January 18th, 2012

Black Magazine – Twigs and Stones

Here’s a beauty story from the latest issue of the fabulous Black magazine with creative hair from Greg Murrell and Lydia Mahon. It was inspired by handcrafts and the idea of being resourceful in challenging times. Photography by Russ Flatt, Styling by Rachael Churchward and makeup by Natalie Dent.

January 18th, 2012

Black Magazine – Boys Best Friend

In this shoot Black Magazine stylist Rachael Churchward applies her signature masculine aesthetic on female models. Hair by Greg Murrell, Photography by Stephen Tilley, Makeup by Kimberly Hill for M.A.C.

January 18th, 2012

Black Magazine – Tall Trees

Shot out in the Waitakere ranges, this story features some of the amazing tinsel creations from the Assistant fashion Editor at Black Magazine - Jess Grubisa. Photography by David Shields, Hair by Greg Murrell and Lydia Mahon, Styling by Rachael Churchward and Makeup by Stacey Lee-Ghin.

January 18th, 2012

Black Magazine – The kids are all right

A fun day was had shooting with these kids who each had their own thing going on. The future will be in good hands if this lot have anything to do with it. Hair by Greg Murrell and Lydia Mahon, Photography by Russ Flatt, Styling by Rachael Churchward, Makeup by Shirley Simpson for M.A.C.

November 2nd, 2011

Metro Magazine November 2011 – The “Celebrity” Issue

The latest Metro magazine is on the shelves now with hair for the “Celebrity” issue by the fantastic Nicholas Macaulay. Gilda’s hair has never looked so good!

September 2nd, 2011

Press Clipping: An interview with Ryders’ Greg Murrell in the NZ Herald Viva Magazine.

31/08/2011
Viva talks to some of the most interesting people behind the scenes at New Zealand Fashion Week.

Greg Murrell

Greg Murrell is a Fashion Week original who this year is busier than ever coming up with looks to complement designer styles. Murrell and his Ryder Salon styling team are working on the Stolen Girlfriends Club show tonight and Huffer tomorrow. He is also creative director for the KMS California hair team on the week’s Contemporary Salon shows, giving him a range of established and emerging designers to work with. His first show of the week was Ingrid Starnes yesterday.

“I think it’s important to work with each brand’s aesthetic, but for the [hair] look not to become predictable,” he says. “In the back of my mind are feelings about trends and movements that I have noticed, but sometimes I just have to disregard what is happening elsewhere and find solutions that appeal to my sensibility and work well for the designer.”

Where are you at?
For Huffer we are moving things away from the expected, and with Stolen Girlfriends a new imagining of their rock and roll aesthetic is planned. It was also exciting to work with Ingrid Starnes for the first time on her contemporary salon show. Ingrid was after a look that had a nice floaty and free texture which was pulled back from the face and fastened in a loose deconstructed chignon at the nape. Strong but sensual.

Explain the process of coming up with a look?
We will usually meet up about a month before the show and start talking about the themes for the collection. We then meet for a hair and makeup trial on a live model about two weeks before the show to test it all out. We keep working on variations of the agreed look until we choose the right feeling. Often it is dependent also on the makeup look.

What happens backstage?
We usually have a two to three-hour call time before the show. Generally we will have the show look storyboarded out and team members are assigned tasks. As director I supervise this and help the team of between six and 10 people to complete the look to my satisfaction. I generally do the finishing.

What was the very first fashion show you worked on?
I think it would have been an in-store for Zambesi in Vulcan Lane in 1997. I did some braided looks from memory.

What was the most memorable show you’ve done?
There have been many shows at Australian Fashion Week over the years and it is hard to pick one, so I will pick the two shows that I did for Zambesi at London Fashion Week. I love that city.

How has NZFW changed the game?
Well, before NZFW, we didn’t really have an organised and cohesive fashion industry. We just seemed to have people who made and sold clothes. With NZFW, the media suddenly became interested and it became possible for specialists such as hair, makeup, lighting, show producers and so on to work with fashion in a much more regular way. The level of professionalism grew accordingly.

Do you take a different approach for Australia?
I still prepare the same way but the reality is that it is not in Auckland so I don’t have all of my trusted lieutenants with me. I usually take three of them with me and complete the team with associates from Sydney.

What’s new in terms of products/techniques?
KMS California is relaunching at Fashion Week with brand new packaging and formulations. I’m excited to be able to get my hands on some of their new products.

A last line on doing fashion shows?
It’s really fun to work on a creative project where other specialists are doing their thing as well. It’s very satisfying and it’s also a chance to stretch out a little and do something you wouldn’t usually do in the salon.

- Janetta Mackay

May 4th, 2011

BlackLOG: RAFW Beauty: Stolen Girlfriends Club backstage by Greg Novak

Here’s a story and some backstage images from the Black Magazine Blog about the Stolen Girlfriends Club show that the Ryder team did hair for at RAFW.

BlackLOG: RAFW Beauty: Stolen Girlfriends Club backstage by Greg Novak.

May 27th, 2010

Press Clipping: Fashion Quarterly Winter 2010

GLAM SLAM

If there was a World Cup for dressing glamorously, New Zealanders would be eliminated in the first round. Why, asks Cathrin Schaer, are we so reluctant to get dolled up?

In a small cupboard above a designer boutique in Auckland, hidden treasure is hanging. Gowns covered in sequins, ruffles and lace, frocks that are strapless, shoulderless and shameless and dresses that took every trick in a seamstress’ book to conjure up.

The couture-like creations draw gasps from anyone who discovers them upstairs at the Carlson boutique on Ponsonby Road.  “These are amazing,” one woman gushes as she molests the fluttering silks and crushed velvets. “So amazing. What are they doing here? Does anyone ever wear them?”

The designer herself – Tanya Carlson - just nods her head. This is the standard reaction from people who get to see the one-off ball gowns, wedding dresses, and cocktail frocks she  has made in the past. A few fashion weeks ago, Australian boutique owner Elizabeth Charles, who runs two exclusive US stores   specialising in Antipodean designer clothing  visited Carlson’s workroom, saw the dresses and asked the designer what on earth such beauties were doing “in a place like this.” “She told me, “you should be making these in LA”,” Carlson recalls. Because there were plenty of customers for that sort of glamour in California, the retailer told the designer. “I don’t make [these kinds of dresses] unless they have been commissioned,” Carlson continues. “I’ve worn a couple of them myself – to fancy dress parties mainly. And they have been lent out for film shoots or hired out for events, like film premieres. They have been taken overseas too, to be worn at glamorous events – because you just don’t get that level of dressing up here.”

 Carlson says New Zealand women just don’t dress up as much as some other nations. As a rule, we are not a particularly glamorous bunch.

And there are some fairly straightforward reasons for this. Firstly we don’t have that many events that require that much dressing up. “Glamour for New Zealanders is usually what people look like at the horse races or at a wedding,” remarks Greg Murrell, well-travelled owner of Auckland hair salon, Ryder, whose former position as the creative director of international hair product firm, KMS, has seen him attending – and styling hair at - glamorous functions and fashion shows all around the world. “And I think its best left there. We don’t have the urban density of many countries; we don’t have the centuries old tradition of urban promenading.” By this, Murrell means the traditional walk, and socialising, around a city square that takes place in warmer countries such as those of South America, where it’s all about showing off to, and gossiping about, the neighbours.

 Showing off  is traditionally anathema to your average New Zealander. Carlson believes this is why, generally, a lot of folks react badly to the styles displayed by some of our more dressed up socialites .  It just seems a tad too, too much.

Murrell has his own theories on the national anti-dress ups attitude. “I think it is true that most New Zealanders don’t want to stand out from the crowd. And I think that’s a result of our egalitarian heritage.” But he doesn’t mind. “I think it suits us to be like that. We are a pragmatic, practical people,” he concludes.

“Uber-casual,” is how local fashion stylist, Ana MacDonald puts it. “We are just a very practical race. It’s that Number 8 fencing wire thing.” Additionally MacDonald points out that it is more difficult to get hold of the outfits one might categorise as wildly glamorous – they’re not something our local labels usually specialise in.

 But should the whole nation be written off as a bunch of tracksuit pant-loving, sequin-hating, jandal-clad frumps? Will New Zealand women ever work out how to “dress up”? And finally, does it actually matter? Does anyone care whether New Zealanders are glamorous or not?

To find the answer to that question, it might be a good idea to go back. Way back. To the origins of glamour, in fact.

 Linguistically at least, glamour originally comes from somewhere equally unglamorous: ancient Scottish. In that language, the original words - grammaye, grammar, grimoire and glomery – all meant something along the lines of an enchantment or a spell. A later version of these, glamer, meant “the influence of a charm on the eye.”

In his 2008 book, Glamour: A History, Stephen Gundle returns to the first use of the word in a poem by Sir Walter Scott. In the 1805 poem, Scott wrote that: “Glamour … could make a ladye seem a knight, the cobweb on a dungeon wall seem tapestry in a lordly hall,” and “a nut-shell seem a gilded barge.”

Gundle, who is a professor of film and television studies at Warwick University in the UK, writes that glamour is “a magical power capable of making ordinary people, dwellings and places seem like magnificent versions of themselves. From its origins,” he explains, “glamour has been associated with dreaming”.

Charting the history of glamour in a review of Gundle’s book, Pamela Church Gibson, of the London College of Fashion, reports that glamour emerged “with the transfer of power from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie, the role of the modern city as a site of social display, and the new culture of spectacle and consumption that followed the Industrial Revolution and political upheavals of the 18th century.”

What she means by this is that when  peasants made it to the big city, they had more reason (lots of people they didn’t know but wished to) and more opportunity (more social events outside the family) than ever to impress strangers. And they could do this by dressing up, by being more glamorous.

It was all about the democratization of glamour and Gundle provides some interesting examples from French history. He says that, no matter what you and Sofia Coppola might think, the French queen Marie Antoinette was not glamorous. She had no reason to be – she was an aristocrat who was born to cake eating and collecting silk shoes and, accordingly, she didn’t need to impress anyone. It was simply her birthright. She never felt that she had to charm anyone’s eye – even though it meant that she lost her head in 1793 as a result of the French Revolution against local aristocracy.

Marie Antoinette may not have thought she needed towin overher public but  Napoleon Bonaparte did and he used glamour to do so. The son of a lawyer, Bonaparte was a militarily-gifted upstart who came to rule France as self-proclaimed “Emperor” after Marie Antoinette and her aristocratic relatives had been so mercilessly disposed of. Bonaparte, Gundle says, fabricated his own myth  by arranging for grand and glamorous spectacles, which convinced the general public that he really was a worthy emperor. Another historian points out that Bonaparte was a forerunner of today’s celebrities – his fame was all about the cult of the individual. Additionally Bonaparte bound glamour up with fashion: The diminutive French fighter loved fashion and wanted to make Paris the most beautiful city in the world – in part because he wanted to keep the citizens occupied and compliant. So he did things like forbid ladies at court to wear the same dress more than once as well as blocking the fireplaces in his palace. All this meant that Frenchwomen needed more clothes – which supported a burgeoning French textile and fashion industry.

 “Glamour is a weapon and a protective coating,” Gundle concludes in his book. “The element of pretend or make-believe is a crucial part of the illusion.”

Another academic, Judith Brown, agrees. In her 2009 book, Glamour in Six Dimensions, the professor of English literature at Indiana University in the USA, defines modern glamour as a sort of disguise. It “relies on abstraction, on the thing transformed into idea and therefore the loss of the thing itself,” she writes. Brown also points out how much our definition of glamour has changed over time. At one stage it was a quality considered closer to beauty, with beauty defined as something true and natural. But over time glamour has become more artificial, more excessive and now it also has a very strong relationship with consumption (as in, it encourages us to want more).  “Glamour requires a kind of beauty - but it has no bearing on truth,” Brown writes.

You get the feeling that it might  be good that New Zealanders are not as glamorous as those in Napoleon’s court.

In the current recessionary and environmentally conscious mood, pundits have even been talking about the end of glamour. English newspaper, The Daily Telegraph recently ran an interview with Joan Collins in which the aging glamourpuss bemoaned the fact that ladies don’t dress up the way they used to. But  the  the lack of posh frocks isn’t so much about slipping standards. It has more to do with a changing culture, changing lifestyles and even advances wrought by feminism. 

Take into account the increasingly casual nature of our wardrobes, the fact that we spend more time socialising online (and therefore don’t need to dress up all the time),and a feeling that we no longer need to maintain some sort of sartorial illusion for our nearest and dearest, greeting hubby at the door, dressed in a cocktail frock and carrying his slippers and pipe for example. Consider also that when it comes to the Hollywood kind of glamour, there’s no longer a lot of mystery involved, mystery being a big part of the spell cast by glamour. When Hollywood first started presenting its young starlets as glamorous, they were able to strictly control their stars’ images, changing everything from a pretty girl’s name to her wardrobe. These days, there’s not much that’s mysterious about trackpant-clad celebrity photographed, makeup-less, slurping on a thick shake in the local supermarket carpark.

Could it be that a new, modern definition of glamour is called for this century, one that involves bewitching but also has a basis in real beauty? Rather than focussing on fuss and the impact an outrageous designer label has on onlookers, it may be worth considering the simpler things that can make anyone feel glamorous – a pair of high heeled shoes, some jewellery, a silk scarf.

“Glamour is in the eye of the beholder,” argues MacDonald. “For some people, they could be wearing a dress from Glasson’s – and if they feel glamorous, then they project that.”

And Murrell is quick to point out the difference between glamour and fashion. While New Zealand may not be as glamorous as other nations, that doesn’t mean we’re not interested in fashion. “Serious glamour does not sit well with our national psyche. Here we have a simpler, more laidback style and I think that many people do that very well. And that can be just as interesting. Glamour to me is when someone has made an effort to transcend the way that they look every day,” says  Murrell . “Not every part of a person’s appearance needs to be scaled up - restraint is a fine thing. To me, glamour isn’t about money, it’s about individual personal style .”

“We prefer a more subtle glamour,” Carlson agrees – and that’s no matter how many visitors end up awestruck by the hidden, hanging treasures she occasionally makes.

May 21st, 2010

Press Clipping: Crafting Beauty: Greg Murrell and Zambesi

Written by Helene Ravlich on her blog  www.mshelene.com Thursday April 15 2010.

As well as being a bloody great guy, Ryder salon owner Greg Murrell is one hell of a talented hair stylist both in the salon, behind the scenes and on the runway. He has had a long-standing role as one of the key creatives in the collaborative process that goes into producing the runway shows and campaigns for my favourite local label Zambesi for many years now, so I sat him down and chatted about working with such an iconic name.

How long have you been working with Zambesi now?
The collaboration has been going for 13 years now. In that time i have been the hair director for all of their fashion week shows in Auckland, London and Sydney, their advertising campaigns and the many other events that they have been involved in.

Can you remember what the first ever hair brief you received was?
The first thing that I ever did for them was a show for their customers in their Vulcan Lane store. The look had a number of small plaits that we then wrapped around the head. I remember being very nervous but the hair ended up looking great!

Is there one aesthetic that has remained constant over that time?
Liz (Findlay, Zambesi co-founder and designer) definitely likes to have an element of long hair around the neck. That has been fairly constant. She also likes height at the crown. We have probably explored many ways of fitting both of those elements into the look. One thing I love about working with Liz is that she is not interested in hair that is “on-trend”. As soon as something becomes too fashionable or obvious she will want to head in the opposite direction. Quite often we have gone for a look that is almost opposite to the aesthetic of the previous season.

Do you think of a particular muse or reference when creating hair for Zambesi?
Well I think that the Zambesi woman is adventurous, individual, free-spirited and has an intellectual approach to fashion. The hair has never been street hair. There is usually a language involved with the hair, which helps to animate the collection. There is a merging of fashion, art and rock and roll culture that seems to suggest new ways of looking at ourselves. With some of the shows there has definitely been a particular muse in mind such as RAFW Spring/Summer 07 where we were channeling Liz’s Greek heritage and the model’s had wet hair like they had just come out of the water in the Greek Islands. They then smashed plates at the end of the show.