Nearly 20,000 hairstylists and beauty professionals from around the globe attended the Kao Salon Virtual Experience—the company’s first-ever digital event.
On October 18th and 19th, more than 50 hours of content (including 15 hours of brand-new “live” content) was streamed online for the hair community to enjoy from the comfort of their own homes (or salons!)
Although the event was originally scheduled to be live, Kao believes that creativity never stops. Instead of cancelling the event like many others around the world, they decided to transform it into a virtual experience with artist and product development sessions, a gala show, panels and more.
“We can be grateful for the resilience of salons around the world. We can be grateful for technology, like the technology that’s bringing us here together today; technology that allows us to gather, to learn and to inspire in all new ways,” said Cory Couts, global president of Kao Salon Division. “We can celebrate creativity—not just the creativity of our craft, but the creativity to plan, to build and to rise. The creativity to create a new future out of an uncertain present and an outdated past.”
The highlight of the two-day event was the highly anticipated gala, which opened with high-energy dance routines and featured the debut of GLANCE, the new collection by Goldwell’s global ambassador, Angelo Seminara.
The collection featured Seminara’s signature colour techniques, such as stencilling, using Goldwell’s Elumen colour range as the base for each look. From deep forest greens to warm ambers, each look is counterbalanced with cool greys and lilac tones for brilliant colour and shine. According to Seminara, he envisioned the collection to be the embodiment of flawless, boundary-pushing colour, with looks for diverse hair types and textures.
The gala also marked the world premiere of Goldwell’s 2021 hair, colour and style trend collection, Essentialism. Essentialism’s colour palette showcases on-trend shades for the coming year. Inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, the collection features muted tones and low-maintenance styles. Goldwell’s Couture Collection, Night Moves transforms the looks from Essentialism into the realm of escapism for fun, retro-inspired vibes.
While the gala’s live experience was created to be enjoyed safely and virtually, it took a lot of thought and preparation by Kao Salon Division’s global creative director, John Moroney and his team, who spent a week in Frankfurt, Germany setting up a full-sized studio to create the feeling of an event stage. It’s safe to say that their hard work paid off as the Kao Salon Virtual Experience transported “attendees” into a whole new (virtual) world that was interactive yet captured the essence of a live hair show.
Comments are closed.