HSOTY
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Victory LAP
Winner of Twincare International’s Hairstylist of the Year (HSOTY) Award, RAEESA DAWOOD, tells Salon International how she went about creating her triumphant looks.
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his was my first HSOTY. By participating in awards events within your industry, you show your clients and your colleagues that you are passionate and committed to your career. It’s about stepping outside the box and getting your brand out into the market. One should immerse oneself in the industry, as each hairstylist has something valuable to showcase and share.
‘Silk Road’ HSOTY was the first competition I’d entered as a solo stylist since opening my own salon in 2019. Twincare gave us criteria to enter models and to showcase our own capsule of hair. Given my own roots and passion for Middle Eastern and Indian women’s hair, I thought that the ‘Silk Road’ theme would capture my skillset best, especially with regard to the texture of the hair and the techniques used. Arab and Indian women have seen their hair as a symbol of beauty for centuries. They focus so much on
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The hairstyles the quality and texture of their hair. And this is what I wanted to bring to the show. Creating looks for me is far more than styling or colouring hair that becomes something to gaze at and then move on. To me, hair is a living work of art that should inspire beauty every day. When I decided on the Silk Road theme, I thought of women across the Arab and Indian peninsula, with hair like silk, traditional beauty and natural movement capturing the very essence of the hair styles I wanted to create.
It took me between three to four hours to create the looks for each model. For all the hairstyles, I washed their hair and used a Biosense leave-in treatment, as well as L’Oréal Mythic Oil to create the shine and sleek texture the ‘Silk Road’ theme was meant to capture. While colours are an important part of the show, I believe that hair texture is just as important and this is why I always focus on texture and colour as a combined effort on any hairstyle I create in my salon.
