Cut and Colour
“My specialty is precision hair cutting and natural looking colour, hence, cut and colour. Precision doesn’t mean position on the perimeter – it did mean that in the sixties – like the 5 point haircuts and bobs when Vidal Sassoon invented boldly designed hair. Today, precision is on the inside. I do a lot of dancers and when they fly through the air, their hair ends up in some amazing shapes that are geometric and very precise. When the hair falls into its natural state, it looks very unfinished.
So I achieve these looks by doing very precise Sassoon method of cutting angles, concave, convex, whatever…very precise angles all done with scissors and comb. After that, I put texture in with all the stuff I learned before Sassoon. Razors against the hair shaft, with the hair shaft and texturizing shears.
Then, I undo my precision but it always shows when the hair starts to move. A precision hair cut means you can literally wash and wear your hair for 6-8 weeks or longer. I don’t do shampoos, sets and perms; I don’t even do brushings. If I cannot take my hand and blow dry and fluff the hair, and it doesn’t look good, then it’s not a good, precise haircut.
To me, natural looking colour means a color that exists in nature.
For example, if my client has grey hair, first I find out what her natural colour is by looking at her eyebrows, then I use that very colour in a natural tone, using a semi-permanent colour. On top of that, I apply some foils using bleach to create some bursts of light. Using these colours will guarantee that about 10% of the gray hair is left.
This method looks natural and turns the clock back 5 to 10 years.
That doesn’t mean I don’t do crazy colours, but my specialty is natural looking hair colours.
You’re a skilled and talented hair stylist, and you’re looking to grow your income and skills.
Learn how your career can benefit from the Claude Bigler Method.
Claude is a successful Vidal Sassoon-trained stylist with over 50 years of experience. His specialties are precise haircutting and highlighting natural hair color. He has styled some of the top Hollywood stars and celebrities in the Swiss Alps of Gstaad.
Asian hair often is difficult to cut short, due to its difficult hairlines. Often the hair sticks straight out around the ears and the nape of the neck. One way to overcome that is by cutting those areas extremely short with scissor and comb. I hardly ever use a clipper. The art of hair cutting is done by human hand, scissor and comb, not a machine, much like Japanese wood working.
What do I do when my clients are tired of their blond highlight and the maintenance that goes along with it? One way to deal with this is going back to their natural hair colour with permanent colour, leaving out some bleached parts and going over it with a semi-permanent colour. In this case, I used red.
Although I specialize in natural looking hair colours, I do have fun with my teenage clientele. I very much like fun colours that we call crazy colours, in particular with that age group. But I do insist on elegance. After all, in my world of hair design, elegance is the symbol of simplicity.
At times I am asked to create a look with scissors that resembles an up-hairdo; that works particularly well with curly hair. A good hair stylist must be comfortable in cutting straight and curly, fine and thick hair. It is not hard to make a beautiful woman look good, but for me, it is far more satisfying to put a smile on the face of a client that gave up on herself and lost her confidence.
I like nothing more than: a) to be given a totally free hand and b) cutting very long hair to very short. After decades of doing hair, I never tire of that.
Colour corrections often are very time consuming and expensive. By the time I see a client that wishes to correct the colour, her hair is in chemical shock and has to be reconstructed before corrected.
