Balayage: A New Trend in Hair Color

By Anne Hunter

Photography by Christie Kline

“Your hair represents the statement that you are giving to the world. It’s important to represent yourself well,” says Jennifer Albert, Balayage artist for Frederic Fekkai Fifth Avenue. “I love Balayage because it allows me, as an artist, to create personalized looks for my clients.” Albert believes that painting hair is like creating a work of art. “When I see someone, I envision the movement of their hair and a look that defines their spirit. With a paintbrush, I bring out their beauty, power, youth, and confidence—their essence.”

Balayage is a French highlighting technique that involves hand painting the hair with shades of color by way of artistic sweeping motions of the hand. It delivers a canvas of sun-kissed color to the hair, with softer and less noticeable regrowth lines than traditional foil or cap highlighting, making the mane a walking work of art. The low-maintenance look grows out beautifully and more naturally than foil highlighting and this French-favored technique is also choice for celebrities in New York City and around the globe for its low key, new urban style. 

Press rewind to find those summer days of youth; the best benefit of Balayage is time travel. “When I look at someone, I think of them as a child. People think that their natural adult color is their true hair color, but your true color is really defined in youth,” explains Albert. “Your hair is always light around the face and on the ends when you are young. I stay within one to two shades of the natural base when I am painting and I lift out the youthful color naturally.”

Not only is Balayage easy to maintain, it’s also not harsh on the hair, which is a huge benefit in protecting your hair from the chemicals and heating that it suffers from foils. “The more I work on it, the better it becomes,” Albert says. “Within three Balayage treatments you start to see a transformation. It varies as you personalize it for each person. There are no rules. This is art.”

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Albert.

The quest of the artist is expression; to find the authenticity in your life and live out of your own soul. “I grew up in a very small town outside of Chicago where being a professional artist is not even heard of,” Albert admits, “but I could look at a woman and know from the second we met exactly how I could enhance her beauty and features.” Albert became a hairstylist, but that wasn’t enough; she sought mediums for expressing her creativity. “An instructor named Nancy Bronze came to our salon one day. She brought a paintbrush and a paddle and taught me the Balayage technique. When I saw her using a paintbrush to create what I was already so passionate about, I never touched a foil again, because now I could use a brush to paint on a living canvas—the hair of my clients.”

It was this passion that led Jennifer to become a full-time artist. “Balayage brought me to New York City and transitioned me into the woman I am becoming today,” she says. “I am a stronger, well-rounded businesswoman and artist. Manhattan has helped open the doors for me to become a better person all around. Because of this, I’ve grown closer to other artists and neighborhoods in the city, and as a result, I’ve also become a dancer.”

The looks on her clients’ faces are Albert’s reward for her hard work and passion. “I can see that I made them feel confident, youthful, and sexy in their energy. I feed off of that. I love it. I never get tired of it. It’s not a job. It’s a beautiful way to complete myself and to recognize that I am an artist. I love painting, I love music, I love dance … I love the expressive industry.”

As an artist who lives her life by inspiration, Albert also inspires others. “What I do for a living has been pulling through life. I’ve always had a natural energy pulling me to follow my dreams. As a young girl, I followed my passion for art because it was the only expressive language for me, and because of that I’m now living my dreams. This is who I am. It has allowed me to not listen to society but to listen to my inner self instead. I follow art because it is the only expressive language for me. It makes me feel good, and because of that I’m living. I’m extremely grateful that I’m allowed to live my life that way. It’s not brave, it’s natural—a natural instinct.”