Curly Hair Is An Asset

This week I had the opportunity to sit in as guest judge for both the short cut and special Nexxus Salon Look Challenge and help decide who would appear in a Nexxus advertorial in Allure magazine. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did! During the short cut, clients played musical chairs while the nine remaining stylists worked on whoever happened to land in their chairs. In the end, they had to answer for the client they began with and a few ideas seemed to get muddled along the way -- kind of like playing a game of telephone with scissors.

Dee was the clear champion on this one. I think she understood the challenge better than the others and it showed in how happy her client was. From my own experience as a stylist, I understand the importance of giving your client a look they can duplicate on her own. In fact, the real mark of a great stylist is the ability to teach the client, while she's in your chair, the step-by-step process of the style so she can do it at home. That's why the Nexxus challenge tested the stylists' teaching abilities.

Nexxus provided the products and it was up to the contestants to share the "how-tos" with their clients. The real key to winning this one was giving the client a style they loved that wouldn't take too much of a chunk out of their morning routines. Glenn, who won the challenge, had a client who'd always taken a very low maintenance approach to her hair, so Glenn gave her client a few simple tips. When you can give someone simple steps that make a vast improvement in her look, that's the best you can do for them. Well, after Glenn's success, we had to say goodbye to someone. Strangely for an educator, Meredith's biggest problem was that she had too hard of a time teaching her client.

When she was sent home, she blamed the straight-haired population for just not understanding the charm of curls. That couldn't be farther from the truth! Curly hair is an asset, but like any hair, it needs to be given a shape that works. Meredith's client's hair fell sort of getting there, without dynamic form or movement to it. The cut needed to flatter the texture of her hair and be amplified by products specifically made for curls, like Nexxus Gorgeous Curls that helps define curls and battle humidity -- a curl's worst enemy. If Meredith had known how to work with her client's curls a little better, she wouldn't have had to leave the competition. For all of you fans who think you can style your hair as well as the pros, now is your chance to prove it! Log on to Nexxus.com to enter the Nexxus Hairdo How-To contest.

Show us your best tips for achieving a salon-quality look and you could win a trip to New York City to watch the finale episode with me and the Shear Genius cast. For full details, go to Nexxus.com.