Master Stylist of the Year

Master Stylist of the Year
Brian and Sandra Smith
Matrix C.R.A.F.T. Global Academy, Dalton, GA
Photographer: Rick Day

COLLECTION: Modern Fairytales


The Inspiration:
It seemed like a natural progression for us from last year's entry. Since we used Afro-American models and shot in black and white for 2008, we thought, “Why don't we use all blondes this time?” We started playing around with hair and decided that we wanted definite shapes and textures. Next we decided that we wanted our entry to be interesting, beautiful, mysterious, captivating and flawless (without doing it with Photoshop!).

The Challenge:
We travel a lot teaching for Matrix so we don't have a lot of down time. The hardest part—after coming up with the idea—was the time for construction of the pieces. Most were made of human hair and were very precise and time-consuming. We had to keep the hair clean as we worked, even as we layered Matrix products to build strength and firmness to support the shape. We had to constantly think about shape, balance and proportion as we worked, and we always second-guessed ourselves about presenting the end results.