Hey Melbourne! We’re looking to do some training this week with some new products and new staff members – and we need models!

CHI Enviro

As you know being environmentally aware is very important for us at Wildilocks and we aim to stock the most environmentally friendly products we can find of salon quality.

Most exciting is a new product we sent staff for training in Perth late last year & just started trialling before Xmas in our Wellington salon, which is the CHI Enviro smoothing treatment. Heard of the “Brazilian Blowout”, permanent blo-wave or keratin straightening? This is a similar product, but unlike some of the negative press you may have seen regarding these products, the CHI Enviro treatment is guaranteed 100% formaldehyde free and amazing for your hair, with no damaging fumes to breathe in. The process realigns the cystein proteins in hair to eliminate up to 95% of frizz and is perfect to tame difficult hair types. It won’t generally completely eliminate curl, however it will relax and tame it, so for vintage lovelies who have a hard time with frizziness even though they love curls, this can be a godsend! If you prefer slick straight locks, the treatment speeds up drying & straightening time dramatically, so your daily hair care regime can be a tiny fraction what it once was!

The process is semi-permanent and can last up to 3-4 months before needing to be re-applied, but the effect is cumulative so you actually will need to do it less over time and still retain the results. Our experience in Wellington have been fantastic and frizz-reduction really is perfect for many people, and we have had clients say it’s completely changed their life!

We’re looking for 2-3 models to perform this service on at cost of product (between $30 – $80 depending on hair length and thickness) between Tues-Friday daytime *this week only* so if you are keen please call us on 03 9642 3384 asap to get a slot. This treatment will normally cost anywhere from $150 to around $400 at standard salon prices, so this is your chance to get a SERIOUS bargain and help our staff learn the techniques to boot!

Male cuts, dreadlock extensions, and human hair extensions

We are also keen for models for male cuts (free!), and are beginning training with new staff in dreadlock-related services including extensions and maintenance as well as human hair extensions, at 30% discount, as these are established techniques and overseen and completed with assistance from qualified senior staff.

Get in quick as the training slots we have available will fill fast! Our number is 03 9642 3384 in case you’d forgotten 😉 Or you can drop us an email at lockworks@wildilocks.com, but telephone is preferred!

I caught up recently with the ever-lovely and gracious Nicole Jenkins from Circa Vintage (who put on a very impressive vintage clothing parade at the Vintage Clothing Jewellery & Textiles Show in Melbourne earlier this year) and in our discussions Nicole mentioned being bored with her current hair colour, and needing a change.

It was no mean feat to coax Nicole into the CBD to Wildilocks @ The Lockworks (our Melbourne salon), but we managed it, to stunning results – Nicole has blogged the experience in delightful detail over here (and thank you so much for all the kind words, Nicole!) … but you can take a peek at her gorgeous locks below! Love love love the pink!

For the particularly curious, Nicole’s colour palette is taken from several of our semi ranges, CHI Chromashine (in-salon only) Directions and Special Effects (both available for take-home purchase). We love to custom-blend shades to specially suit the personality of each of our wonderful clients.

Nicole’s new colour and a range of other new client pics are up on our customer gallery if you care to take a peek – every gallery with new items has a little “updated” note for the next few days or so to alert you, there’s new hair tattoos, vintage styling, wool extensions and more.

If you’d like to submit any of your own pics for our photo gallery of your fab Wildilocks hair, please send to gallery@wildilocks.com. Each image submitted via email by clients that we use will garner a $5 gift voucher for our webstore!

LEMURS! Preparing for attack!?!

… well actually, this is about a slightly different type of Lemur.

Last Saturday, we had a bit of a special day at Wildilocks @ Cuba in Wellington.

Not really anything unusual (for us) hair wise… some stripey patterns, some crazy beard shaving… just a regular olde day… here, lookie:

All in a day’s work, wot!

But….the reason for this particular couple of hairstyles, was anything but ordinary!

Aimee Whitcroft (convener of NerdNite Wellingtonand much other awesomeness) approached Wildilocks a couple of weeks back with a crazy plan.

Aimee (@teh_aimee) and her partner in crime, Dane (@dene), made the decision to enter an insane and arduous road trip for charity – the Mongol Rally.

….the what???…. you ask?

The Mongol Rally is a car rally that begins in Europe and ends in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. It began in 2004 and is an annual event with entries from countries all over the world, but very few from the Southern Hemisphere.

And it’s not like a standard car rally, either. The 16,000 kilometers of the rally is approximately 1/3 of the earth’s surface … and … “The Rally’s rules have traditionally stipulated that a participating car must “generally be considered to be crap.”” ie – tiny, inappropriate vehicles, ideally with High Comedy Value, are required to participate. The Mongol Rally has become insanely competitive to enter, with places being filled mere seconds after registration opens each year. But the best bit, is that all competitors are raising money for charity – and in this case, half will be going to the UK and the other half to worthy NZ-based organisations, in a mightly 50/50 hemispherical split of grand generosity and derring-do.

Lemur Attack Force managed to secure a place for next years Rally, and subsequently have been working on their strategy for visibility and awesomeness in the lead up and preparation for their arduous journey in 2012.

Aimee & Dane needed something to make them stand out to promote their team’s entry, right from the get-go. We wanted to express the spirit of “Lemur” (which, incidentally, means “spirit” in the Latin) as visibly as possible, and chose a palette of golds and browns: combining the best of the golden crowned lemur with the most well known ring tailed lemur, with the most delightful stripes – and where else but on our team’s crowning glory – and who else but Wildilocks to do it??

Below are a sample of images of the day, but you can see the full gallery here (and over here for the Google+ crowd 😉

Colour on! And a nice hot chocolate…

Golden lemur base colour achieved!

Phase 2 almost complete…

Aimee finished!

Dane from behind…

Purdy pic provided by Aimee…

Ta da!

Aimee and Dane were great sports and very pleased with the lemur-esque results, and plan to continue to show the world their stripes as they train for the rally and raise awareness by travelling up and down New Zealand: so look out for them if you are in Wellington or anywhere in NZ, they may be passing through soon!

You can keep up to date with Lemur Attack Force by following their blog on The Adventurists’ site which documents all rally teams, over >here, or follow their brand new Twitter account here. They also have a gallery of gorgeous pics, which of course they will add to over time 🙂

So, of course I haven’t written this very detailed post just to show off their awesome Wildilocks hair – there is an ulterior motive here. As this is a charity event, we want to raise awareness for their entry as early and as effusively as possible – and that’s where you dear reader, can assist. Lemur Attack Force are already accepting preliminary donations, and you can start supporting them NOW!

All teams are required to raise at least 1000 pounds for charity to be eligible to enter, so you can assist to make sure they meet this requirement by clicking the donate button below:

Every little bit helps, so even if it’s just a dollar or two, it will help get them to Mongolia and also help very worthy causes (see here for more details on the charities that the Mongol Rally supports). We also would like to say that we highly approve of The Adventurists’ various events and causes, and note they held a smashing Steampunk Xmas Party last year, which we wish we could have gone to!

Lemur Attack Force are seeking other corporate sponsors too, so if you think you can help, contact them asap 🙂

We’ll post more closer to their departure, but we want to say that Wildilocks wishes Lemur Attack Force every success! (and to not meet a grisly fate in some remote Mongolian steppe at the hands of bandits, please).

BRING A FRIEND FOR FREE RETURNS TO WILDILOCKS @ CUBA for AUGUST 2011

Wildilocks has been braving new frontiers in several directions, and have been in New Zealand now for well over a year (woohooo!). This time last year, we launched the first Wellington salon major promotion with a “Bring a Friend for Free” special which was very successful over the quieter winter months in 2010. We’ve decided to run a similar special for the entire month of August this year, for Wellington only – we unfortunately don’t have the capacity for this special in Perth or Melbourne at the moment we’re afraid, but our lovely Wellington TreatMe clients have by and large been through now, and we now have a few appointment slots opening up!

What better way to encourage our happy clients new and old, to return for s spuce up, than to bring a friend with them – for free? Please note your friend-for-free must be new to Wildilocks – so get the word out, and get yourself the equivalent of 50% off! You can book appointments immediately for any date in August, friend must be on the same day and applies to almost all hair services including cuts colours, dreadlocks, vintage styling and more!

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Wildilocks colour supplier – space age technology, literally!

Wildilocks has been a stockist from day 1 of CHI ammonia free hair colour by Farouk Systems, from the USA. While these colours occasionally have their quirks, they are more environmentally friendly than standard salon colour ranges, and the best ammonia free colours available on the market today, with a complete focus and committment on products which are safer for the client and salon environment, as well as the environment. They require no ammonia to activate them in the shampoo stage (unlike a well known fairly recently lauched major brand competitor in this area *cough*) and are truly the best thing you can do for your hair.

We were surprised to only just hear about the Farouk Systems involvement with the final Space Shuttle program, which you can read all about here but a brief excerpt is below:

For the final shuttle mission, Dr. Morrison will be the Co-Investigator with Farouk Shami, founder and chairman of Farouk Systems, and their science team to design, prepare and load the Farouk Systems experiments at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). They will be the mentors for the development of the “CHI Stars” Student experiments (a co-op between Lone Star College-North Harris, CHI School of Cosmetology in Houston, TX and Farouk Systems) and will take the student to KSC for the experiment/payload operations and launch of Atlantis. After landing, they will be responsible for the unloading and post-flight analysis of the experiment samples and helping the CHI Stars Student Investigator decipher the results.

The CHI Stars experiments on STS-135 will study the efficiency of microencapsulation of three antioxidants using Dr. Morrison’s methods that have been patented by NASA and that were flown previously on the STS-107 flight and recovered from the same experiment apparatus that was found in Texas after the destruction of the Shuttle Columbia.

“This is a banner year for Farouk Systems,” says Mr. Shami. “We’re celebrating 25 years of ammonia free color, launching a new, safer smoothing treatment with CHI Enviro, we appeared on The Celebrity Apprentice and now blasting experiments in outer space. Hair is the final frontier.”

Pretty neat stuff! You will find Wildilocks one of the few companies that combines this experimental approach with day to day salon work, always looking for new and exciting things to do for and with hair!