Lisa Muscat-Vitale, artistic director at é Salon in Sydney, Australia, collaborates with Robert and Kay Lobetta on a new collection.
After seeing a Fashion World Facebook post—part photograph and part sketch—that blurred the line between what is real and what is not, the award-winning hairstylist was inspired to create a new collection, which she called Virtuality. “Still fixated on this particular image, I began to evaluate the hair, drawn to its transparency,” she says. “From here my thought process moved to fabrics, textures and the possibility of manipulating hair to appear textile.” The creative process began with a photo shoot directed by Robert Lobetta, who sent the photographs to artist Blair Palmer, who sketched each image separately. Then Kay Lobetta worked her post-production magic, seamlessly blending the sketches and the photos so it is nearly impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. Pure genius.
Lisa Muscat-Vitale is fascinated by textiles, the canvas for endless shapes, silhouettes and styles—weaving, puckering, lace and crochet. “The textile here is a basket weave,” she says. “This is a style that has evolved for me, and I really wanted to expose the detail in the weave.”
Lisa Muscat-Vitale is fascinated by textiles, the canvas for endless shapes, silhouettes and styles—weaving, puckering, lace and crochet. “The textile here is a basket weave,” she says. “This is a style that has evolved for me, and I really wanted to expose the detail in the weave.”
“I really wanted to create a mask out of hair,” says Muscat-Vitale, who started at the base and continued to build the shape, using a crocheting method. Again, inspired by the image she saw on Facebook, she was drawn to the dark, smokiness around the eye, which was further accentuated with a wide cat-eye.
The single objective was to create a series of images in which the viewer was unsure as to which part was a photograph and which was a sketch or illustration, thus merging the virtual world with reality. The inspiration behind this look: sheer material and transparency.
The single objective was to create a series of images in which the viewer was unsure as to which part was a photograph and which was a sketch or illustration, thus merging the virtual world with reality. The inspiration behind this look: sheer material and transparency.
“This look was about pushing my own boundaries,” says Vitale-Muscat. “I saw an image of a lace cap and made it my mission to make it out of hair.”
“This look was about pushing my own boundaries,” says Vitale-Muscat. “I saw an image of a lace cap and made it my mission to make it out of hair.”
