29 March 2024

NAHA 25 Years: Matthew Morris, first to win Men’s Hairstylist of the Year!

Matthew Morris, a Colorado native, began his career as a make up artist. With high demand for his celebrated work, it was only natural for Matthew to make the transition into hair styling.

With a background in sculpture and design, Matthew found his favorite medium in beauty. Known for being a quick-change artist, Matthew has the ability to morph clients and models into endless looks with ease.

NAHA is celebrating 25 spectacular years this Summer, and we sat down with Matthew Morris, a seasoned veteran of the NAHA Awards. He was the winner of the first Men’s Hairstylist of the Year award (2013) and winner of Editorial Hairstylist of the Year (2005). “It was a proud moment to win the first ever award for Men’s Hairstylist of the Year. We had just launched our Mens Dept in the salon that we consider the new home to men in Denver bringing them affordability, convenience, and luxury men need. I did this shoot as a creative project for that and the work turned out so great, everyone encouraged me to submit it. I’m glad I did. Being the first to win an award make it that much more memorable and meaningful. Winning the inaugural award is special because no one else will ever win it!” Matthew commented on his Men’s Hairstylist of the Year award he received last year.

His 2005 collection won him the title of Editorial Stylist of the Year, what was his inspiration? Well, Matthew was hired to do a story on jewelry and each piece was quite unique. For the more earthy pieces, he did very natural, lived-in hair and gritty makeup. For the more polished pieces, the hair was bigger and made more of a statement. Each piece had a corresponding hairstyle that was unique to the jewelry, so he was able to spread his styling wings and show a variety of styles.

He decided to enter his collection in NAHA because “my stylists and photographer encouraged me to enter. We were very proud of the work and once I saw this new award on the entry form, I knew I had to enter. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to win, being a finalist for three categories was huge!”

NAHA has definitely changed over the years, Matthew’s opinion? It was becoming the photoshop awards, and was it was becoming unrealistic. I was so happy to see them tighten the rules on retouching! I’d like to see how they could get rid of retouching altogether to show what stylists are truly capable of doing.”

L’Erin Stortz and Matthew Morris would love to see videography added to NAHA. Capturing the whole process of creating the looks and photos for NAHA entries, put in to a creative video, really captures the whole editorial side, experience, details, and time. “We do a lot of videos that take 3 days worth of work in to a 3-5 minute video that we use for marketing materials a lot, and they always blow people away and really show how much goes in to it.

Don’t miss NAHA 25th Annivesary! Check it out: probeauty.org/naha

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