Ask The Experts: The Contemporary Non-Fussy Updo

In the November issue of IMAGE, on shelves nationwide now, leading Irish hair experts share the AW17 trends to know and the products you’ll need for great winter hair. 

“A little prepping of your hair will give you the perfect base for a contemporary upstyle. Centre partings are a great way to tone down an upstyle and waving sections in different directions will create a more contemporary, tousled look. Use very few pins, as over-use can make the look seem set. My go-to product for contemporary upstyles would be L’Oréal Tecni.ART Super Dust.” – Sharon Sheehan, AC Pure, 051 421288

“To make things easier with upstyles, you need to get lots of texture in the hair. This really helps when pinning hair up. It is a hairdresser’s best styling tool at the moment – helping to pin hair into a messy chignon.” – Paul Davey, Davey Davey, daveydavey.com

“A contemporary updo for me is a very simple ponytail with a plait or twist incorporated into it and lots of texture. You can never have enough pins when creating this kind of updo to keep it all in place without looking too stiff or over-styled.” – Paul Hession, Hession Hairdressing, hessionhairdressing.com

“Top knots are still really big. They’re a little tighter and a little higher and a little bit more slick. Jennifer Lopez, Katy Perry and Kendall Jenner have all sported this style in recent times. Ensuring they’re kept sleek and tidy is the way forward with this look, using gel-based products. Braids work perfectly for quick DIY contemporary updos. The reason why any sort of braid works well as an updo is because once it is braided, it’s so much easier to put the hair up and catch it, something a lot of people struggle with at home. Halo braids and fishtail braids all work well for this. Once you’ve secured the hair up you can manipulate it fairly easily to make it more sleek or more dishevelled.” – Christian Shannon, Manager at Brown Sugar, South William Street, brownsugar.ie.

“With contemporary upstyles, it’s all about looking done/undone so perfect your DIY waves. Pratice in front of the mirror and don’t stop until you do a style you love. YouTube tutorials are a great learning tool!” – Darren Lacken, Crow Street Collective, cscollective.ie.

“It’s all about soft, Instagram friendly undone hair. One of my favourite, easy to achieve trends is ‘space buns’. Using your InStyler MAX Rotating Barrel, loosely tong some bits though, put your hair in two high pigtails leaving plenty of tendrils out around the front. Then back combing each pigtail and twisting round into a messy textured ‘space bun’. Instagram dream!” – Katie Jane Goldin, CEO of LanaiBLO, Gold Fever, Instyler and greathairinspiration.com.

 Check out Sharon Sheehan, Paul Davey, Paul Hession, Christian Shannon, Darren Lacken and Katie Jane Goldin’s tips for autumn/winter hair trends in the November issue of IMAGE, on shelves nationwide now.