Feature - Bastian Casaretto Interview

Text / Images by Jamie Harrison // Published Friday 17 December 2010
 
Bastian Casaretto is Aveda’s Artistic Director for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and is based in Berlin, Germany. He began his hairdressing career at the tender age of 11 in his father’s salon - sweeping, making coffee and helping out - until at 15 he began an official hairdressing apprenticeship. From there he joined Vidal Sassoon in London before moving on to the Frankfurt salon and Academy, where he stayed for 13 years. 
 
He then became Wella Professional’s Artistic Director for Germany, Austria and Switzerland where he ran classes, performed session work and put together training programmes. Following Wella, he joined Aveda, and now spends at least one day a week in the salon, which allows him to stay in touch with trends and maintain a salon approach with his students.
 
Bastian took two days out of his very busy schedule to join us in the MyHairDressers.com studios where he recorded four amazing hairdressing tutorials alongside Aveda Master Colour Technician Bruno Elorrioroz and gave us this exclusive interview.
 

What are you up to at the moment?

I’ve been really busy throughout September and October - If there’s a week when I’m not on a plane, it’s a lost week. I began with Fashion Week in New York, working - six designers. I enjoy session work, it’s very interesting to change from cutting to styling. I worked with amazing people, like Odile Gilbert who is just incredible. She sees hair as a material and not as hair and I feel so honoured to work with such a genius. New York is just a pool of ideas, from the kids on the streets up, it’s all just…wow! I even thought about moving there, but then… Berlin is better.
 
I then did a show in Italy for 500 Aveda clients in Milan, presenting our new collection. It’s nice to go to Italy or Spain, they work hard but they enjoy their life and they have that great sense of beauty. I’ve just done some classes in Amsterdam and then Rotterdam, and I’m here with MyHairDressers.com now!

 
From where do you draw your Inspiration?

If you walk through the world with open eyes it comes from everywhere. My big inspiration is fashion. Couture is always taking everything a bit further and taking it to the extreme, but always staying glamorous. We want women to look beautiful and the female body is beautiful by itself, so if you put clothes on they should make the body look more beautiful and same goes for hair. The different kind of materials in fashion and how the designers work materials is always inspirational. How they cut their materials is actually great inspiration for how to cut hair.
 
Nature has always been inspirational to me and it’s important for fashion, for architecture, for everything. Look at the Bauhaus; it’s been around since the 1920s and one of its biggest legacies has been open plan - taking walls away, adding glass walls, bringing the outside inside - adding to the contrast of the 90 degree angles with the beauty of nature. Nature has incredible colour - from the autumn colours or the sand on the beach in summer. It’s beautiful.
 
So my inspiration comes mainly from nature, fashion, architecture. And always watching people on the street - keep your eyes open. A big benefit of being someone that’s allowed to travel so much is that I can see the street style - what the kids wear around the world.
 

Who are your influences?

Odile Gilbert with updos. I think she’s amazing, she just thinks about hair totally differently. She made me rethink hair, big time! Two years ago I did my first Fashion Week in New York and I had to do things with hair that I would never have thought about. For example we turned hair into a huge dreadlock in about 5 minutes and the gorgeous girls were all looking like Bob Marley - we painted the skin and everything! It was really an eye opener for me.
 
Tim Hartley is one of my big hair heroes. He inspired me from day one. The way he moves the hair – it’s not just the haircut it’s how he moves the comb and works it. He’s just out there, a very special person and a total icon. Tim never does anything twice – he always goes forward and never looks back. That’s pretty amazing.
Karl Lagerfeld is definately somebody I admire. He’s doing a tremendous amount of work, with six labels as head of design. Whoever has done a big show, collection or even a photo shoot, knows how much hard work that is. To do it for six different labels…well, it blows me away. Like Tim Hartley, he never does anything twice. He does something, then says, “Okay it’s done, lets go somewhere else.”
 

Who's your Style Icon?

It has to be Steve McQueen. He’s just Mr Cool, Mr Male. I think that’s where male fashion is going. It’s been quite feminine recently, but I think it moving back to manliness.
 
I like Debbie Harry and the hairstyles she had, always bleached and wild and very textured - rock glamour. Peaches is similar to Debbie Harry, she’s got that attitude and is very rock n roll. 
 
Claudia Schiffer is more glamorous and gets more beautiful as she gets older, with a sort of maturity, that’s really alluring. She recently did a shoot with Lagerfeld when she was pregnant and he devoted a whole Vogue magazine to her. I think it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen by her.
 
Marilyn Monroe is just pure femininity. I like the blondes! If you look back to the 70s and before, it was either blonde hair or black. But I could include Audrey Hepburn and Coco Chanel for the dark haired style icons!
 

Do you have a favourite hairdressing technique?

At the moment, my favourite technique is putting the graduation back into the shapes by building up shapes and pushing hair in one direction. There’s been so much layering and long hair recently and I really like to take it to a bob or even shorter, put in tight graduation and really sculpture a new shape onto the head. You can do that really well with graduation.
 

What's hot right now?

For me, grown out colours with darker roots to lighter ends sums up this year. It’s not actually growing out, but seems to on the first look that’s what you think. But you look twice and you think, “That's cool because its made to look like that.”

Texture is right back in vogue. It’s about not just giving the client a precise haircut - 80% is the haircut and 20% is the glamorous finish. I like to show customers how easy it is to make the hair look glamorous. Any magazine you open now, the hair has a natural glamour and doesn’t look like it’s set or styled too much, it’s more like it’s not been touched but still looks beautiful.

 
Do you have a favourite product you use?

Aveda Light Elements Styling Cream is one of those products you can put into the hair and rework it without being heavy. I’ve not seen anything like it on the market so far, especially something you can use on thin hair to just give a finished look without it looking blow dried.

I also like the Volumising Tonic because it’s made with Aloe Vera. You put in the hair and get so much shine. You can do updos with it, you can blow dry it, it’s a really nice, adaptable product.
 

Do you have some Top Tips for us to pass on to our subscribers?

Be 100% professional in whatever you do. Try to get educated as much as possible, and not from just one company. You have to be as flexible and complete as possible as a hairdresser. One day you’ll get a client who wants a certain thing, and if you don’t know how to do it, you lose your customer.
 
If you are in session work it’s important you know your basics – how to put in a line, layering, graduation or how to do a finger wave or a set perm, or roller set, pin curls. That’s all part of our hairdressing job and we should know how to do it. You should be able to work the razor, how to do a shave with a proper knife.
 
One thing that helped me, that made my clients like me and made me successful in the salon is that when I do the consultation, they get three options – short medium and long, and I play with the hair to show them in the mirror, so they can decide how much they want to take off. If they choose the long one, which is usually the safe bet, they may think about it and come back and have the medium or short style next time. And I always try to give them a restyling option at the end of the session in the mirror, maybe using a couple of pins, so they feel taken care of and spoiled. When somebody comes to see you during their lunchtime, they’re getting away from their busy lifestyles so they get a break, get spoiled. The salon is where they can relax and be made to feel special and reinvigorated and they leave refreshed.

 
How important are online education facilities like MyHairDresssers.com?

Education is the most important key at becoming successful, because you can do everything that anybody asks. And you have more fun playing with hair, so you can pick up a magazine and say, “That looks cool I’m going to do that hairstyle today.”
 
Time is such a luxury these days, and it’s difficult to spare time to go to many classes. But now you can learn on your iPad, on your iPhone. People can now be educated in every free minute and they decide what they what want to learn, not have to sit through what a teacher wants to teach. MyHairDressers.com is the future, it’s the way to go.
 
Online education is brilliant and MyHairDressers.com came along at the right time with the right people to take hairdressing education to a different level - getting it stylish, modern, new, and delivering to a younger audience with limited money. To me MyHairDressers.com is like a family sharing its knowledge because I don’t believe in holding anything back, I want to give everything I know to my students. MyHairDressers.com reaches a wider audience and a lot more people than I can in class, and that’s what we need to focus on for the future.