Since 2009 my friends and my Love have told me to do a blog of all the funny and not so funny things that happen to me at my job. I am a straight freelance hairdresser that is based out of Manhattan NYC for the last 12 years. I have been doing hair for editorial, commercial, video, runway for fashion for 17 years. And what is everyday to me I guess is something very unordinary for others. I won’t use names of accounts or of models etc. just the story. So here is my first blog starting January 2010.
With all this cold weather we are having on the east coast this winter it reminds me of a shoot about 5 years ago. Do you remember that year that on president’s day all of NY got shut down with 3 feet of snow in one night? Well it was that winter, not an easy one and defiantly cold. Well this particular American fashion magazine had to do a re- shoot of one of their fashion story’s for the April issues in dead of February with no budget and they needed it fast to make it to print.
I guess the previous shoot the model had a drug issue that day and every shot looked like a heroine bohemian east village girl and it was supposed to be a decadent Upper East Side woman that was vacationing in the Hampton’s. So we got this rather big at the time well still is now she’s acting model to reshoot it. But this particular model came from a country were it doesn’t get lower than 50 F degrees and that is freezing to her. Well the closest beach was in the Long Island and it was about 23F but with the off shore wind felt like -2F. It crossed my mind why take the chance of having to reshoot in this weather again and not fly us to Miami just to make sure. But knowing they hadn’t planned in the budget to do so I left it as a thought and that’s all.
So besides having a very warm RV right on the beach the production had 2 gas heaters that look like a little jet engine’s pointed with the wind towards her on set on the beach. And to make things worse it was April issue we had a prototype from his runway a Robert Cavali dress (that means it hadn’t been produced yet so more than likely there was just that one or maybe one more of this particular dress). It was made out of chiffon with Cavali's signature rock and roll print. The cut of the paper thin dress had pieces of fabric that were blowing in the wind like a kit that day.
To say the least the model was not happy and not one of us blamed her. She has a lighter complexion not olive tone. And she was turning a nice light shade of purple. “No problem” the photographer said,” we can photo shop her skin town right!” Her nipples were some how pushing through like a knife, “No problem “once again the photographer said,” We can photo shop those out also”. I felt so bad for her, we all did. She kept asking production and assistant’s to put the heaters closer as to get more warmth from the flames. I turned my head towards the wind to light my cigarette and heard the stylist (Clothing Stylist) scream like some one had died. The blowing kit like pieces of fabric had gotten to close to the flame of one of the jet heaters. And had quickly set the paper thin one of a kind dress on fire. Like any normal reaction two assistant’s grabbed her and rolled the model in the sand patting her down as fast as possible. No one was hurt not even one burn on the model, thank God. Only the dress was now looking more like the Heroin Bohemian East village look that we were trying to stay away from. Like most great crews we dealt with what we had. I re-did her sandy hair; make up re-did her sandy face. Got a new dress and pulled it all together. All for fashion! LOL
