ARLINGTON — Chris Elliott, of Studio 5 Hair Design in Arlington, can finally show off the fruits of her national-level competition with top hair stylists from across the country.
In July of last year, Elliott was invited by SO.CAP.USA hair extensions to join their six-member hair extension team, made up of SO.CAP.USA’s top hair stylists from Washington and Oregon, at a hair-styling competition in Los Angeles for “the top salons in the United States,” which included thousands of entrants, counting both teams of stylists and individual stylists.
“Since some of the salons were local, they were able to submit as many as 10 entries each,” Elliott said. “Because our team was from out of town, we only had three models to work with, once we got there, but it was a big project. We spent three to four hours on each model, plus the work done by the professional makeup artists in our team.”
Elliott’s hard work paid off, since not only did one of her hair models get chosen for, and published in, the recently released latest edition of Passion, an international hair extension book published once every two years and “found in the majority of top hair salons,” but she was also chosen as the regional distributor of Euro SO.CAP heat fusion flat-wrap hair extensions.
“I’m proud to represent a small town, and show that we can keep up with current trends enough to compete with the big boys,” Elliott said. “We were going up against red-carpet celebrity hair stylists, and we still pushed the envelope.”
Elliott and her fellow Studio 5 hair stylists, Randi Mitchell and Jodi Hoover, also entered a cover photo competition for Northwest Stylist Magazine. Hoover served as the model, while Elliott and Mitchell “went to town, transforming her into the ultimate diva.” Elliott added blue hair extensions to Hoover’s hair, “creating a fabulous mane of hot locks,” and Mitchell “vamped up” her makeup, “with a look straight from the runway.” Out of an estimated 200 entries, Studio 5’s submission placed fourth, which Elliott deemed “not bad for three small-town girls.”