Instagram Feature: Mustafa Avci
There are some types of beauty that seem larger than life. Decades of perfect, flowing hair on the silver screen has made the Hollywood wave seem inaccessible to the “mere mortal.” Your typical client is left with a sense unreality and helplessness when she watches flowing hair, beaming with film set lighting, as the princess walks into the ballroom to the building cacophony of dramatic string music. But New York salon owner Mustafa Avci is turning the light back toward the people. He has spent years mastering the fingerwave and updo and is now spreading his knowledge throughout the world with his workshops, teaching stylists how to give their clients the leading role look.
Mustafa came from Turkey and chose New York to start his American beauty career. He spent 11 years training in an upscale salon before breaking out on his own and opening Salon M in Brooklyn. Now, 7 years later, he's one of the most valuable beauty educators in the country. He's been flying back and forth across the states, running classes in LA and our very own Sacramento, before shooting back to New York. He has even teamed up with another one of our favorite stylists and masterful updo artist, Laura Kaszoni ( of lalas updos), to help run his workshops. Modern Salon has featured Mustafa a half dozen times, with good reason. So if you're looking for quick tips from Mustafa, they're easy to find.
His work personifies elegance and precision. Despite the free-floating ethereal look of his waves, he has a specific process by which he creates them. It's not simply a matter of wrapping up the hair with him. Mustafa curls the hair in brick patterns in order to give the sections more room. This way he can make the sections wider, and it adds volume once he lets the hair down. Modern Salon shot a video of Mustafa where he shows you what he does a little better than we explain here. But the point is, that loose-hanging hair is the product of a long trained knowledge.
Like any good artist, his path to success was paved with practice. The wonders he makes with hair don't just come from creativity or raw talent. He now has 20 years of experience as a professional stylist, and his days have been spent combing his fingers to the bone. The updos and fingerwaves you see here were made with techniques developed through long years of trial and error so he can bring another level of glamour to his clients. Life is not a movie, but that doesn't mean stylists can't give their clients elements of a movie. That's one of the beautiful things about stylists: they empower people.
You can try to track Mustafa down for one of his workshops through his workshop site. Or if you just want to stay updated with his hair creations (which we highly recommend), you should definitely follow his instagram @hairsalonm.
And while you're at it, you should stay updated on other great stylists by following us @salon_guys. Mustafa is unique, and one of the best in the business, but there's always another amazing talent out there to get inspired by, and we’re always on the lookout for them.
Keep styling, everyone.