UNITED KINGDOM: The world's top hairdressers use their creativity to stage a hair-raising show for cancer research

It started from a personal need to deal with grief over the loss of a child, but today the Alternative Hair show has grown to one of the biggest events on the international hairdressing calendar. On Sunday (October 23), British hairdresser Tony Rizzo and sixteen salons from around the world filled London's Royal Albert Hall with a show that put together all shades and shapes of hair. The Alternative Hair Show is the brainchild of the Rizzo brothers, three hairdressers from London who wanted to raise awareness and funds for leukaemia after one of them, Tony Rizzo, lost his son to the illness. "Unfortunately we lost my first nephew, he was four years old and he died of leukaemia. And so we wanted to do something for this terrible tragedy, and we wanted to raise money for this terrible disease, for leukaemia. And that's how it started really, it was a personal thing for us," explained brother Ozzie. The Alternative Hair show has been going for 22 years and in addition to the London show, has also been staged in Chicago, USA and Bologna, Italy. Teams for the show come from all corners of the world. Participating in the 2005 show, dubbed, 'Renaissance' were salons from Austria, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Israel, Japan, Spain, UK and USA. All proceedings go to charity, the Leukaemia Research Fund. During its 22-year existence, the show has collected over five million pounds (GBP) for the charity. All the teams presenting at the Alternative Hair Show do so at their own expense. For the participants, the combination of the good cause and creative freedom, being able to 'go alternative' make the show different from the hundreds they attend during the year. "We think this is a very special event. Not just the hair, but also the fashion, not just particularly the hairdressing, but the fashion overall. And on the other hand it also helps a very justified cause, leukaemia, and logically, all that we can do for this sort of events, we, Rizo's, try to do," said Daniel Rizos from Spain. "I do it because it's obviously a great event for raising money for a good cause and obviously it's a way to express myself because this show you can do anything and actually, they encourage you to do anything, so it really is a good vehicle for creative freedom," added British hairdresser Michael Barnes. In addition to spectacular hair, the Alternative Hair Show 2005 presented audiences with the rare opportunity of seeing one of the hairdressing world's greatest icons, Vidal Sassoon on stage. For Sassoon, who himself recalled participating in the show in the 1970s, the event's original style and goal left a long-lasting impression. Speaking backstage, Sassoon commented on the stage of the hairdressing world, saying it was more artistic than ever. "I've been around the hairdressing world for 63 years, I was 14 and an apprentice in the east end of London. And from hairdressing to a hair cutting, colour, perm, art form, the whole essence of hair as we knew it when we were very young has changed. Hopefully, our team has been partly responsible for that. But the standard of work, worldwide is purely artistic. It's sculpting at it's best, I mean, we're looking at faces and we're carving shapes to go into that bone structure, this is incredibly exciting. Nobody else has that privilege, only hairdressers," he said. Sunday's show raised 220,000 pounds sterling for The Leukaemia Research Fund.

ITN Source | October 29, 2005

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