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“It was the most emotionally moving experience to have together with our Design Team,” Stenson says. “Our Design Team looks up to us, but we wanted to say, ‘Wait. Stop. There’s someone else you really need to know. There’s someone else who helped us and taught us when we were in your shoes. We wanted our team to feel the emotion of this man and to know how he’s shaped our lives and our careers.”
“With over a thousand locations, the Ulta Beauty family is spread across the country, but Unveiling Beauty comes to them, offering support and “real talk” from industry leaders. “The name ‘Unveiling Beauty’ describes what we’re trying to do with the show,” explains Carver, who is also the Global Creative Director for L'ANZA Healing Haircare. “It’s about removing the curtains.”
On June 10, Unveiling Beauty was about “Conversations That Create Change,” and Pekela Riley, David Lopez and Crystal Banks joined Stenson and Carver to have an open dialogue around racial disparities, diversity and social injustice.
“We’re at a critical moment and we’ve seen some very ugly things in our society,” says Riley, a member of the Ulta Beauty Pro Team. “And we have to address this in our households and our hearts, in our community and in our profession.”
In talking about the importance of blurring the color lines in the salon world, Stenson brought up Ulta Beauty’s goal of ensuring that everyone, no matter their texture type and or ethnicity, feels there is a stylist in the salon to service them. “We have a long way to go because it takes time to teach and train someone on a skill set and to see that they are really good at texture hair,” he said.
Riley agreed. “We don’t want to add diversity, we want to be diverse.”
The conversation between these friends and artists was honest, heartfelt and humbling, as everyone opened-up about the cultural lens through which they viewed the world and how it was often informed by their race. Lopez distilled the definition of the term “white privilege” by recognizing that while many white people have struggled and have worked very hard, “One thing that never held them back is the color of their skin.”
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Story: Alison Alhamed
Hair: Ulta Beauty Pro Team and Design Team
Photographer: Richard Monsieurs
Makeup: Deney Adam, Dmitry Potapov
Fashion stylist: Carlton Jones and Jennifer Daniels
The words that describe our recent reality—social distancing, quarantine—run counter to the collaborative team spirit fostered by the Ulta Beauty Pro Team. This elite squad of stylists have made it their life’s work to connect—with their clients, their peers, their Ulta Beauty family, and their industry. They are also creative problem solvers and within days of enforced COVID-19 closures of Ulta Beauty stores and salons, Senior Vice President, Salon Services and Trend, Nick Stenson and Chief Artistic Director, Ammon Carver, had figured out a way to counterbalance the isolation and loneliness of lockdown in a COVID-19 world. The two launched a multi-tiered program of education and inspiration, involving artists from across their Ulta Beauty family, and released Unveiling Beauty, a video series featuring all things beauty, all things Ulta.
“There has been so much uncertainty during this time,” says Stenson, an award-winning editorial stylist. “We were looking at the industry and at the thousands of beauty professionals who work with Ulta Beauty and we asked ourselves, what can we do to connect us to both. How do we do something that seems uplifting and light in lieu of the heaviness around us? That was how we came up with this idea and once we had it, we put it together in three days.”
UNVEILING BEAUTY, INSPIRING HOPE
In partnership with
products used
Wella Oil
Reflections Luminous
Smoothing oil
Matrix Biolage
Styling Complete Control Hairspray
Kenra Dry
Volume Burst
L’anza Healing
ColorCare Color
Illuminator
Redken Wax Blast
10 Finishing
Hairspray Wax
Matrix Style Link
Mineral Rough Me up
Salt Infused Spray
REAL BEAUTY
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By Anne Moratto
TRENDING BEAUTY
Throughout the year, Ulta Beauty produces hundreds of in-store and onstage events, marketing support videos, and multi-media presentations. The resources available were pivoted to meet working-at-home requirements and Unveiling Beauty was born. Stenson and Carver mapped out a schedule—a mix of stylist-centric and consumer-focused content—and invited their friends to share.
The themes have evolved to meet the needs of the audience. From an early "Avoiding At-Home Hair Catastrophe" to a very creative conversation around "Vivid Color" with Ulta Beauty Pro Team Member Sean Godard and Chrystofer Benson, Matrix Global Artistic Director to "Men’s Grooming" with Ulta Beauty's David Lopez, Anthony Negron and Beto Sanchez.
“Unveiling Beauty has been very well received,” Carver says. “When we first started thinking about this we thought about a three-tier approach: a broadcast with the Ulta Beauty Pro Team; and then a secondary schedule with the 18 members of our Ulta Beauty Design Team. The Design Team was tasked with creating videos on Tuesdays and Thursdays that are very consumer-facing and that go out in the morning and the evening. The third tier involved our Services District Educators (and there are approximately 100 of them). They are making a video a week to provide a sneak peek into the Ulta Beauty Academy Classes.”
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DESIGN BEAUTY
As the fastest growing salon company in the industry, Unveiling
Beauty also tapped the Ulta Beauty Design Team and the field associates in education and operations.
“It offered us an opportunity to show the breadth of talent out there and really stay connected to the industry from a local and national level,” Stenson explains. “Some of our stylists are very grounded in their community, which is great, but we also wanted to offer them a bigger platform, give them more exposure and a jump start to being more well known. When I was coming up, it was so important for me to have people who believed in me and sponsored me. Having this strong digital focus allows us to give them this moment and continue to spotlight them.”
Carver agrees. “It’s been amazing to put something out there that felt like a real bright spot that touched on real topics. We knew that at any given time during this lockdown, there were 20 different LIVES happening so what could we do that would be a little different? I think it’s that combination of technique and very heartfelt sharing.”
“This time in our life has been challenging, “Stenson concludes, “but we want the industry to know-- don’t lose hope, don’t get discouraged, maintain the career that you have, because this blip in the road won’t knock us off course.”
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SELF-CARE BEAUTY
We saw several trends emerge from the COVID-19 lockdown—baking, home improvement projects, and a mania for puzzles. With #selfcaresunday trending every weekend, and face mask sales skyrocketing, it’s clear another trend is a renewed emphasis on at-home beauty and taking time to pamper.
Stenson and Carver hosted a segment of Unveiling Beauty called “All About Skin” and invited their friends to share some of their skin secrets.
Ulta Beauty Skin Experts Enrique Torres and Heather Rubin, and Ulta Beauty Pro Team Member David Lopez, broke down cleansers, masks, roller balls, and took questions, live.
“Now that I’ve been home and doing all these lives, I’m extra aware of my skin,” Carver says. “And while I come from a hair background, not necessarily a skin background, it’s all beauty.
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MAKE BEAUTY
As the world responds to the changes brought about by COVID-19, stylists want to get their hands in hair and clients want to get back in the chair. Ulta Beauty offers beauty professionals an environment where, every day, they are “unveiling beauty.”
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MAKE BEAUTY WITH
www.modernsalon.com
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