Tu Mano Lobis Collection by Ryuta Tomono

Tu mano lobis means “you are my treasure” in Lithuanian, and is the maximum expression of love towards another person. From these inspiring words, Ryuta Tomono creates an artistic hair collection to represent the meaning of love.

Through four different styles in the Tu Mano Lobis collection, Tomono expresses the evolution of female love, from when she falls in love for the first time up until her wedding day.

The hairdresser has been inspired by his own experiences and for the first time he has devised a collection based on these feelings, although for ‘Tu mano lobis’ he created a happy ending, different from reality. ‘First love’, ‘Eclipse’, ‘New Moon’ and ‘Across the Stars’ are the four looks that correspond to each of the stages of love.

First Love

Jean de La Bruyère said in relation to his first love: “We never love with all our heart and all our soul but once, and that is the first time. Successive incarnations are less involuntary.” These are imperfect feelings that begin to grow in the subconscious – pure, sweet and precious. This delicate movement will not be repeated. Ryuta has not been inspired by a childhood love, but by the first crush of an adult woman, since age has nothing to do with the moment first love arrives. And he does it with hair dyed in gold, with fresh orchid petals sprinkled across the front. Behind it, hundreds of delicately braided strands of hair that express the purest beauty and at the same time the feeling of danger, so fragile that they could break if touched.

Eclipse

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving”, wrote Woody Allen. The expression of love is not done only through sweetness and joy. Sometimes it is also accompanied by pain and suffering. The inner world, once brilliantly lit, darkens and fades away like an eclipse. This is the theme that Ryuta Tomono had the hardest time reflecting on, as he tried to express a whole different aspect of love. The woman experiences another facet of falling in love – the pain, as if she were waking up from a sweet dream, an eclipse that suddenly envelops the light of day in darkness. It’s something unimaginably dark, although it makes her evolve as a person.

The facade is made in an image of a stone sculpture. Retaining its coarseness, the stone’s surface creates a sense of massiveness and visual darkness. Behind the facade, her black and purple hair is boldly styled like a flame, expressing deep darkness and pain.

New Moon

This woman has learned what is the beauty of love and then the pain. Now, she finally takes another step in her life and the new moon marks a new beginning. Hence the wedding gown is pure white, a color associated with holiness and purity. Although it is a colour in which the most sophisticated techniques are blurred, Ryuta Tomono has boldly incorporated the most intricate techniques into this design. Except for the silver hair cuffs, this look is made entirely of hair. All the bases on which the hairpieces are placed are made up of more than 500 strands of braided hair. The sheets of white hair have been carefully designed down to the smallest detail and all the edges have been braided to give them stability. Nearly 300 hairpieces, in different shapes, were architecturally placed to create an organic form.

Across the Stars (Special Edition*)

The wedding day has finally arrived. Evolving from her first love, she has learned what is the beauty and the pain of love. After all, she is now determined to embark on her new journey. She now knows that her wedding is not a ‘happy ending’, but a ‘new journey’ in her life. At that moment, on that special day, she feels at the peak of her life. This look was not initially part of the collection; it was originally planned as a two-day shoot. Ryuta would re-shoot the best styles from each stage on the second day in an attempt to perfect them. However, the inspiration for ‘Across the Stars’ came to him on the day of the first shoot. So, he immediately started working on it to transform ‘First Love’ into this final design.

The base of her hair was changed to long blonde hair, and all the front petals were removed and reattached. About 50 fine braids were added, and the ‘First Love’, which was conceived as the image of purity, was reborn in one night as a magnificent wedding gown

Hair: Ryuta Tomono Hair Assistants: Kanta, Hideaki Kawai Photography and Post Production: Alan Cruz, Sohei Yanaoka (*Photographer of Special Edition) @sabfa_official MUA: ASUKA Styling: SoSky1998