From multi-colored opal to betta-fish highlights, it's clear that innovative hair coloring has hit an all-time high. And there's a new application process that promises to be just as cool as the rest: hand-pressed color, reports Cosmopolitan. The technique creates beautiful, blended effects in less time than traditional dye — oh, and did we mention it includes a slab of plexiglass?
The brain behind hand-pressed color is Redken colorist Chiala Marvici. "I have a painting in my apartment that a friend did for me a while ago that has a lot of colors on it, and I fell asleep one night and dreamt of all these layers of paint living together on one surface," she told Cosmopolitan. "When I woke up, I thought about how beautiful that would be on the hair and how I would translate that vision onto the hair."
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The technique involves swirling different dyes (in interesting patterns like triangles, circles, and stripes) onto a six-inch-wide piece of plexiglass. Marvici then places a section of hair flat onto the glass to allow the design to transfer to the underside of the hair. She presses the pattern into the hair with a putty knife, so that the colors blend together and saturate each strand. The technique is almost like screen-printing, but does not leave the actual shape of the pattern you painted. (Although we could definitely see that being another future trend.)
She then repeats the process until all the desired sections have been saturated with color. After the dye has processed, she rinses it out for the cool, multi-tonal effect you see above. Unfortunately, hand-pressed color has not reached most of the U.S. — but Marvici is determined to teach other colorists around the country how to use the technique. Until then, fingers crossed that it hits a salon near us sometime soon.