Hairdressing legend Antoinette Beenders needs no introduction – but here’s one anyway. As the Senior Vice President of Global Artistry for Aveda, the Dutch-born, American-based, world-famous hair artist was recently in Australia as a headliner at the MANE STAGE education event, receiving the award for AHFA Icon of The Year 2024 at the Australian Hair Fashion Awards. In the midst of this frenetic trip, we were fortunate to sit down with Antoinette to discuss her many achievements and her pertinent thoughts on the current and future hair industry.

The trip followed a few weeks that included New York Fashion Week and shows in London and Paris, and preceded a trip to Canada the next week, before launching a new campaign back home in Minneapolis  – otherwise known as a regular month for Antoinette. With travel to, experience in and what she calls a “love affair” with Australian hair since working with Trevor Sorbie since the ‘90s, this trip marked another milestone for Antoinette amidst a career of inimitable milestones.

“Being recognised the other day as the first female, in 32 years of the Australian hair industry, as the first female icon, that to me is a highlight of my career, it makes me emotional,” she shared. “I was also one of the very first female British Hairdressers and London Hairdressers [of the Year]. Our industry is 98 per cent female, practically, but if you look at who’s getting the accolades, it’s a lot of the boys. I’d like to think I’ve given a lot of women insight that you can do it. I’m also someone who comes from a small town who wanted to make a career in hairdressing, and I did it. It’s just hard work. You’ve got to push a little bit harder.”

Among Antoinette’s well-deserved points of pride is her role as Corporate Creative Director for Estée Lauder Companies, which she ascended to on an unorthodox ladder, without a graphic design degree and as a creative. It’s a role that has Antoinette oversee 35 graphic designers, copywriters and store designers.

“If you really want something, you can do it, it doesn’t matter whether you have a degree or not. I just did it through work and through my dedication and my advocacy and my passion,” she said.

With this storied experience, Antoinette is keeping a keen eye on the state of the global hair industry, with a myriad of emerging business trends catching her eye. The rise of independent hair and working with younger generations who expect a better work life balance are key salon considerations. In product development, Antoinette noted rapid innovation centring  modern consumer needs around curly hair products and textured hair education, the rise of hair extensions, as well as hair loss, with this year’s third iteration of Invati, titled Invati Ultra, aiding hair density by up to 85 per cent. Scalp care and the ‘skinification’ of hair technology is vital to this modern evolution, with the brand’s Scalp Care range essential for hydration, sebum-control and hair quality and growth. This is all under Aveda’s umbrella of brand-defining sustainability.

“I’ve been with Aveda for 27 years. If I look at where we have come from to where we are now, is absolutely mind boggling,” Antoinette said. “I’m very proud of working for them because we’ve got over 45 years of innovation and plant knowledge. We have our own lab and our own in-house perfume lab, which is all organic-based and made with natural-based oils. It’s fascinating how plant innovation has become so advanced in the last 40 years.”

From the past to the present to looking ahead to the future of the industry, the newest expression of Antoinette’s editorial work, titled Astral, collaborated with a digital engineer to harness the power of AI, without having it replace or overwhelm actual hair art. For a hair artist who is more used to the holistic side of hair, Antoinette is embracing the digital possibilities in the creation process. She credits technology in how it can elevate and aid creative possibilities, where Astral is supported by AI in its videography, backdrops and fashion, while the true hair art and real models retain full integrity. Antoinette also thinks technology can significantly enable salons through booking and operation systems.

“I think AI is coming at us with a vengeance and a lot of hairdressers are very scared and nervous,” she said. “I think we are already using AI. Look at Uber look, look at ChatGPT. It’s part of our life. We’re living in a digital revolution. When I was in England, I said to my fellow hairdressing friend ‘stop being so scared, we didn’t have the internet 20 or 30 years ago, now we use that every day’. You have to find a way of doing it. For us as a hair industry, we’re quite safe because we have the power of touch. I would be much more worried if I wasn’t in a job that didn’t touch people, because touch is the hardest to replicate.”

This technology adds to Antoinette’s timeless creative process. She grew up in an editorial landscape thanks to her father’s role as a photographer, in a perspective-defining dynamic through which she continues to share her work with him. Through this process, she sees herself as a “sponge” that’s always picking up points of inspiration, everywhere from her extensive travel to social media and beyond, while admittedly hoarding hair that also adds to her repertoire. With a self-appointed title as the “queen of PowerPoint”, she combines these aesthetic highlights and starts creating the story.

“For me, creativity is all about storytelling,” she said. “It’s part of me. I have about 70,000 pictures on my phone, I take pictures of everything. I’m the daughter of a photographer, so I’m photographing everything all the time, every day. I’m very much a thinker. I want to know how things are done. I love observing people, observing nature and I like learning. I’m always curious and I’ve got a childlike brain. I look at things very unfiltered.”

“I remember being a kid, my father really changed my perceptions so that I look at things differently. It’s funny, because you can walk down the street every day and just go from A to B, or you can walk on the street and just look around you. I’m not always like that, because if I’m on a mission, I’m on a mission. Trevor Sorbie always used to say ‘you’re like a horse with two flaps’. I’m super focused, but I’m very much a dreamer. I think I live very much in my head.”

Within her incomparable career, Aveda is at the heart of it, giving her free reign to design her own collections, supporting her in the event and stage space, starting with their renowned Congress events, and pairing her with fashion-forward and couture labels backstage, such as Stella McCartney or Iris van Herpen, which holds special pride of place for Antoinette given their artistic connections and shared Dutch backgrounds. From editorial partnerships to ready-to-wear trends, product innovation and industry-building education, Antoinette espouses, more than anyone, the power of Aveda as a creative hub and a family.

“They don’t tell me what to do,” she said. “I can just do my thing of what I want to do. So, I wear a lot of different hats. We have over 50,000 hairdressers as Aveda artists in the world and they are the heartbeat of the Aveda brand. We make a beautiful product that is naturally derived, the highest efficacy, high performance, plant-based hair care in a very sustainable and conscious way but, at the end of the day, it’s the artistry that makes Aveda, because they take that product and turn it into something emotional and very powerful, and they are really are our everyday heroes behind the chair. I’m very passionate about that, so it’s my job to inspire them, to educate them and to mentor them.”

Aveda and Antoinette’s mentorship has built a generation of award-winning talents and that sense of purpose is one of many reasons Antoinette has stayed with the brand for close to three decades. A commitment to the planet, with vegan, B Corp certified, Leaping Bunny approved, plant-based products is just the beginning, with vegan events, education on environmentalism and a healthy approach anchoring the brand.

“It’s not just what’s on the shelf. It’s a lifestyle, it changed my life, it really did. I ended up becoming mostly vegetarian. I stopped smoking 27 years ago. It’s very nice to have a brand that really promotes healthy living, and bring that into an industry that’s not so healthy living,” she said.

“Listen, I ain’t moving. I’m staying forever, I’m not leaving, they’ll have to kick me out,” she laughed.

With this partnership made in heaven, creativity stemming from her youth, from the heart, to the eye to the set, and more awards still cascading onto the mantle, we look forward to the next decades of Antoinette’s industry leadership.

For more information visit www.aveda.com.au

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