Andrew Smith of Andrew Smith Salons in the UK has just released his latest collection — Seductive. This sultry collection highlights a style Andrew has been building on throughout his career. Straying from the edgy images he used to produce, now he trusts his gut and creates shapes and colors that he is drawn to. Read on to learn more about his latest collection and how his style has grown over the years.
What was the inspiration behind this collection?
I always try to look for beauty by examining what’s in my eyesight, and I really wanted to create a collection of styles that draws attention and has an almost magnetic pull to the eye. I wanted to achieve this in a soft way and wanted the collection to have a laid back effortless beauty.
Tell us more about you as an artist and how your work has changed over the years.
I spent many years as a young hairdresser trying to be creative and push myself more towards creating unusual and almost ‘wacky’ styles - this reflected in the early collections I created. It soon became apparent that I was creating work that I thought others would like - my peers and judges for competitions but this wasn’t proving to be successful for me, so I changed direction and started to work with fashion magazines and went back to the basics of styling hair without the need of technical cutting. I absolutely loved this and it pushed my skill set to a direction that I was so much more comfortable with. I then started to create collections that pleased me and what my ‘style’ of work was more suited to which is beauty at its most simplistic, hair that any viewer would love whether they be creative/technical/classic minded but also that in which clients in my salons would appreciate.
What did you learn about yourself through creating this collection?
Most definitely to keep things simple and stick to my plan of what I had brainstormed in preparation for the shoot. Sometimes I can get distracted by what I think others may want to see which clouds my judgement on the shoot day but I’ve learnt to work by following my heart and what I love to do and create the hair I love to create.
How did you decide on color, cut and style?
I always like to compliment both aspects as opposed to producing something very risky as I feel this is my style, I love colours to be interesting but not take over the direction of attraction. Cut-wise, I feel like I want to offer something for everyone so I try to include different lengths and textures as well as a creative cut to please the technical observers whilst still ensuring it fits with my overall style of simplistic effortless beauty.
Were there any tools or techniques that were key to getting the looks?
I always love to use classic techniques when creating cuts and colours. By using classic techniques but more interesting shapes you really can create something quite seductive.
What trends do you see taking place in the next few seasons?
I see the trend of effortless beauty remaining and becoming the star attraction, I see women looking towards fashion magazines for hair inspiration rather than hair magazines and stylists creating collections with a more ‘true to life’ feel - far less edited and retouched and rawer, again like what we see in the fashion magazines. I see a ‘return of the hairdresser’ rather than the skill of the ‘post editor’ movement.
I see interesting shapes taking centre stage by using a variety of tools, colours will continue to be dominated by balayage, but I see them becoming more eye-catching whether that be with the use of tones or the amount of colour.
If you could have a superpower what would it be?
I would absolutely love to fly, I’m a daydreamer and I can’t imagine any better place to do this than amongst the clouds in the sky - the ability to really clear your mind to produce room to think creatively.
To see more of Andrew Smith's work click here!
