InStyle's Hairstyle Try-On Ipad App
Besides revolutionizing how you buy products and read content online, the iPad has also changed daily life from how women find the perfect lip shade to how men buy engagement rings. Now tablets are giving your hair a makeover too.
The Times has noticed a new, digital trend among New York hair salons: using iPads instead of magazines for hair inspiration and easy reading. Besides allowing for gorgeous visuals that pop, the iPad provides timely celebrity looks that even a weekly magazine can’t keep up with.
Ms. Rummo [of Salon AKS] said that she spends up to 20 minutes consulting with a client over different looks using the free MyGallery app. And unlike the months-old images found in dusty tear-sheet albums, ones on the iPad allow for up-to-the-minute results. For example, the salon downloaded images from the 2011 Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute gala for its clients the next day.
And as anyone who’s ever used the search function knows, the internet is the perfect antidote to finding the most esoteric hairstyle.
“If someone comes in and asks a younger stylist for a Veronica Lake look, the stylist might have no idea who that is,” Ms. Rummo said. With the iPad, stumped hairdressers can now call up pictures of Ms. Lake, the 1940s actress famous for her peekaboo waves.
At some salons, iPads are even used in place of magazines for easy reading.
It’s not just the stately Fifth Avenue salons that are using tablets. In Little Korea on East 32nd Street, Aate Beauty Salon has the devices stuck to the wall with Velcro in front of each chair. But it uses them more to entertain clients than to consult with them.
Magazines have been worried about the iPad’s dominance and scrambled to develop fun and engaging apps themselves (see Seventeen and Glamour, among many others). In fact, thanks to InStyle’s Hairstyle Try-On app, women can experiment with new celebrity cuts before their appointment. Similar to Lancome’s virtual makeup tool, women upload a photo before trying on endless hairstyles based on face type, celebrity, length, color, and style. What’s impressive about InStyle’s app is that instead of being a stagnant tool, the living app updates its looks twice a month in addition to offering a salon finder feature selected by InStyle editors.
Granted, we doubt this iPad trend is sweeping every salon in America, but we wouldn’t be surprised if that was commonplace in the next five years.
