Master session artist Joseph DiMaggio’s relationship with designer Allina Liu is still going strong. Last season was DiMaggio’s first season keying hair for Liu’s eponymous womenswear label, and this year he was really excited to make her vision come true again for the debut of her Spring 2025 collection at New York Fashion Week. This time around, along with his session and education team, Shokunin Clik, worked in collaboration with Liu to celebrate femininity through the presentation, inspired by woman-led cults and the Pagan tradition of Midsommar.
The hairstyling for the collection, titled “Good For Her” was full of beautiful details. This year, the label staged a presentation, where the “disciples” as DiMaggio call them, stood in circles around a contortionist, giving viewers an opportunity to get a closer look at the models and a chance to appreciate the intrinsic beauty and details behind the clothes, hair, and makeup.
To create eerie but eye-catching and incredibly feminine hair looks, DiMaggio worked exclusively with RICA products, a natural-based haircare brand based in Sicily, and an assortment of new Hattori Hanzo tools for any quick fixes and additions to the styles.
RICA hair products were a perfect match for the concept since the brand is mostly composed of natural, earth friendly ingredients, including volcanic water and soil. DiMaggio explains that the extracts and the brand’s performance really tied together the look, plus, he added “also keeping that healthy vibe and taking care of the models hair, our team really try to take care of their hair.”
His goal was to let the divine feminine take center stage and that’s exactly what the two styles that the team conceptualized did. To differentiate between the younger and eldest “disciples,” DiMaggio gave the models two different styles to distinguish between the newer and experienced members of the cult.
Younger models had very controlled and sleek pigtails tied with a white or black ribbon at the end, which he sourced locally in New York City from Pacific Trimming, a store that he called “a wealth of little trinkets and accessories,” and the team’s favorite sourcing spot in the city.
The more experienced disciples had a little bit more of a looser, lived-in hair, to signify foraging, or as DiMaggio says “to show that they have earned their freedom in the cult, so they can have more freedom.” For this look, the team did two dutch braids with loose wild ends supposed to mimic foliage, and give a “living out in the farm” texture.
To hammer on the point of farms and foraging, the hair team glued fresh rose thorns on the pigtails with weft glue—a little detail that you might miss but one that totally makes a difference. The thorns were sourced from Etsy, but we also saw some team members cutting some thorns directly from fresh sourced roses backstage.
DiMaggio says that pigtails are definitely coming back this upcoming spring and summer season. “There’s a lot of festivals and a lot of going out, a lot of bows as well we’re seeing this season and incorporating either ribbons or scarves into the hair, and wrapping as well,” he added. “We’re really excited about that because that’s our jam for sure.”
