Tress chic – Manila Bulletin

Berni Ottjes and Francis Libiran collab for FrenchBrowns launch

By Kaye Estoista-Koo

Did you know that Europeans don’t like it straight or “clean-looking?” Berni Ottjes, Dutch artistic director of L’Oreal Professionnel is setting the record straight on hair at the grand hair show featuring the trendiest color of 2016, FrenchBrowns by Majirel. Berni’s live demo hair cuts and styles were partnered by Francis Libiran’s 12-piece fashion ensemble.

He remarks, “The structure of the girls here is totally different from the girls we have in Europe, but it’s nice to play with structure like that. It’s not always about the beautiful flat hair, I heard here the women would kill for straight hair but in Europe, a lot of younger girls are coming out with more structure, the more beachy way of wearing their hair. I think it’s more feminine, more fun, it’s more how they should wear the hair, it’s not about doing the hair perfectly.”

With that aesthetic in mind, Berni set out to create stylish yet wearable looks with the FrenchBrowns as color and Libiran’s collection as the canvas. The new FrenchBrowns has 10 distinct hues. He shares, “I really loved it! My goal was to give the audience something different, not that clean hair but a little bit more rough, streetwear but elegant, avant-garde and with sexiness.”

Francis was very happy with how his latest collection came to life with Berni’s hairstyles: “It gave us a different style, we’re used to straight hair but Berni showed us the different variations and it complemented my collection as well.”

Berni, a regular fixture backstage at international catwalks as well as fashion ads and shoots across the world, created chic and effortless looks for the launch. The French Girl hair is all about natural looking hair that is subtle yet elegant and looks consistently polished. At the launch, Berni demonstrated three ways to cut and style FrenchBrowns paired with Libiran’s designs, explaining that “my passion is color and I like to play with texture, color, and it still has to be feminine and sexy.”

STREETWEAR SEXY 

For the first segment, Berni came up with looks that highlight real, wearable hair for the ultimate French Belle. Because he was cutting his model’s hair quite short, he gave a quick tip: “With this kind of color, you have to be sure of what kind of cut you want to do. Get rid of all the heaviness around the cheeks, around the triangle of the ear, so it will give you a softer look. Keep your lines very soft and make it a little bit more round. I think it’s very important that we are using simple techniques that you can use in the salon so all my shows and demos are ready-to-wear.”

He gave his model a French trendy bob that, he explains, “is a little bit edgy, a little bit classic, a little bit in-between, sexy but with edginess. I’m getting rid of all the fringe and she will look more like a Paris model.”

For any cut or color, Berni says to remember that each woman has an accent on four points that can be used. “If you leave one point more open, it makes that section more visible. The important placements are the temples of the forehead, the eyes, the cheeks, and the chin.”

To achieve an elegant yet commercial streetwear sexy look, Berni concludes: “A woman should be able to style by herself the cut you give them.”

After the show, Francis exclaimed, “I really love the first model Berni cut and styled, such a big transformation, she’s like a new person! The wearable streetwear looks give you a very interesting something to look at.”

EVENING UPDO

In order to show off the different layers the FrenchBrowns created with the model’s hair, Berni styled the second model with an updo. He stressed the value of natural movement here, making it look very soft and lighter on the ends, but still healthy.

Berni shares his tip for this look: “I’ll give her a funky  restyle. Don’t make it too neat, not too big and very loose, make it rough. Fingerwork and proper back-combing are important prep-work here.”

Berni relates that in Europe, most of the girls in the salon want to do the updo, “but they want it to look as if they did it by themselves, that’s the most natural way of doing an updo. For a hairdresser it’s not always easy but with the right combing and leaving the ends very clear, you can do it with just some volume and shape up with a few pins.”

He reveals this trend will continue into next year—“My motto is to have the hair more natural in fashion week, more rough, those are the new hits going into next year, we will see collections in Paris where you see a little bit of roughness and it looks simple but there is texture just like this.”

Berni remarks at his styled model: “Most of the time, when you do a perfect updo, it looks nicer when it’s more rough. It’s elegant but still sexy.”

AVANT-GARDE FASHION WEEK READY

The third model Berni styled on-stage was wearing a design, which Libiran, who is also an architect, said was inspired by the gates of a castle.

Berni explains that to wear this look for any fashion week:

“I like to play with structure, which gives you a different way of looking at color. Since this is now waved hair, the ends will be lighter. The small and big placement of the curls make the structure different when you brush it out.”

At shoots he does in the US, Berni adds, “I keep it very soft but very rough on the ends but always elegant, I always try to give the hair a feminine touch. When you’re talking about fashion, about shades, I think it’s very important that the shape makes the woman.”

Berni loved this last style best, “I like the avant-garde because I like to play with texture and I like to play with gel. I make it a little bigger when I saw the shape of the clothes and I felt like expanding the texture of the hair because it would flow out in the clothes and I think it makes it much stronger.”

During fashion week anywhere, Berni admits that all the designers “want to have the hair like a pony tail, very natural with the makeup but when it’s more avant-garde, with structure like this, it makes the collection stronger, there’s balance in the clothes and the look and makeup.”

FRENCHBROWNS: A CLASSIC

Berni remarked on how the new color collection of FrenchBrowns will fare. “I think it will be a classic, it has reached a lot of women around the world. In Europe, we already see that the people are hungry to go back to a more natural look. I think it’s already a big hit in Asia, all the women are already dark, so if they are going two or three levels lighter, it’s already a European color and it makes the face softer and it suits a lot of women here.”

FrenchBrowns is all about bringing that inexplainable yet effortlessly elegant French Girl hair to life through 10 different hues, bluntly chopped hair, and styled in a messy tousle.

One last reminder: “Hair completes the look of the woman, whatever she’s wearing, it should complement the hair. We saw how it looks very relaxed and easy to manage. We have all these different innovations when it comes to hairstyle.”

from Hairstylez http://cityhairstyle.xyz/tress-chic-manila-bulletin/