Essi­ba Small

Twen­ty-nine years ago when Mon­i­ca Headley col­lab­o­rat­ed with friends and fel­low cos­me­tol­o­gists Clem Lue Yat and An­cil Weekes to present the first Hair and Beau­ty Trade Show, it was with the goal of giv­ing hair­dressers a chance to di­a­logue with prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ers and ex­pose them to new tech­niques.

On the heels of an­oth­er edi­tion of the show, sched­uled for April 30 to May 2 at Crowne Plaza, Wright­son Road, Headley is sat­is­fied that the an­nu­al event con­tin­ues to meet and even sur­pass its ini­tial goal-nev­er mind she's been ba­si­cal­ly run­ning a one woman show all these years. "When An­cil died, God rest his soul, and Clem mi­grat­ed to the US back in the eight­ies, I made a de­ci­sion to con­tin­ue alone be­cause I felt that there was still a need for it." Headley soon found out that run­ning the trade show alone was eas­i­er said than done, with a yo-yo econ­o­my, in­de­ci­sive ex­hibitors and the like. Still she nev­er thought of throw­ing in the tow­el. Her col­leagues An­tho­ny Med­i­na and Kim Ale­ong used to tell her about the cours­es they took abroad and how much it would cost. "I thought that in­stead of hair­dressers fly­ing out to pay those kind prices I could fly the ex­perts here."

Through the con­tacts she made while teach­ing cos­me­tol­ogy in the US, Headley flew in cos­me­tol­ogy ex­perts to im­part their knowl­edge and to share their lat­est tech­niques with young stu­dents and vet­er­ans alike. In fact, the hands-on train­ing ex­pe­ri­ence from in­ter­na­tion­al styl­ists and make­up artists usu­al­ly ap­peal to the lo­cal cos­me­tol­o­gist want­i­ng to stay up to date with in­ter­na­tion­al beau­ty trends. At this year's show, mas­ter hair weaver Clem Lue Yat is ex­pect­ed to un­leash his life­time hair styling and weav­ing tech­niques to in­ter­est­ed peo­ple and will al­so be demon­strat­ing high­lights and colours. Lue Yat's ca­reer in cos­me­tol­ogy spans some 40-plus years. In­ter­na­tion­al guest W L Spencer, a hair styl­ist who has worked with the likes of Tony and Guy and Vi­dal Sas­soon, will present a two-day in­ten­sive hair boot camp that will af­ford those who sign up the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plore hair sculpt­ing and cut­ting. "When you are in this in­dus­try you have to in­vest in con­tin­u­ing your ed­u­ca­tion in the field," the 40-year cos­me­tol­ogy vet­er­an said. "This is what keeps you ahead of oth­er hair­dressers, builds con­fi­dence and ex­pands your cre­ativ­i­ty."

Spencer's rig­or­ous hands-on course will al­so cov­er du­al­i­ty of colour place­ment, bal­ayage (a French term for hair paint­ing), the DNA of high­light­ing, geom­e­try of dry hair cut­ting and the foun­da­tion of cou­ture.

There is al­so a mas­ter class for vet­er­ans on Japan­ese sculp­ture cuts which Headley said was for the "ad­vanced hair­dress­er who wants to up her game." Younger beau­ty cul­ture stu­dents, from in­sti­tu­tions like YTEPP and Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps, will be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete for a chal­lenge tro­phy and oth­er prizes in Up­sweep and Fan­ta­sy style and make­up us­ing the theme Cou­ture-High Fash­ion. Headley her­self was a young and fresh 22-year-old when she left T&T to pur­sue lan­guages at Queen's Col­lege in New York and end­ed up at the Wil­fred Acad­e­my pur­su­ing cos­me­tol­ogy af­ter grad­u­at­ing. She al­so worked for Sum­mit Labs In­di­anapo­lis, and John­son Prod­uct Com­pa­ny, Chica­go Illi­nois, where her job re­quired vis­its to vo­ca­tion­al and pri­vate schools to train young beau­ty cul­ture stu­dents for the New York State board and chem­i­cal re­lax­ing and to ed­u­cate them on the us­age of chem­i­cals. She left John­son's in 1980 as a dis­trict and re­gion­al man­ag­er.

A year shy of the 30th an­niver­sary of the T&T Hair and Beau­ty Trade Show, Headley said she was hap­py to fi­nal­ly be able to launch an An­nu­al Mas­ters Clas­sic awards to ho­n­our lo­cal cos­me­tol­o­gists. Sa­lon own­er Kim Ale­ong, 84, (Life­time award), An­tho­ny Med­i­na (cos­me­tol­o­gist mas­ter clas­sic award) and (make-up artistry award) Yvonne Pop­plewell have been cho­sen as the first set of award re­cip­i­ents for their ded­i­ca­tion to cos­me­tol­ogy. "They have up­lift­ed the stan­dard of cos­me­tol­ogy in this coun­try and should be recog­nised for that." Oth­er high­lights of this year's show in­clude Botox con­sul­ta­tion, a pre­sen­ta­tion by LifeStyle So­lu­tions and 37 booths fea­tur­ing the lat­est prod­ucts and tools for the hair and beau­ty busi­ness.