Two talented Kiwi hair stylists have taken home top honours at the recent Goldwell Colour Zoom Challenge 2011.

The ‘New Talent Colourist’ award was won by 29 year old Lincoln Nguyen, a PHd stylist at Schnips PHd Manukau Salon in South Auckland.

Lincoln describes his style as a natural ‘girl next door’ look.

“I wanted to create a simple playful style which is elegant and feminine, emphasising strength through colour.  I used bold reds contrasted with a dark base colour, and created a relaxed, casual appeal through the use of a colouring technique called balayage,” he says.

Balayage is all the rage in Hollywood at the moment, and creates a ‘grown-out’ regrowth look.  It complements the long soft layers Lincoln styled on his model, Sonya Morrogh (above).

Lincoln and Sonya will be winging their way to Miami next month to compete against other stylists for an international grand prize – the chance to help design the Goldwell Colour Zoom 2012 Collection, and contribute to defining future international hair trends.

The ‘Peoples Choice Award’ was taken home by Lynette John, Artistic Director at Schnips PHd.

For Lynette the competition was a chance to feed her passion for the challenge of photographic competitions.

“They push you to open up your skills to a new level and range of creativity, creating looks that are a lot more edgy and dramatic than your average street-style" she said.

"With ‘Play Strong’ (this years theme) it was a real challenge to combine the two ideas of ‘play’ and ‘strong’ into a hair style without the one fighting the other; the ideas of soft, fun, and light-hearted, contrasting to notions of powerful, passionate and courageous.”

Lynette answered this challenge with a strong haircut that is playful in its colour tones and versatility. 

The heavy fringe makes a strong statement, can be styled soft with curls or waves, and worn on both sides. 

This contrasts too much softer shorter layers around the rest of the head.  And her colour inspiration came from her beautiful model, Chantell Rogers.
 
“Chantell is an open, bubbly person, so I used colours that reflect that type of personality; a peachy base with blonde highlights.  There were a broad range of colours and I wanted to play with ones that I don’t usually use in the salon.  The highlights were done with an ash blonde and honey blonde, plus a toner to cool them down,” says Lynette.

The Colour Zoom Challenge 2011 gave stylists from all over New Zealand the opportunity to take their style global. There were two categories to the competition, enabling both experienced and newer stylists to compete.  Not just a straight colouring and styling competition, entrants were required to combine hair styling, colouring, model outfit and makeup skills, as well as photographic direction.