Guest blog post by Tiffany Jasmine, TUBC student at our Glendale Heights Campus.
Curling irons, bobby pins, hairspray. Every station is occupied. Every individual is accompanied by a reflection. Tricoci University’s finest stylists of tomorrow are today working together and competing against one another in one of the schools fun creative demos. These events are free admission to friends, family, and prospective students. They are a great way to demonstrate and get to know our school’s program. We open the doors to the public with friendly warm hospitality, and even offer free refreshments, free goodie bags, and free raffles for awesome prizes. Guests sit back and get to see all the exciting visions of students’ beauty imagination and vote for their favorite look from each category.
Our initiative was for students to separate in four groups of five to create a look that a person would create to go in for a certain interview. The four groups being interviewed were news reporter, reality tv star, broadway, and high-end salon stylist. Students ranging from beginners to seniors all worked hard to achieve the look they thought was best.
I took the challenge as a stylist. As a stylist it was my responsibility to perform proper protocol on my model, Ashley Segovia, 19, a full-time cosmetology student. I gave her what I believed would be the best look to land her an interview for a position for a high-end salon stylist. Her responsibility as my model was to be cooperative and optimistic to lend a hand to my ideas in achieving her all over look.
We were given our category a few days prior to the show and I had given it a lot of thought. I even visited a few high-end salons to jog my creative juices and stimulate my imagination. My vision of a high end salon stylist was someone who was clean, professional, but also edgy, and bold. Someone not afraid to take risks but also knew what they were doing. They had to be very fashionable, with clothing that seemed high-end fashion, someone who kept up with what was “in” for her guests. In my mind the beauty industry is a part of the fashion extravaganza. It only makes sense that all the pieces to the look’s puzzle should go together hand in hand complementing each other in the look’s statement. That is the overall goal in achieving a look; to make a statement. I wanted my statement to say, “hey, look at me, I work hard to keep myself looking good to ensure my guests that I will make them look good as well. My look fits my environment because I’m only working with the high end of fashion and beauty culture”.
To achieve such a statement, I broke up my model’s look in three categories; makeup, outfit, and hair. I wanted her makeup to be fierce, beautiful, clean. I went with a dark smokey eye to compliment her beautiful eyes. I hint of blush colored up her smile a bit. And just a nude like pink gloss glaze hugged her lips. Her smile would pull it all together. For her outfit, I had her wear something that very fashionable people these days wore. I didn’t want her to be representing a high-end salon with pants and a shirt from Walmart. I dressed her with an edgy looking leather zipper cropped jacket over a white tee. Her legs danced down the runway in black cheetah legging and black and white stripped shorts. Her feet were protected with some leather thigh-high boots to match the jacket. The professionalism was kept in the crisp clean black and white clothes while she also looked like she hopped out of a fashion magazine. She looked great. I told her to make sure her attitude better walk with her on the runway. I wanted her attitude to say, “hey, you with the hair! Let’s do this. I’m gonna make you look fabulous!” For her hair was like a chandelier in the house of glass, the main piece. I styled a half up half down updo Mohawk. Pinned the hair on her sides back to compliment her cheek bones. Then I curled all the hair in the middle from the crown down to the nape to hang low below her shoulders with innocent bouncy curls. Her overall look was clean, fierce, edgy, bold, professional, and fashionable. She was ready for any job thrown at her and would look good doing it!
The other stylists models and I worked hard for a good hour and a half. The amazing school’s coordinator provided free pizza for us to stock up on energy while working hard. When we were all set and done we lined up in our categories and awaited our turn to present. Our category was last. We were competing with 4 other teams. We each took turns getting up on stage to give them a look at our model and had our model walk up and down the runway while stylists explained their look. We did not win this round but we were the only ones in the group who were not dressed like everyone else. We got props for creativity and uniqueness. Overall it was a fun night and gave students an experience of working in a salon in the future. We didn’t win the competition but we did win some fun memories and accomplished our mission.
I would advise anyone and everyone who is ever invited to a creative demo to go and experience it yourself. Whether you’re into getting to know the program to see if it is for you or if you just like to see all the great creative looks, Tricoci University’s creative demo events are definitely the place to be!