Being in the industry for more than 20 years, Erin Fernandes continues to push her creative boundaries.
Co-owner of London-based ED Hair & Tattoo, Fernandes has entered the Contessas since 2005 and says she tends to take a more old-school approach to planning her photo shoots. “I still remember those little photo slides and tend to do a lot of magazine purchasing and Internet searches for inspiration,” she says. “I ended up taking photos and screenshots to use for my mood board.”
For her 2019 Canadian Colourist collection, Fernandes worked with direct dyes opting for a muted pastel palette. The fact that muted pastels are a big hair colour trend for 2019? She says that’s purely coincidental. “I’ve worked with a lot of bright, out-there colours in the past and I wanted to push myself into a different direction,” she says. “Honestly, I think because of the age bracket that I’m in, I just do what I love and what I’m attracted to.”
Fernandes decided on yellow as her anchor colour approximately six months before her shoot date, and combined reds and purples with oranges, yellows, pinks and greys. But choosing her colour combos was no easy feat. “I took collections of hair and coloured them all with every colour I purchased. I prefer to mix colours until I’m happy with the results,” she says. “Then I group [the hair] together and keep them together for a month, intermittently going back to it, re-evaluating how it looks and seeing if it’s still pleasing to me.”
“Shooting for colour is different than anything else,” she adds. “You really want the colour to be shiny and reflective, and obviously be the first thing you see since that’s the heart of the colour collection.”
One risk she decided to take was with the black- and-white geometric-patterned backgrounds, in which she credits her photographer, Natasha Gerschon, for executing. “In the past, I’ve tried choosing things that would get me in [as a finalist.] But this time, I wanted to do it for me. I wanted to let all the rules and structure go away, as far as the background, because I really loved its juxtaposition,” she says. “It draws you in, it’s unexpected, and after sending Natasha a couple of images [I was inspired by], I developed a vision and wanted to have fun and take a risk.”
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