Alternative Hair Show 2015: Aurora Raises the Roof!

The majesty of the legendary Royal Albert Hall never ceases to delight visitors to London’s the most highly anticipated event of the hairdressing calendar: the Alternative Hair Show brings color, passion and emotion to a global audience enthralled by its spectacle and vision!

Many of the hairdressing teams participate each year, working tirelessly to create their 3-minute slot in the evening’s programme, at the same time as entirely financing their own shows. The on-going support that they offer to Tony Rizzo and Alternative Hair makes this event an occasion fuelled with emotion on so many different levels: “There are no words I can find to thank these wonderful hairdressers. Their support and generosity never fails to make me feel both eternally grateful and humble,” commented Tony Rizzo, Alternative Hair Founder.

Entitled “Aurora”, the show’s descriptive, proved particularly inspirational to the hair teams showing their work. In many of the hair collections, fashion-led colors in every shade imaginable, from the palest pinks and yellows, through multiple tones of blue and green, to the richest blacks, perfectly linked to the literal meaning of “aurora”. The northern latitudes also proved inspirational with aspects of dawn and dusk, glacial ice patterns and frozen landscapes woven into the themes and styling.

Now a popular part of the evening, the Alternative Hair Visionary Award, sponsored by TIGI, shows international emerging talent. The finalists of the 3 sections: Cut & Colour, Men’s Cuts and Avant-Garde, each show 1 model judged on the day by an esteemed panel of hairdressers and journalists. The spectacular effort and high-quality of the work made the judging extremely difficult. Anthony Mascolo, Alternative Hair President, who launched the Visionary Award said: “Every year the work gets better and better. The standard was phenomenal. Every single hairdresser not only showed beautiful hair, but the makeup, and styling created fantastic overall looks. I don’t know how we actually decided on winners!”

The winners of the 2015 Visionary Awards were:

Cut & Colour: Barry McDonagh
Men’s: Walter Armanno
Avant-Garde: Emanuel Esteban

For the last few years Alternative Hair has linked with AIPP to present the winners of the AIPP International Awards. Part of this Award ceremony, includes a presentation to the chosen Alternative Hair & AIPP Legend. This year the award went to Robert Lobetta, who received his award from his good friends Pat and Anthony Mascolo and Roberto Pissimiglia. Other winners were Philip Bell from Ishoka (UK), Angelo Seminara (UK), Marvin Lin of Flux Reel (Taiwan), Uros Mikic (Australia) and Carol Bruguera (Spain).

We must never forget that Alternative Hair is about raising money to support research and education and ultimately helping find a cure for blood cancers, including Leukaemia. With all monies from the Alternative Hair Show going to their own charity, Fighting Leukaemia, each year a film is played to show the audience the vital work the charity does and what it hopes to achieve. On stage was 6 year old Blue Tobin a survivor of Leukaemia, but still fighting his own battle against ill-health. He encouraged the audience to put money into the collection boxes or to text donations. Who could resist! The evening raised a fantastic £201,000 (US$ 310,000)!!!

The 2015 Alternative Hair Teams were: Saco – Babicz – Rossa Fanagher – Anne Veck – Class – Mario Krankl – Paul Stafford – Gogen – é Salon – TIGI Creative Team – Kohsuke – Alan Edwards – Robert Cromeans – Fehringer – KPO – Laszlo Hajas – Dmitry Vinokurov – Carlo Bay – Sanrizz

Photo Credits: Alex Barron-Hough