Miza Mayi is a talented artist. Her beautiful voice can create a perfect mix between soul, electro-pop, electric jazz, lounge, and funky. She was born in Kinshasa, her father is Italian and her mother is Congolese, so she grew up between the cultures and traditions of both nations. The name she chose is the perfect summary of her “Voice”. Indeed, Miza means queen and Mayi means water (in Lingali, her mother tongue): “Water can be delicate and sweet but also destructive. My voice is like that too”, says Miza. She considers change as a constant in life. Therefore, being versatile becomes necessary when you want to live knowing how to approach every event. Her passion for music comes from the idea that music is a universal language capable of connecting people through sound vibrations. Versatility is the voice of Miza Mayi; listen to her interview to find out much more about her.
Health: this is the word that represents Michela Coppa's voice. After 10 years of working in television, she decided to let her passion become a real profession. Michela chooses Social Media channels to show a snapshot of her life; she started posting recipes related to her eating habits and diet. Her followers love her healthy and creative approach to cooking. After a trip to India, she enriched her research for a new lifestyle focused on soul and body with a new great passion: yoga. Yoga became an essential part of her life and Michela decided to share her experience with as many people as possible. Not only as a passion but also as a job. Today Michela is an entrepreneur in wellness training, holding healthy cooking and yoga courses. Her goal is to spread the message that yoga, combined with the right diet, helps you to live your life to the fullest. Taking care of our body and spirit teaches us to love ourselves more and to strengthen our resilience, which is fundamental in times of a pandemic. Michela’s biggest wish is to teach her daughter a healthy and conscious lifestyle, inspired by freedom and love. In the interview she gave us, Michela talks about acceptance, yoga, meditation, and the ideal world that she would like to give to her daughter. Watch the interview!
Angela Lei is a young businesswoman, born in Italy with Chinese roots. Thanks to her entrepreneurial spirit she decides soon to open a Chinese restaurant in Milan. Not a place like any other, but a place spreading out the gastronomic culture of her country. Her restaurant specializes in traditional cuisine from Wuhan, the region located in the southeast of China, at the confluence of the Han River with the Blue River. Angela is happy to be in Milan, where her effort is amply rewarded by the curiosity of her clients, passionate about the stories that she tells in the presentation of each recipe. Angela is an intercultural and brilliant woman who loves to share knowledge and experiences. Don't miss this interview
Sara Strambini is an actress and model. She promoted a new style of presenting TV shows, very ironic and engaging. Sara believes in the importance of the word “change”. She is one of those people who does not undergo change, but who seeks it. Today Sara continues to be an innovator, even cultivating a sense of authenticity without forgetting her origins. It's not a secret that she was born in a small provincial village, from a large family, and grew up with a patriarchal model. Despite the traditions her ideas are very progressive: organic food at km 0, enjoying the pleasures of food while respecting health, limiting travel, and preferring green vehicles. Watch the interview and listen to the voice brought by Sara Strambini!
Modern Salon October 18, 2021 Great Lengths USA, the leading company for professional-use only, premium hair extensions, has announced the appointment of award-winning hairstylist Justine Marjan as its U.S. Brand Ambassador. In her role as Great Lengths USA Brand Ambassador, Marjan will help to educate both the salon community as well as consumers about Great Lengths by serving as a voice and content creator through editorial, social media and industry events. As the leader in ethically sourced human hair, Great Lengths is the only extension brand that can guarantee ethicality based on tracking mechanisms the brand has in place, and Marjan will serve as a voice in educating the importance of quality and ethically sourced hair. “We couldn’t be more excited to have Justine on board,” says Michael Napolitano, Chief Executive Officer at HairUWear, Great Lengths USA’s parent company. “Her authority within the beauty industry will lend credibility and awareness to promote Great Lengths’ growth in the U.S., and we look forward to this partnership.” With over 15 years of experience styling hair, Marjan’s career began in the salon world prior to transitioning to celebrity and editorial styling. Her celebrity and editorial work has been featured in Teen Vogue, Glamour, Allure, Elle, InStyle, People Style, Refinery29, US Weekly and more. She was the lead hair stylist for 2019 and 2020’s Bravo’s Project Runway and she regularly serves as a judge for beauty awards held by various outlets, including Glamour and InStyle, and recently was a judge for the prestigious The North American Hairstyling Awards (NAHA) in 2020. A beauty influencer in her own right, Justine has over 400,000 followers on Instagram, where she shares her tips, tricks and client work with her fans and followers. “I’m thrilled to be working with Great Lengths to highlight their brand story with others and speak to the incredibly high quality of the products, since I so often use hair extensions on my own clients,” she says. “It’s a simple way to instantly transform their look. I also love that the brand uses double-drawn Remy hair that is ethically sourced, which makes every hairstyle look like it was created with healthy, natural hair.”
Allure.com September 13, 2021 Getty Images Jennifer Lopez may have surprised everyone when she unexpectedly showed up at the VMAs as a presenter, but we were fully prepared for the icon's arrival at the 2021 Met Gala. OK, that's not entirely true — one can never truly be prepared for JLo is going to bring to the red carpet other than glamour, and considering it's fashion's biggest night of the year, it calls for a beauty look that lives up to the moment. In the past, Lopez has left onlookers in awe with her Met Gala gorgeousness. She wore a sleekly pulled-back yet long and flowy retro hairstyle to go with her equally long and flowy frock at the 2017 Met Gala. Her 2018 look went in the completely opposite direction when she cut off her hair into a bob mere moments before her arrival. And we couldn't even see her hair in 2019 because she wore a dangling beaded headpiece. Once again this year, it's a bit hard to spot Lopez's hair thanks to the cowboy hat she wore atop a look styled by hairstylist Lorenzo Martin for Wella Professionals. Catch her from the side or behind, however, and you can see she's wearing a super long, teased ponytail, the rugged texture going perfectly with her sparkling western-inspired Ralph Lauren look. (And yes, that's faux fur.) To create the long pony we added Great Lengths 20 tape-ins, Martin shared, adding that he teased the hair with GHD Tail Comb at the roots before clipping it in for an stronger hold and then followed up by curling the hair with GHD Curve Soft Curl Iron. He then mixed Wella EIMI Dry Me Shampoo with the Wella Shape Shift Molding Gum with Shine Finish for texture. Makeup artist Scott Barnes gave Lopez a very-true-to-JLo look, with a pinky-nude lip, golden, glowing skin, and smoldering smoky eyes. And you can bet her skin was prepped with her own JLo Beauty products, starting with her That Hit Single Gel Cream Cleanser and culminating with That Star Filter Complexion Booster.
It was her own frustration at not being able to grow her hair past her shoulders that set Ursula Sienko on a search that ultimately resulted in a business concept. “Once I experienced my Great Lengths Extensions in my hair, I knew I wanted to share that with other women,” she says. Sienko, a master extension artist, has opened three locations of her Hair Fusion Bar—one in New Jersey and two in Illinois. She and her team perform her signature hair extension services using Great Lengths and the HairUWear family of brands. “Nothing makes me happier than to watch the smile and sense of confidence that appears after a service,” says Sienko. “It’s so rewarding to transform our client’s lives while providing a financially rewarding career for our stylists.” Tailor Made Experience At her locations, the artists have been trained by Sienko and every extension service is carefully customized to meet the desired needs of each client. “After the stylists have received Great Lengths certification, I stand side-by-side with them until they master the craft. It has to be done the correct way.” A thorough consultation kickstarts each service; this allows client and extension expert to ask questions, get answers, and form a plan. “This is not one size fi ts all,” Sienko explains. “We customize the hair to fi t their hair density. We go over the hair extension samples and all the details involved in creating their desired look.” For a stylist looking to specialize or for a salon considering an extension system, the quality of the extension hair is extremely important. But equally crucial is a good quality bond or attachment on the extension, Sienko says. “This is something that not everyone talks about but it’s so important. When a Great Lengths bond gets wet, it expands and contracts, just as your hair would, naturally. This is because it’s a keratin protein bond, and it acts like hair would act.” The acceptance and popularity of extensions has greatly increased since she fi rst discovered Great Lengths, Sienko concludes. “We can accomplish so much with extensions—the opportunity for this line of revenue has never been greater.” In a video interview with MODERN SALON, Sienko explains that what she provides is a truly, one-of-a-kind experience.
A deep dive into crafting the Ferrari of hair extensions. WEEKS BEFORE NEWS REPORTS AND TRAVE ADVISORIES, PAIGE STABLES FLEW TO ROME IN SEARCH OF THE BEST HAIR EXTENSIONS IN THE WORLD. SHE FOUND SO MUCH MORE. Allure - May 2020 Let’s start with the dinner. There was the handmade fettucine swirled to perfection and topped with a dainty dollop of caviar. There were no less than four separate breads that had scarcely left the oven before they were in my mouth. Food, as the world knows, is a very worthy reason to go to Rome. But it’s not why I was there. It was late January, and I was there to meet with a man named Fabio Antonino, the CEO of the hair extensions company Great Lengths. Just as I left, Rome confirmed its first case of COVID-19. Shortly thereafter, the entire country was on a lockdown of unprecedented scale. But in late January, that earlier, more innocent pre-global-pandemic era, Antonino and I sipped espresso and talked about hair. Antonino’s extensions are some of the best in the world, and at that first meeting, I had little idea how little I knew. The hair extensions found inmore than 40,000 salons in over50 countries are made in the Italian town of Nepi, in exurban Rome. They are made of human hair from India, sourced from a ritual known as tonsuring, a religious practice where hair is voluntarily sacrificed and donated. The extensions gleam in the sunlight. They are richly colored, not by box dye but by thousands of shades coming together to form a kind of genetic tapestry. These are the Ferraris of extensions—so natural, so delicate, they could have grown out of your head. (But they didn’t, and that’s why Great Lengths exists.) Inside Great Lengths headquarters, over 200 pounds of hair is processed daily. During my visit, I saw a room filled with women silently focused on handfuls of hair. Some were carefully combing strands; some were snipping the ends with the skill of a surgeon. And not a single one registered my presence. There was a long table, completely covered in blonde hair, and farther away, a set of tables covered in brown hair, resembling an assembly line where, perhaps, Instagram influencers are made from scratch. And now a few basic facts about Great Lengths extensions for the unversed: Every strand undergoes a lengthy process (it can take up to six months) to meet the “100 percent Remy” standard (meaning the strands are aligned in the natural direction of the cuticles) and the “double drawn” standard (hair is the same fullness at the top as it is at the bottom). A couple of pieces of machinery are involved, but almost every step has been done by hand since Great Lengths was founded in 1993: “Nothing can substitute the human [hand] in this kind of craft,” said Antonino. Some of the most careful handiwork comes into play during the coloring process. “We had to build a system on our own because the kind of method we use is [traditionally] only used for cashmere,” he explained. Before the hair is dyed, rather than the original dark color being bleached out, it undergoes a “depigmentation” process, where natural pigments are gently stripped away over the course of up to a few weeks by washing them in an oxidant solution. By skipping bleach, that silky virgin-hair texture is preserved. In the color room, exposed pipes line the walls and connect to massive metal vats. We watched bundles of hair get dipped into the huge tanks of violet liquid, hair that would eventually become snowy blonde. In the bright, sterile room known as the blending department, I met Daniela, a 20-year veteran of Great Lengths whose chocolate-colored hair cascaded past her shoulders. Daniela has a special power: She can envision any single hair color as a prism and replicate the shades you would find on an actual human head. She’s the one who makes these extensions look like real hair. Daniela’s team took a base color and mixed it with six or seven additional hues. The mixture of shades was then repeatedly pulled through a kind of Plinko board thingy to blend them together. Minutes went by, and then she held up a bundle next to the desired color swatch. The colors in the two bundles melded seamlessly. The extensions were perfection. She nodded her head almost imperceptibly and moved on. Of course, none of us could have known what was going to happen to Great Lengths and Italy, and so many of us, in the weeks and months to come. At press time, the company was weathering the storm. “This is a difficult time for all humanity,” Antonino told me over email. “Great Lengths is a proudly Italian global business. Throughout this time we will stay close to all of our clients, colleagues, suppliers, and partners.” And when Italy opens for business again, I know the artists at Great Lengths will be back to their posts. Their meticulous, head-turning work is not yet done.
“The Kids’ Theatre” is the fifth episode of the “The Great Italian Journey”, Great Lengths 2020 communication campaign, dedicated to Goethe’s Italian travel diary. This story celebrates the cheerful, playful side of Dolce Vita, that the two female foreign visitors discover by approaching a unique artistic expression, very peculiar of Palermo: the kids’ theatre, recognized by UNESCO as a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity. The puppet show has always been a fun way to deliver education to both children and adults, way before the diffusion of the public school. It starts in the mid nineteenth century, with stories of bandits and saints, Shakespearean dramas and above all the very popular events of the paladins of France told by Ludovico Ariosto in his epic poem “Orlando Furioso”. Mixing realism and fantasy, tragedy and comedy, the kids’ theatre, known in Italian as “Opera dei Pupi” convey the values of Sicilian people, such as chivalry, sense of honor, the defense of the weak and the priority of boundless love. Besides their literary aspects, this theatre means a precious, rare, endangered and extremely skilled craftsmanship. Puppets are actually still made manually: forging their metal armor requires a month of work for each puppet. Every puppet, or pupo, is a wooden unique piece, different from any other, that can also be made on commission for a value of over 1000€ each. In Palermo the work of the puppets is linked to the names of various families. The theatre that hosted Great Length’s production is Franco Cuticchio’s one, now a the third generation of puppeteers (Franco is also displayed in the video working at a new pupo). The protagonist of this story is Agatha, a model and actress with an outstanding personality, who enters the micro stage herself to start making jokes with the puppet and playing the accordion, the music instrument that is still used for the shows’ live soundtrack. Her casual, fresh short curly look with a bang is easy, fun and practical. It perfectly shows a less obvious use of extensions: not applied to give length to hair but to build a full but still natural volume, boosted especially on the top of the head. Naturalness is also key to Agatha’s hair color choice, a warm chocolate shade, deep and intense, made possible with the application of GL Pre-Bonded in color 03, length 12”.
