Limerick’s Niall Colgan has scooped the IMAGE magazine award 2011 at the Wella Trend Vision Irish finals. The glamorous industry event took place at Thomond Park recently to a packed house of hairdressing experts from around the country. “We are genuinely excited to have a hair professional of Niall Colgan’s stature as the winner of the IMAGE fashion award at the recent Wella Trend Vision competition” commented Melanie Morris, editor of IMAGE magazine.
She continued, “His of-the-minute blonde and pink crop had immediate impact, and I think will strike a chord with IMAGE’s fashion-forward readership. We so look forward to working with Niall as our ‘go to guy’ for tips, tricks and hot-off-the-runway hair trends. Look out for his inside track for perfect party hair in the December issue of IMAGE.”
Niall, who opened his own salon ‘Niall Colgan Hairdressing’, just over two years ago on O’Callaghan Strand, had been working on his model for months in preparation of the big event. His model was Limerick’s Madeline Mulqueen (who came to national attention as the bridesmaid in the renowned Horse Outside video by Rubberbandits and now works in Dublin with the Morgan modelling agency). Madeline’s hair underwent months of transformation to interpret the ‘Lumina’ trend in the Wella brief.
Every year, Wella creates a new vision in hair using four trends, from which participants in Trend Vision have to choose one trend to interpret. Niall chose the ‘Lumina’ trend taking his cues from metallic, luminous, liquid, and futuristic inspiration for the shape and colour.
The competition is judged on the overall look from head to toe and Niall gathered a creative team of professionals to work on the look which included Mandy O’Loughlin makeup artist, fashion stylists Kate and Melie O’Mahony, art director Olivia O’Sullivan, a team of colourists that included Nikki Harris, Eithne Ryan and Jean McGann who are all senior colour technicians in Niall’s salon, and coordinator Calvin Hayes who is the salon’s front desk manager. Niall acknowledged that all the staff in the salon contributed to the win and it was a real team success.
Winning the IMAGE magazine award means Niall and his team will work with IMAGE in a styling capacity and have possibly secured the highly-covetable front cover shoot for model Madeline in an all-Limerick creative collaboration.
Speaking after the win, Niall Colgan said, “I’m over the moon about winning the IMAGE award. This means so much for the team, the salon, for everyone involved. We’ve put so much work into it, it feels great for that to be acknowledged and to get industry approval in such a prestigious competition. I want to thank everybody involved for their contribution. This is a great feat for us as we face into our third year of business.”
The staff of Niall Colgan Hairdressing will be celebrating the win for some time yet but for the moment, it’s business as usual in the salon which is open six days a week with late night on Fridays.
Niall Colgan holds his IMAGE magazine award with model Madeline Mulqueen at the recent Wella Trend Vision finals
