Bedhead you can wear to work

Walk of shame hair was all over the Fall/Winter 2010 runways from Rag & Bone, where hair was matted down up top and scraggly at the bottom to Alexander Wang, where models sported the sort of oily comb-over that’s barely even acceptable at the beach. This 90s-inspired look might look great on the runway, but can morning-after hair actually be acceptable in real life? Gio Smaldino, art director at Toni & Guy salon in downtown Vancouver thinks so. Here we talk to Smaldino about the trend and how to best achieve the bedhead look at home.

Q: What’s your impression of 90s grunge bedhead?
A: Well, it’s so easy to do. It just takes some arranging but mostly people have the right texture already. Not many people have perfectly straight hair.

Q: Beyond just getting up with greasy hair and walking out the door, how would you get the look at home without looking like a hot mess?
A: First you’ll need a diffuser, which allows you to heat up your hair and create its natural texture. If you’re blowing your hair with a blowdryer your hair will kind of blow apart and go frizzy and fuzzy, but if you’re using a diffuser, which attaches to your blowdryer (you can get generic ones that fit to any blowdryer), then what you’re doing is adding heat to the hair so it dries more naturally and you get more of a wave with a soft natural look to it. If you want to get it to look more street-wise you’d go in on the root and put in a bit of hairspray and tease the root a little bit, just to give it that dense look at the crown and give you a bit of fullness. And then you finish it off by putting some oil on the ends so it doesn’t look frayed, but loose, soft and lived in.

Q: What sorts of products are necessary to achieve the look?
A: A dry shampoo works well for this look. It will absorb your own natural oils so you don’t have to shampoo for a day, if your hair is limp it will give you a lot of body, and it also gives you that feeling of having a little bit of grit in your hair, which is perfect for this sort of style. Dry shampoo can take away a bit of the sheen in your hair but you can put a bit back into the ends with a silicone-based cuticle-sealing product like TIGI’s Rock Out Shine Blaster.

Q: Is bedhead something you could take from day to night? Is it a look you could wear to the office?
A: I think the bedhead is a lifestyle: If you’re going to be wearing it to work, you’re going to be living it and you’re going to be wearing an even more dramatic version at night --you’ll just need to pump it up a bit and give it that extra little bit of edge.