A Braid Bar in WeHo ?! Gittt out … Why is this so hard? The service takes 15 minutes, costs $25 ($40 with shampoo) and there are a million different braids to pick from. Our friends at BMF Media, Domain and LFB Media Group banned together to bring celebs, influencers and press to the Wella Beauty Bar pop up lounge at NINE | ZERO | ONE salon — a permanent salon located in a castle-esque building off Santa Monica Blvd in what was once a library in L.A.’s early days.

The braid bar is a permanent amenity at the salon, but temporary sponsors also came in for the two day event such as Fake Bake tanning, shelves full of Schick Quattro for Women and Bio-Oil (known to prevent scarring if you apply the cream at the time of the scratch), a photo booth, UV Vodka (and UV Vodka cupcakes) and catering from the Little Door Next Door. We also noticed a major sponsor was the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau which is kind of amazing, no? We just heard they are sponsoring some things in Sundance as well which begins this Thursday, January 19th. Another sponsor of note was Teleflora, owned by Lynda & Stewart Resnick, who built the new wing at LACMA last year — aptly named the Resnick Pavillion. (They also literally have an orchard at their Sunset Blvd home in Beverly Hills (specifically a pomegranate orchard which is semi in relation to their other company POM which makes pomegranate juice — we put a picture of their house down below)).

#TruffleNotes: Wella was started as a wigs and hairpiece company in the late 1800s but by the time the 1900s rolled around, wigs were no longer in fashion so they started trying to invent ways to permanently add waves to hair and thus created the ‘perm’ — see a pic of their first perming machine down below! 

old country library historic building

Braid bar!

Gift Bags!!

swag corner at DT headquarters

self tanning

if you click on this picture you can see the writing on the bottles bigger

gets rid of scares!!

Wella!

The world's first perm machine -- from Wella

Orchards can by seen from this aerial view of the Resnick home

This is like old news in Italy, but for us Rossano Ferretti is the latest Beverly Hills salon. And the newest Italian addition to Canon Drive, largely known for it’s Italian stores and restaurants — the Drago brothers opened Enoteca Drago, Via Alloro and Il Pastaio … Jean Leon, Wolfgang Puck and Peter Garland opened Italian ristorantes La Scala, Spago and Porto Via, and let’s not forget Il Trammezzino, Mulberry Pizza and  Caffe Roma (which has some serious BH roots we’ll get into another time). Making the street even more Italian is the  longstanding Italian leather maker Puruti, who is very in the know … For many years fellow hairdressers and Italian compatriots Umberto and Giuseppe Franco in Le Grande Passage ruled Canon Drive’s beauty business. Now the street has made some room for Rossano Ferretti’s new team and philosophy …

Many will understand this when I say and some who travel more will already know – but Los Angeles is what is consider to be a ‘color town’. This is sort of our worst nightmare at the Truffle as we are always bringing out the best in L.A. and trying desperately to compartmentalized the worst but it is no shock to anyone, I am sure, that we are actually known as a ‘color town’. The alternative is to be a ‘cut town’, meaning the cut, shape and style is the focus. Because LA is very color happy — those entering into the beauty world get lots of training in color, color, color. In Italy on the other hand, it’s all about the cut. Rossano actually told me that he had to import all his cutters where as finding top colorists locally was a snap.

#TruffleNotes: Another interesting reason most salons hire locally — each city has it’s own idea of what “blonde” is … all over the US there is a great difference between a NYC blond, a Miami blond, a Texas blond or a LA blond (the last being the blondest) … so hiring a NY colorist to do blond in LA could wind up in disaster.

Rossano’s goal is to help make every town – even LA – a cut town. Rossano has about 30 locations in Italy and one in each New York and Miami. He wanted to move to Los Angeles for quite some time but wasn’t sure about a location. He came out to look and didn’t find anything. He was heading to lunch at Il Pastaio when he noticed the location where Celebrity Vault use to lie directly next door to Mulberry’s Pizza. There was something about the location that grabbed him and he phoned his realtor (no, not Jay Luchs, but close) from the restaurat to give him the address – 345 North Canon Drive. Although it was not listed on the market, Rossano’s realtor called him back 20 minutes later with surprise news he had received via an internal email updating current listings in their MLS database — and that address was on it.

Rossano began to build immediately – as he does with all his salons; his first love was architecture and brings much of his craftsmanship in building to his hair cuts. All his salons are designed with the priority of using natural light. His salons in Venice, Verona and his hometown of Parma are particularly of note to his skill in design. Each location in the world (he also has a few other locations in Dubai, Mumbai and London) are geared towards the natural aesthetic of each town — in Los Angeles, he chose to build three privee cutting stations in a 2nd floor space that offer only natural lighting and will double as a Rossano school when they launch their LA training program in January (they currently have schools in London, Paris, Parma and Madrid). The program is designed to teach students of the hair the method Rossano’s uses to cut hair which basically is all about going with the flow. He is a believer in straight lines only so far as the the eye can see –  what he does with the scissors is blend, blend, blend with the hair in a way I have not yet seen. He wants it to look like a straight line, but it is not a straight line.

If you get bangs cut, you will be more familiar with this idea. Lots of people have cowlicks and therefore cannot have straight bangs and hairdressers will explain how to deal with them so pieces don’t fly around or stick up … the same philosophy can be extended here to the entire head. Rossano goes with the hair so that each piece is always the correct lenght for it’s location on your head and the direction in which it grows. The cut appears like a simple staight hair cut but it’s better because it moves, has life and volume and basically always looks rawwwther model-ly no matter what’s going on up there.

I know this from living with a Rossano hair cut for the last month. It was actually quite a major honor to be one of two people in Los Angeles to get my hair cut by Rossano. We went upstairs to their 2nd floor and had a long talk about his father who use to cut hair in the town square in Parma where he was born. He told me about his aspirations to be an architect but that working with his father led to a different passion. He told me about his girlfriend of many years who is the subject of his look books and a helpful hand in opening new salons and running the day to day business. I explained The Daily Truffle and had cappuccinos. I was also introduced to Christian Serafini who is 100% Italian and will be moving from their New York location to manage the BH salon and run the school which will take place in the second floor space in the evenings.

We at the Truffle turn down complimentary gifts and offers 90% of the time but when we got a call from these Italianos, an interesting thing happened in my house … A certain member in my family, who doubles as my personal Beverly Hills salon historian and has been on salon boycott since the close of Maurice-Jose in the late 80s, raised a brow upon hearing the name: Rossano Ferretti. This certain member of my family is incredibly well known by certain hairdressing old-timers in BH who have spread out to various salons over time and with whom she can still recount the days of Camelot when being a hairdresser in Beverly Hills was like being royalty, and Hollywood made movies about the women who went, and the men actually came in and watched and paid and sometimes even invested in the salons. Those were the days when you only had 5 hairdressers to choose from and every salon was a scene where you’d see girlfriends, movie stars, and young men from France sweeping up curls and bustling around with champagne and coffees. This certain member of my family had done her research and found this Italian newcomer with a salon empire back home in Italy to be refreshing and intriguing.

We both went in together a second time to discuss color – after all, it is a color town.

I’d met a woman named Nancy Braun the first time I went in who was the former chief colorist for L’Oreal and had joined Rossano’s team. I always like to question colorists about natural color alternatives, as chemicals used for beauty are one of my pet peeves. Usually the only answer I get back is Henna — which doesn’t take out gray or make brown hair blonde — but Nancy surprised me and told me she likes to use L’Oreal Professionnel INOA Hair Colour - which is nothing new, but for several reasons has yet to catch on.

“I.N.O.A.” sort of stands for ‘Innovation No Ammonia’ — and covers up 100% of white or grey hair, is 100% odor free, and is 100% ammonia free (for the rookie – ammonia is a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction and is 10x worse than it’s evil twin peroxide). A 2010 New York Times article questioned “Can INOA Make Ammonia-Free Hair Dye Mainstream”  … the answer may be no — I shall explain.

The threat of no ammonia immediately raises questions like: Will the color be as dark? Will the color hold as long? Will it wash out?, and things like that. The color in INOA is defined by how well your colorist and shampoo-er stick with the process they should have learn from their training with L’Oreal. If mistakes are made in the INOA shampoo process – the color may not come out as well as it could. Many salons do not promote or support the product because they are afraid to wind up with unhappy customers that might not return if the color fades. Usually the shampooing task is farmed out since washing hair does not require the time and skill of a colorist and what has been happening is that some of the shampoo girls aren’t INOA trained even when your colorist may be.

We can vouch for the process at Rossano Ferretti so just do it with them.

The final step of the INOA process actually uses another TRUFFLE MUST called Shu Uemura Oil Cleansing Shampoo. This is used as a final step because its oil base enables it to lift excess dye off the skin around your forehead and ears but it’s more common and intended use is simply for regular shampooing — we got a sample of this along with our cappuccinos.

L’Oreal Professionnel INOA Hair Colour
website

Rossano Ferretti HairSpa
345 North Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, CA
(310) 598-6780
metodorossanoferretti.com

#Trufflenote: You can park in back.

xoxo
Caroline

Today some friends of the Truffle are launching a new site “Beauty Bender” – specifically designed to deliver Monday and Thursday email newsletters full of expert tips, new products and a monthly photo shoot.

Co-founders Alexis Johnson and Kathryn Romeyn draw upon their editorial backgrounds (Alexis worked at Angeleno and Kathryn is the current deputy editor of L.A. Confidential) to approach beauty with the same journalistic intention they’ve brought to topics such as entertainment, lifestyle and current events. Their monthly photo shoots feature editorialized beauty ideas. This month’s is all about metallics – Next month Alexis and Kathryn will turn to ’12 beauty resolutions’ for 2012.

In examining the current content on the site, we found simple basic advice, trendy new products, major brands like Chanel, drug store items like Bag Balm, services from local merchants like Anastasia Beverly Hills and expert interviews with beauty professionals. All and all — a good formula that is clean and easy to follow. (There will be lots of green and holistic initiatives in here too).

Alexis Johnson, who is born and raised in Los Angeles and graduated from Harvard-Westlake before going to USC for journalism, named 3 liters of water a day as one of her beauty secrets — Volvic or Brita to be specific — Volvic for the least amount of taste and Brita so she can avoid plastic bottles. Alexis also included monthly facials, Tazorac, daily SPF and Botox. Basically very honest, and kinda true.

Alexis also got her graduate degree from USC in Art Curating and writes for, yet another L.A. native and HW grad — Bettina Korek’s website For Your Art. Kathryn was working at Riviera previous to her position at L.A. Confidential. The two girls met on an internship at Angeleno many years ago and remained beauty buds. They have been planning the site’s launch for the better part of a year and send out their first newsletter today!

These girls check out and so does the site. Truffle Approved!

www.beautybender.com
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