently found a jewellery box containing a crappy piece of cling film in which a few precious curls from my boys’ first ever haircut had been hurriedly saved – to keep it fresh? Not sure what my logic was with the cling film, but, along with a few licorice-imp-sized teeth, opening the box set my mind on hi-speed rewind to twin angels with backlit, weightless curls. Christened ‘the baldies’ by kind family members, their hair was a long-time coming and when it finally grew it sort of ‘foofed’ around their heads like a couple of clouds. That was until their first haircut. Then oddly it gained weight, lay flat and grew like everybody else’s. But their ‘first’ hair was quite a landmark. If I was a good Victorian mother, I might have woven these precious locks with mine and even my own mother’s into a hair bouquet, or maybe worn them in a locket around my neck. Despite the lack of ceremony or beauty, uncrinkling the somewhat shameful cling film I’m sure gave me the same rush of joy/sadness/nostalgia that a moist-eyed glance at a hairy wreath under a glass dome would have given one of our forebears.
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When photographer Sarah Lee and I first talked about collaborating on this piece, we decided we were more interested in discarded hair, of no sentimental worth whatsoever. The inconvenient or unsightly hair we deal with on a daily basis. The trimmed, shaved, plucked and binned kind. The beauty of the abandoned, grubby tumble-weave or the poetry of a lonely pube.
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The shoot itself proved a good example of our different attitudes to hair. While I rummaged through discarded wax permeated with back hair, or worse, for a ‘good one’, Sarah gently heaved and shuddered, the detritus having for her the same associations as skeletal remains. The vigorous handwashing despite lack of contact with the subject was hilarious!
Our happiness can be dependent on the good or bad hair day. This shoot is a celebration of ‘bad hair’ in a way. Or dead hair? Although hair is already dead. And doesn’t continue growing after our death, only we shrink and dry, giving the appearance of a growth spurt. Would the combined hairbrush, razor, salon and plug-hole hair of London fill a Mini Cooper, swimming pool or stadium? Who knows, or cares really, but this hairy debris has a kind of beauty.
Our thanks to We Are Cuts, The Brazilian Hot Wax Co., Dean Street Townhouse and Nathaniel.
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Reds, Bangs &
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marlon rueberg
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air’s ow bettina mcilwraith
A modern day fable where hair is haute and the appetite for decoration is healthy. The ritualistic and celebratory approach to accoutrement encourages fun and then some. Living the dream indeed.
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Stylist: Bettina McIlwraith, Photographer: Natasha Foster, Retouch: Abbie Muntz at Faux Pink Hair: Nina Ratsaphong, Make Up: Samantha Patrickopoulos, Model: Ruby Hough at emg models 111
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jesus manongdo
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Detail of A Lady in Her Bath, Francois Clouet. c. 1571 Oil on oak
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Detail of Girl in White, Vincent Van Gogh. 1890, Oil on canvas
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Detail of Summer, Tintoretto. c. 1555, Oil on canvas
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Detail of Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria , Sir Peter Paul Rubens. 1606, Oil on canvas
Hair Styling by Cicci at CallistĂŠ in Paris Painting images courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 124
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Pony Up, Emily Eldridge 126
Credits
Inside cover: photo
Page 2-3, inside back cover: photos
Page 4, 65: typography
Jason Schlabach Hong Kong
Oriana Reich Hong Kong
Monique Goossens Amsterdam, Netherlands
orianareich.com
moniquegoossens.com
Page 5: sculpture
Page 6, 32, 64: collage
Page 7-11: photos
Sarah Illenberger Berlin, Germany
Kiah GM Melbourne, Australia
Cleo the Bunny / Diana Yen New York, United States
sarahillenberger.com
instagram.com/kikifwafwa
thejewelsofny.com
Page 12-13: object
Page 14-15: photo
Page 16-19: installation
BLESS Berlin, Germany
Stanislava Pinchuk (MISO) Melbourne, Australia
Mona Hatoum London, United Kingdom
bless-service.de
m-i-s-o.com
whitecube.com/artists/mona_hatoum
Page 20-21: installation
Page 22-23: sculptures
Page 24-25: illustrations
Sookoon Ang Singapore
John Meade Melbourne, Australia
Milo Kossowski New York, United States
sookoonang.com
suttongallery.com.au/artists/ artistprofile.php?id=29
milokossowski.com
Page 26-29: hair sculptures
Page 30-31: photos
Page 33-35: photos
Studio Shoplifter New York, United States
Peter Sutherland New York, United States
Shauna T / Perks and Mini Melbourne, Australia
shoplifter.us
petersutherland.com
perksandmini.com 127
Page 36-39: photos
Page 40-43: photos
Page 44-45: article
Lorenzo Vitturi London, United Kingdom
The Hotham Street Ladies Berlin, Germany
Max Olijnyk Melbourne, Australia
lorenzovitturi.com
hothamstreetladies.com
maxolijnyk.com
The Portable Solar Panel Page 46-49: interview
Page 50-51: article
Page 52-53: article
Elle Waldmann Los Angeles, United States
Khrob Edmonds San Francisco, United States
Wendy Syfret Melbourne, Australia
waldmann.co
goodgoodgirl.com
Page 54-56: article
Page 57: poem
Page 58-63: article
Kathryn Lefroy San Francisco, United States
Josh Gardiner Melbourne, Australia
Pixar interview by KT Hong Kong
kathrynlefroy.com
joshgardiner.wordpress.com
Page 66-67: collage
Page 68-79: photos
Page 80-87: photos
Gasius London, United Kingdom
Susanne Deeken London, United Kingdom
Sarah Lee / Pippa Brooks London, United Kingdom
gasius.com
instagram.com/susannedeeken
sarahmlee.com / pippabrooks.com
Page 88-93: photos
Page 94-105: photos
Page 106-111: photos
Marlon Rueberg Hong Kong
Ren Hang Beijing, China
Bettina McIlwraith Sydney, Australia
marlonrueberg.com
renhang.org
bettinamcilwraith.com
Page 118-125: photos
Page 126: illustration
Nicole Rose Paris, France
Emily Eldridge Hong Kong
rosecolouredworld.tv
emilyeldridge.com
Page 112-117: photos
Jesus Manongdo Melbourne, Australia
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Sookoon Ang Sarah Lee Pippa Brooks Peter Sutherland BLESS john meade Cleo The Bunny Shauna T/ PAM Gasius Lorenzo Vitturi Susanne Deeken miso Mona Hatoum studio shoplifter Ren Hang hotham st. ladies