Cutting edges

Paul Eastin is the editorial director for Paris Parker in Baton Rouge, and this month he will serve as lead stylist for 17 runway shows during NOLA Fashion Week. Last year he worked with top talent at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York City. When he returned, 225 asked him to share what he learned.

The future is now. I witnessed it recently as a stylist for New York’s Fashion Week. Digital printing, forward-leaning color blocking, bold shapes and progressive cuts and lines of clothing were all on display as I worked with innovators Frank Rizzieri and Kevin Ryan for the Richard Chai runway show at Lincoln Center.

Rizzieri has won the Global Salon Business Award and been named North American Hair Stylist of the Year—two of the most prestigious honors a hair stylist can earn. Kevin Ryan has worked the New York fashion runways for more than two decades, styling the hair of supermodels—real ones who earned the title. The ones who can go by their first names only: Naomi, Kate, Giselle.

Ryan and Rizzieri make a dynamic team.

Their styling for hair was smooth and straight, which is much different from the approach I have been pushing with my work in Baton Rouge. I came back inspired to work with cleaner lines and more modern shaping—something more relevant to the fast-paced, cutting-edge lifestyle many of us now lead.

Typically, the South is reluctant to take the lead down a cutting-edge road. We have a softer approach to hair. I plan to negotiate this.

It was so interesting to me how Ryan would set the tone for a show with very modern hair while avoiding the most obvious looks that are often repeated ad nauseam in salons and magazine spreads.

“It’s not about trends,” I remember him telling me. “We do something different every time.”