Celebrity Extension Training with David Lopez and Glam Seamless
In case you guys missed it on our Instagram feed (…and story — and then some more posts) we recently got back from a trip to New York City where we trained with Chrissy Teigen, Lily Aldridge and Ashley Graham’s celebrity hair extensionist, David Lopez.
Lopez is known for his hair and extension work on celebrities — including Ashley Graham’s amazing 2016 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover.
During our time in NYC, we were part of the inaugural graduation class at the Glam Seamless headquarters, where Lopez showed us all of his best tips and tricks in an intimate setting of only a handful of stylists from the NYC region. The course covered a lot including; the different Glam Seamless lines, install techniques – and styling tricks that he’s currently obsessed with.
What Lopez did differently (that we hadn’t seen before):
The Experience
What was cool about our experience with David was his openness and incredible urge to pass on his knowledge to others. He really didn’t have an air of arrogance to him that most other celebrity stylists have.
From his fear of salt-water and extensions (oh, we hear you, David!) to clients doing reinstalls without washing (yes, Graham made him do this once for a last-minute birthday karaoke event — and yes, they fell out) it was super nice to hear someone of his stature explain that we aren’t the only ones with these client woes.
The “Chrissy Teigen Method”
Ok, so it’s not specifically called this, but we’ve dubbed it that for in-studio use. According to Lopez, Teigen is a big fan of “the more hair, the better” mantra — which we’ve always had an issue providing and most training courses teach you that “rows” of untouched hair needs to between the layers of tape-in sandwiches (thus diminishing your install surface space, depending on the clients amount of hair/head surface space).
Lopez swears by the fact that if you have a high hair quality (like Glam Seamless Elite, 100% pure remy) you can actually layer the sandwiches on top of each other to maximize the amount of hair used per clients — thus giving you the ability to create dramatic short-to-long ‘dos or to give a client the ULTIMATE mermaid hair. And because it’s high quality, layering them together won’t create additional bunching when the sandwiches move together.
The “One-Time Red Carpet Pony”
Take this next one with a grain of salt, because this is NOT for the faint of heart. Just like we explained above with the row-on-row method, Lopez used a similar technique on Graham for a red-carpet event, but instead of installing them in horizontal rows across the head, he actually placed them in rows vertically (imagine going from ear-to-ear over the top of the head, like a head band) to create the ultimate pony-tail hair. Because the tapes lay incredibly flat, this was perfect for the sleek updo for the perfect night out with friends.
#GirlCrushing
From L-R: Jamie, David Lopez, Miranda, Natalie
