28 March 2024

Charlie Price takes the Beauty Underground from NYFW to London!

Charlie Price and The Beauty Underground have been populating the backstage of the main trendsetting fashion shows for YEARS! Through his international exposure, they have worked with some of the most notorious designers and one of their many specialties is educating hairdressers on making it behind the secret curtains of the catwalk!

As fame celebrity hairstylists, Charlie Price and The Beauty Underground are hitting the road to two of the most influential events in both consumer fashion and professional hairdressing inspiration in only a matter of weeks!

First they are hitting up NYFW, with an insane array of shows, and then they are headed to a rather different event, London’s 35th Alternative Hair Show!

AHS is a fabulous global affair that stood the test of time as the premiere hair show of the industry, and this year is a special one, with the Utopia theme, is going to be a spectacular encounter staged at the legendary Royal Albert Hall on Sunday, October 15th 2017! The Alternative Hair Show is where the top talent in the world of hairdressing can stand on a stage for a sensation of creativity, vision and most of all, comradery for a very important cause: Fighting Leukemia. This year American hair icon Charlie Price & The Beauty Underground Team is headlining the event as one of two American teams in this very international event along Paul Mitchell’s Robert Cromeans.

Tell us a bit about the organization required to orchestrate a successful NYFW from your perspective?
I have been creating runway hair in NY since 1998 – where I trained under runway masters such as Guido Palau, Serge Normant and Eugene Souleiman. I was hooked and vowed to begin leading my own shows which I did a short time later on the Peter Som show while I continued assisting A-list editorial superstars. To create hair looks directly with the designer is a truly special kind of collaboration –not to mention working right alongside mega-watt makeup artists such as Kabuki, Gucci Westman and Bobbi Brown– as well as talented beauty industry friends like Janell Geason of Aveda or various superstars from the MAC team – who we are paired with with regularly. Sharing these looks with eager hairstylists brand new to fashion week takes the whole thing up yet another notch!
The Beauty Underground will be leading shows once again at NY Fashion Week September 7-15, 2017. My colleagues and Beauty Underground co-founders Shareena Hansen, Katie Renshaw Nielsen and I knew, with our deep and varied experience, we could help other hairstylists break into runway hair – show them the ropes and make the whole experience easier and even more fun than it was for us in the beginning – all the while filling our backstage beauty teams with new blood! Our program has worked like a charm – we continue to sell out each season. At NY Fashion Week we will have a team of 30 artists who join us each season from all around the USA and occasionally even Canada and the UK!

Which designers will you be working with this year? Anything you are particularly excited about?
We are working with three designers once again this season that we have developed relationships with:
Namilia, a very Avant Garde German duo who are dressing many celebrities and music stars – they are very political, intelligent and have a seriously twisted point of view that we love!
John Paul Ataker, a Turkish designer who specializes in gorgeous exotic evening gowns – the exact opposite of Namilia. The company always does a spectacular show which this season will feature 50 models.
Francesca Liberatore, an Italian designer who hails from the famed Central Saint Martin’s School in London which produced Alexander McQueen and John Galliano among many other designers. Her creations are at once the epitome of something a sexy Italian woman would do and worthy of a free thinking, forward minded fashion intellectual.
Some of the designers we have led shows in the past for include: Jeremy Scott, Peter Som, Jason Wu, Imitation of Christ, Matthew Williamson, Cynthia Rowley, Costello Tagliapietra, Georgine, Catherine Malandrino, Zero by Maria Cornejo, Vivienne Westwood, Diane Von Furstenberg, Tadashi Shohji, Peggy Jennings, St John, Charlotte Ronson, Jennifer Nicholson, Jay Godfrey, Katty Xiomara, Miguel Vieira and Benjamin Cho, among others.

What can you share with us about the trends you have prepared with the designers for the coming season?
We will meet days before each show to formulate the perfect beauty look for each show – alongside the designer, fashion stylist, makeup artist and PR company.

Now, a month after NYFW, you will find yourself shifting stages for a new audience in London’s Alternative Hair how. This is your first show there, can you tell us a bit about what you are preparing?
I had been a part of Alternative Hair Show about 15 years ago when there was one each year here in Chicago – it is always such an epicenter for creativity and a meeting of the minds for many highly influential international hairstylists. The Beauty Underground and I are extremely excited to finally land a spot in the London show!
We are constructing a segment that will be based on our favored icy palette – and will employ a unique way of showing multiple looks on only four models –we love the work of Avant Garde fashion designers such as Iris Van Herpen and Rei Kawakubo– and while we would never copy these geniuses, they are always present in our consciousness as we create. There will also be elements from Japanese sci-fi involved such as ‘Ghost In The Shell’ as well as in your face makeup inspired by Bjork and the signer Brooke Candy.

How does this differ from your experience in NYFW, what changes in your approach for the looks you chose?
The difference is Night and Day – at NYFW we are there to pluck hair and makeup ideas from a fashion designer’s psyche and then bring them to life in perfect harmony with the clothes – at Alternative we are free to divine looks that reflect our Beauty Underground esthetic and imagination while stimulating other endless creative considerations. Both are incredibly therapeutic and rewarding prospects however!

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