American Crew Hosts Opening Night in Chicago

From Top, Left to Right: As a crowd of beauty pros looked on, Colomer's Carlos Colomer signed a check for an $85,000 donation to Hairdressers Unlocking Hope; American Crew founder David Raccuglia addressed the crowd; Crew artists channeled Dean Martin to reinvent Rat Pack hair; gravity-defying hair took center stage in Crew's Matic presentation; male models in the Matic presentation featured clean cuts with lots of texture and volume; Crew's American Gothic segment showcased goth hair with a sci-fi edge.

It was standing room only when American Crew presented its much-anticipated 2008 trend collection to a packed crowd of beauty aficionados in March, during America's Beauty Show (ABS) in Chicago. The sold-out evening event brought men's hair and fashion trends to the forefront with a lively runway show spotlighting eight segments.

To wit: American Gothic, where goth met sci-fi; Rat Pack, Crew's take on a modern-day Dean Martin; Jeremiah, starring rugged Western frontiersmen; and Ralph Machismo—thinkDirty Rotten Scoundrelsin flip-flops. Also taking center stage were Steven Cox's and Daniel Silver's 2008–2009 fall/winter collection for Duckie Brown; New Folk, a homage to Bob Dylan, inspired by the movieI'm Not There; One Night Only, American Crew's annual presentation of avant-garde looks; and Matic, the debut of American Crew's 2008 collection of gravity-defying hair.

Clockwise, from Above: Crew models sported beards in the Jeremiah segment that paid tribute to gritty and rugged Western frontiersmen; the New Folk segment featured Dylan-inspired 'dos; another look from the Jeremiah segment.

"We really let American Crew's true colors show," said Craig Hanson, artistic director for the Colomer Salon Division. Hanson and Artistic Director Paul Wilson set the trends for this year's opening night event, while members of the company's international artistic team flew in from around the globe to help create looks for the show. "We featured lots of red, white and blue that paid homage to Americana, but in a goth kind of way," Hanson said.

To cap off the exhilarating weekend at ABS, American Crew, Art + Science Salons, Colomer USA and hundreds of caring salon professionals put down their scissors and products and picked up their wallets to raise more than $80,000 to build a home in New Orleans for victims of Hurricane Katrina through Hairdressers Unlocking Hope and Habitat for Humanity. "Hairdressers Unlocking Hope is a phenomenal organization that is truly committed to involving the worldwide community of hairdressers with the devastated community of New Orleans to make its people look and feel beautiful again," said Dan Easton, senior vice president of marketing for the Colomer Salon Division. "We couldn't be more proud to be involved in such a worthwhile endeavor." —K.D.