There's another opportunity coming up to learn some tress tricks from a hair star, this time Kevin Murphy, whose has the distinction of being the hair director of Melbourne's spring fashion week. On October 22, 7-9 pm, for $45 at the Ace Hotel Cleaners, you can join him for in-depth demos on live models, with drink and appetizers to follow. Call 800-251-4247 x. 226 to register.

Murphy's long wavy handiwork on the runway.

What is it about mustaches that automatically turn people into serial rapists? Check out this 1973 commercial for Quick Curl Barbie and Mod Hair Ken, where Barbie gets carried away by Ken's new rape-o 'stache… LITERALLY!

Do you buy hair magazines even if you're not getting a haircut anytime soon and have had the same 'do for the past five years? Are the extravagant coifs your favorite part of runway shows? Well, tonight you're in luck! Four talented Portland stylists had entries accepted for the NAHA competition (North American Hairstylist Award), the most prestigious and selective honor in the industry. For first Thursday, the stylists will be presenting pictures as well as live demonstrations of the styles they entered for the "NAHA Night of Art and Fashion" at the EWF Modern showroom in the Pearl (1122 NW Glisan). There's no cover charge and there will be pie from the Pie Spot, so you kind of don't have any excuse to not go.

So last week, we offered one lucky reader a complete hair makeover with Dayna at Belle Epoque salon. The lovely Petra Whitacre emailed us with this complaint: "I'm tired of being mistaken for a teenager, and also being mistaken for a goody two shoes."
While I can't really sympathize with being mistaken for a teenager (unfortunately) I do know what it's like to want to look like you could, maybe, if there wasn't, like, a test or anything that day, cut class.
See Petra's transformation (plus tips from Dayna for maintaining colored hair) after the jump!
Petra before:

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Have you had the same hair for more than two years? Are you bored? Did you just go through a bad breakup? Time for a makeover!
Everyone loves a makeover. Especially me. Which is why I arranged a makeover giveaway with the fantastic Belle Epoque Salon. One MOD reader will win a complete makeover—consultation with owner and master stylist Dayna Cakebread, cut, color and her photo here, for all the world to see.
Email Dayna a photo, why you want new hair and what you'd like your new hair to look like by next Friday, July 24th.
Just make sure you're ready for a complete new look. I want some very dramatic before and after photos to post, okay?
Email Dayna at: daynacakebread@hotmail.com.

Oh Drew! You can do no wrong.

I find it somehow charming that this contest is sponsored by the Northwest Resource Credit Union (there you go, guys—got me). The Hot Hair Challenge is this: You make an appointment at one of the participating salons for a cut or style (Orchid Salon, Bella Pearl, Bob Shop, Hello Gorgeous, Blue Chair Salon, Leepin Lizards, Blades Hair Studio, Europa Hair Salon, Pulse, Pigment, Rootz, and Grace Hair Salon). When you're all done, they take a photo of you which is then posted on the Hot Hair Challenge Flickr page. Then you round up everyone you know to dogpile the Flickr page with positive* comments on your hairdo—the winner with the highest volume of comments when the contest closes ("around July 22nd," with winners announced on August 10th) will get a $100 gift certificate to the salon that did you right, and the stylist will walk with a $100 Visa gift card, and everyone else is reminded that local credit unions with all their clean(er) hands and personalities and stuff are lookin' pretty cute these post-economic-apocalypse days.

While you get on it with that, the Flickr page is meanwhile filled with placeholder images of celeb portraits of yore. This one is given pride of place at the top of the page—nice choice.

*Perhaps (okay, it's quite likely), the ingrates in Blogtown's comment section (which is not to say, of course, that they are all ingrates) have jaded me, but my first thought was a fear of, um, less than positive comments. Let's hope someone's keeping an editorial eye out over there, yeah?

There's a new line of haircare products created by Portland stylist Thad Grace of of Grace Salon, called Mada, which I've been using on my own hair for the past couple weeks. (Caveat for the religiously locavoric: the products themselves are manufactured in Canada.)

The essential challenge with marketing hair and beauty products is that there are too many on the market, and most of the decent ones are interchangeable. As someone who's had a lifelong fascination with beauty products, half the joy is just changing the scenery in my bathroom, trying something new every time. Something has to be downright life-altering to extract anything resembling brand loyalty. And as I've waded, happily fickle, through the many great products on the market guided by recommendations, promotions, and occasionally politics, my preferences are often defined just by what smells nice.

One of the side effects of this over-saturation of product options is that new products are left to the uphill challenge of attracting attention and distinguishing themselves from the fray. Mada has taken one such tactic with their shampoos, which come in spray form. The press materials that accompanied my samples reasoned, among other advantages, that the innovative spray bottle delivery would enable greater "accuracy." I have never in my post-No More Tears shampoo life suffered from inaccurate shampooing (even in my days of dyed-red, roots-only aiming), but I like a novel application of product as well as the next gal, and like I said I'm sympathetic to the need to differentiate.

That said, there's just no getting around the fact that this is a bad idea. It is simply impossible to spray a sufficient amount of shampoo on your head to get a decent lather without also inhaling a fair amount of the spray. The shampoo once applied performs perfectly well, but it just doesn't make sense that it should come at the cost of coughing on chemicals in the shower.

I also tried a spray conditioner with SPF and a shine spray, the effects of both somewhat difficult to gauge, being that on the first couple applications I apparently over-applied, and my hair looked greasy, which scared me off of anything but the lightest spritz. (Note: the conditioner can be used in between washings on dry hair but is no stand-in for an oil absorbing powder.) The one product I absolutely love from Mada is the hydrating (non-spray!) conditioner:

This is whipped delightfully light, almost like a foam, and it instantly melts any tangles completely out of my long hair. I can run my fingers all the way through without it snagging in the shower, without any combing or pre-shower brushing, and I don't have to use gratuitous amounts of it to get the effect. It's awesome.

Another neat trick Mada has up its sleeve is that you can enter information on your hair type through a web site function called Mada for Me, where you plug in info about your hair type for product recommendations. Never mind that my relatively simple criteria (long, wavy, untreated) yielded no less than seven products—the joy of digitized customization still has not worn off since it was introduced in the makeup sections of drug stores when I was just a wee product obsessive, and it's easy enough to edit suggestions down to what you'll actually use.

Oh, and most important: the scent is one of the better ones. Find Mada online, and look for it at Grace Salon and others in the Northwest.