Client
Kao Salon Division
Services
Hair colouring, cutting and styling, Makeup artistry
Year
2025
I’m honoured to be chosen as a finalist for the Kao Global Creative Awards 2025 in the New Talent Colourist category.
My entry is inspired by the interconnected nature of our environment, and how the natural world creates beauty and art in the most unlikely places. My main reference for the design is mycelium – a part of mushrooms that function as an underground network to spread fungus and begins the vital process of decomposition. It can be microscopically small, or stretch underneath an entire forest. It makes the most beautiful patterns as it grows, but because it’s found underground and on rotting things, we hardly realize it exists. I think there’s something magical to it, and we have a lot to learn from fungi about finding beauty in the darkest parts of ourselves. To illustrate this idea further, I used colours that aren’t conventionally “pleasing” to the eye – bright neon green, muddy beiges and earthy, matte browns. The hand-painted pattern might be what draws the attention first, but the “plain” brown is actually made up of intricate layers of gradients designed to create a shifting optical illusion. This wouldn’t be possible without Goldwell’s Pure Pigments – I used the Gold, Ash Blue and Matte Green colours to play with the light and represent the unique layers of soil that feed our earth.
Model: Tayla Botha
Makeup and Hair: Caro Botha
Photography: CRM Photography
