And you think you work long days? Ruth shares the styling techniques she used to create these three glamorous looks for Amerie's new music video.

A lot of you may know Amerie from her hit single One Thing. I got to know her really well recently, when I worked on her video for the title track for Touch, her latest CD.

 Ruth Roche
Ruth Roche

The shoot went on for 22 hours and was shot in LA, both in a nightclub and on a jungle set created in a parking lot the day of the shoot. I worked with makeup artist Eric Spearman, and we started getting her ready at 3 A.M. What a day!

 To create this messy bed-head, I set Amerie's hair with a large barrel iron and back-combed it at the roots, mostly in the crown. As she played with her hair in the scene, it became perfectly tousled and appropriately "wrecked."
To create this messy bed-head, I set Amerie's hair with a large barrel iron and back-combed it at the roots, mostly in the crown. As she played with her hair in the scene, it became perfectly tousled and appropriately "wrecked."

In all, we created three different looks for Amerie. Because she dances—and I mean, really dances—during almost every scene, her hair had to be able to move and still look great. So we kept the products, especially hairspray, to a minimum. We also had to retouch her hair with an iron throughout the day; not only was she whipping it around in the dance segments, it also kept raining on and off.

This futuristic Japanese-inspired look is elegant and sexy. I pulled her hair   back smooth and sleek into two ponytails, one at the crown and one at the nape, leaving out a top Mohawk section to smooth back and over the crown. Using elastics, I created "bubbles" down the length of the ponytails, pinned them into place and intertwined a thicker braid within them.
This futuristic Japanese-inspired look is elegant and sexy. I pulled her hair back smooth and sleek into two ponytails, one at the crown and one at the nape, leaving out a top Mohawk section to smooth back and over the crown. Using elastics, I created "bubbles" down the length of the ponytails, pinned them into place and intertwined a thicker braid within them.

But when all was said and done, despite the incredibly long hours, everything worked out perfectly. Amerie looked gorgeous, and I'm sure a great video will come out of it. Following are the techniques I used to create the different looks.

Amerie described this as "mermaid waves"—long and layered, but without a lot of volume. I center-parted the hair and wrapped it around the iron from roots to ends. This keeps the hair flatter and wavier, rather than producing bouncy curls.
Amerie described this as "mermaid waves"—long and layered, but without a lot of volume. I center-parted the hair and wrapped it around the iron from roots to ends. This keeps the hair flatter and wavier, rather than producing bouncy curls.

E-mail Ruth at [email protected]. To find out more about RARE education with Ruth Roche, visit www.rarenyc.com, or call (866) RARE-NYC.