 Hey world, my name's Lucas Doney, International Trainer and Artist for Don Paul Mitchell Systems, and I'm gonna share what I'm most passionate about, which is cuttin' hair. We're gonna get right into it with our mannequin. We've got it pre-zoned out, divided with a natural parting over the left eye to this crown area, where all the hair's sewn into the mannequin. That's one of those areas that we need to be mindful of, and then straight down on the center back. So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna work through a graduated shape. I think that's one of the most challenging things we can do as a hairdresser. But we're gonna work something asymmetrical, so working up to something slightly shorter on the left, slightly longer on the heavier side of the part. By starting the shape, I think what's most important is deciding what that length, that choice of length is gonna be. On a mannequin, they love everything you do, so you get lucky. But it's important to make sure that that choice of length is a good decision and suitable and complementary to the head shape. So, working with a mannequin, they have a perfectly round head, so we're able to create something and make decisions with a little bit more flexibility. We're gonna start right in the center. Now, section number one is gonna be the most important section of the entire haircut. Because my friend Clinton says, if section number one is no good, the haircut's no good. So, we're gonna try and work really clean, really methodical, and make sure that we are mindful of maintaining a good, like, approach. So, I'm gonna take a little bit of each side. Section number one. It's gonna be a little bit of a triangular shape. So, wider at the hairline, skinnier at the occipital area. Put that hair out of the way. So, section number one's gonna dictate everything about this haircut. So, I may cut section number one more than once, just to make sure that my choice of length is really suitable to what we're looking to create. Now, I always section with the wide side of the comb, and comb and groom with the fine side. That just helps me maintain good tension and good control. So, through here, I'm looking at my shape. What I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna take my fingers as I comb, and I'm gonna hinge them down. That's gonna allow this length at the top to be longer than the length at the hairline. So, in turn, it's gonna create a graduated shape towards the top. What we see a lot is people pulling the hair straight out. Now, straight out is gonna give me a layered effect, because now my length is the same at the top of my section as it is the bottom of my section. So, I always like to tuck my knuckles in, and hinge down like a little drawbridge. Make sure you have good control. Gonna come down once again, cutting that length shorter at the hairline, longer at the occipital bone. So, if I comb it straight down to natural fall, you can already tell that it's beveling in. That tells me that I'm already creating a graduated effect. So, I'm gonna cut this just slightly shorter. I think my choice of length needs to be slightly shorter. As I'm working too, you may notice that I do an interesting thing with my scissors. And that's just to make sure that I have a straight wrist position. So, if I'm here, I'm holding my wrist straight, but if I bend my wrist a lot and hold my scissors this way, then I have a really sharp angle in my wrist. So, I, in turn, move them in my hand, and it allows me to maintain a good body position and good hand and arm position. So, cool. Section number one. Now, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna work from there. I'm gonna take pivoting sections on the left side all the way to horizontal, so it's gonna be about six sections. On this side, I'm gonna pivot to about a diagonal, and then I'm gonna work parallel to that, moving forward. So, what's really important is to make sure that our sections are consistent. So, on a shape like this, I will always count my sections. So, my guide, and then now I'll rename this section number one. You know, it's important to make sure that you maintain balance, and if I take six sections on one side, I need to take six on the other. So, I wanna make sure that it's symmetrical, at least through these first few sections till we work into our asymmetrical end result. And we color our mannequin this morning, which was nice. It's got a nice coat of six R, all made sure the demi on it. So, a nice demi permanent hair color. Just gives the hair a little bit of shine, a little bit of slip, and makes it a little bit nicer when we get to the blow dry. So, I've cut section number one. On the left, I'm gonna look at section number one on the right now. So, I wanna make sure that my sections are parallel, so a lot of times I will take the comb, and I will push my section, or the comb through for sectioning, and then I can use my thumb just to hold the hair. It's a little bit easier to make sure that I work a little bit cleaner that way. Now, section number two, or excuse me, one on the right side, comb from underneath to organize your guide. Now, what I'm really mindful of is paying attention to the root of the hair, or the scalp area. That's gonna tell me how much over direction I'm using, as well as how much elevation I'm using, making sure that it's the same. A lot of times as hairdressers, we tend to look like at the hair being cut in our fingers, at the cutting line. Scissor is already straight, so it's gonna cut a straight line if you close it. But if I'm mindful about where the hair's coming from at the scalp, that can tell me whether or not I'm working symmetrically, or how much elevation or over direction I'm using, because a lot of times our clients are always moving their heads, so we wanna make sure that we're pretty mindful about where the hair's coming from. Then from this same point, jumping back over to this side, section number two, comb that down, keep it nice and clean, comb from underneath, looking at the root of the hair. So my eye is drawn right in here at my section. That's why it's really important to work clean, because then you can see your sections as you work. Comb that down to natural fall. It's already sitting into a bevel, so we know we're doing something right. And if you guys have questions, shoot them out. I'll try and answer a few of them as we work. I also have to try and cut hair at the same time too. So organize my guide from underneath, looking at the root of the hair. You wanna do your best to stand in front of your section. I'm standing a little bit off to the side so that you can see. Cool, like in the way that's looking. So we're gonna keep working. I'm gonna take one more section over here. I'm gonna work to about the mastoid process, so that little bone behind the ear. On a mannequin, it's sometimes challenging because they don't have bone structure. It's all round. So basically where that occipital would be. Or where that mastoid would be rather. So this will be the last section of the graduated shape on this side. And on the other side, we'll work towards something more horizontal. Be mindful of my elevation. You notice too, that as I cut the sections of hair, I'm not dropping it and then repicking it back up. I'll cut my section here. Hold my elevation, add the hair to it so that I can maintain consistency through the shape. So, I'm gonna work through this. Got one section here until we get to the horizontal. And you notice too, that I will move the head around a little bit, just to make sure that I can work in front of my section. Maintaining that elevation coming through. I've got one more section and then I'll be horizontal on this side. And now essentially what we're doing is we're creating a little bit of a roadmap for the rest of our haircut. On this one side, we worked horizontally, all the way up to that horizontal point. And on the other side, we stopped at a diagonal still. So what will happen is if we just work parallel from these sections where we stopped our graduated shape through the back, what that allows us to do is create an asymmetrical end result without a lot of complication. So I know that my outline's gonna be impacted towards the end. So I'm not too concerned with the outline right now. So I'm gonna work parallel. I'm gonna do the whole left side and then the whole right side. So I'm paying attention to my roots still. What you'll notice too is I tend to do this. I'll bounce the section a little bit. And as you can see at the scalp area here, you start to see the hair buckle, a lot of slack here. And if I pull it down too far, I can tell that it's wrapping around the head shape. So what you'll see me do quite a lot is bounce the section of hair to make sure that my elevation is consistent. And I haven't decided what the outline's gonna look like. We're gonna put the outline in when it's dry. So whatever the outline looks like now is just a byproduct of the decisions we made with our internal shape. So our graduated shape. We haven't decided what the outline looks like. So a lot of times with a client or a model or something you're working on, what I would suggest is make your decisions based on priority and practicality. What's priority to you? What's priority to your client, right? Your client could come in and say, oh my gosh, like this back area, this graduated part is the most important part to me. I want it to be stacked up. We use that phrase a lot. A lot of clients will use that phrase. If that's priority to them, that's where I'm gonna start. If the priority would be like an outline, then I'd make sure that I would start with the outline. So making your decisions and your sectioning approach and your decision making based on priority and practicality. Where do you need the most control, right? You need the most control of the graduated shape. You need the most control of the outline. I'm gonna work my way around. Working horizontally now. So now my elevation is controlling my graduated shape and my cutting line is controlling my horizontal shape. So what that does is allows me to create, have control over this while my elevation allows me to control this. And once again, as I comb it down into its natural fall, I can tell that it's beveling. And what we see here is like a lot of times we think this is a hole. But I haven't decided what I want this to look like yet. So looking at it now, I can tell you that that's probably gonna come off there when I put in the outline. So I'm not concerned with the outline right now. That's all gonna be something that we do while the hair is dry. So once again, another horizontal section. Comb that hair down. I think grooming the hair forward. That one little tip that like someone once taught me keeps the hair out of the way and I can see my scalp line too. So that's like a big thing for me is to make sure that I can see that because I'm paying attention to the root and I wanna make sure that everything's consistent. Hold my elevation, add the hair to it. Hold the elevation, add my hair to it. Move my feet. And because I'm paying attention to the root of the hair, I can move the head around and work through my haircut. Even if they were looking down, if they were looking up, if they were looking anywhere, I can still be mindful of where the hair is coming from. I don't have to necessarily have their head in any one specific position because I'm looking at this, not trying to match where I pull it in space but actually trying to match where I pull it from. Which was a big eye-opener for me. I know cutting hair, it was like a, I guess I just had never thought about it. So for me, it was like, wow, that's a really great way to look at it. You know, it really changed the way that I cut hair. So once again, if I look at this elevation, I know that if I pull it down, that elevation is far too low. It's going to be very, very heavy. If I pull it too high, then I'm going to move into closer to layering the hair. So I want to have a little bit of a heavier feel to it. So that way there's a little bit of length preserved through the top. Got some questions coming in. Hi, good cutting. Great. People like it. We're taking it to the people. I had this cool opportunity to be here, hanging with my friend Matt in his studio. It's such a privilege to be here. So cool. I appreciate the opportunity. Once again, I'm following my section. So my eyes are up there. And when I comb the section about two thirds of the way down, I'm going to shift my eyes to the ends of the hair so that I know I'm at my cutting line. So combing it down to natural fall, it's all beveling inward. So I can tell that it's going to sit into a pretty nice shape when we're done. Last section on this side. And I always think about too, how that hair is going to dry. On a mannequin, it's not as important because they don't have body heat. But on a human being, you do want to think about the body heat and how the hair is going to dry. So I always think like even during the blow dry, we'll talk about it. A little bit about where that hair naturally is laying while it's being warmed up by the body heat. Working all the way forward. Last section here. So we've got a little bit of a graduated shape here in the front. We're going to shift to the other side now. So I've created my graduated shape through the nape. And this side I stopped one section shy of where I went to on the other one. So it's going to be more diagonal. What that's going to do moving forward is going to preserve a lot more length and density towards the front than I did on the other side. The other side sits more balanced. This side's going to sit slightly more diagonal forward. Therefore it's going to be longer on one side. So it'd be kind of a cool way to create a graduated effect that sits asymmetrically so that it's just a little bit more foolproof. Once again, I'm going to comb, I'm going to push with my thumb. Hold that hair, comb this down. And all I need to do is then put my clip where my thumb was. So I'm going to take a small portion of what I cut on the other side and just make sure that they tie together a little bit. And now my sections and my fingers are going to be parallel to my section. The reason being is now I'm creating that end result that's a little bit longer towards the front. So that diagonal sectioning makes it easier for me as I work to maintain that little bit of over direction. And my cutting line are going to ensure that this gets longer towards the front. And you'll see what an impact that has moving forward. Once again, parallel section, thumb goes in. So what's important is to make sure that as I section I push, push, push, push, push. My thumb holds that hair above and I can just comb the hair down. That way all that groomed hair stays nice and neat above there. Little section of what I cut previously, comb from underneath, looking at my root. So this is more like a traditional what people would call a graduated, like a triangular graduation. Just depends on where you went to school. You know, we always have this conversation about like you could call it whatever you want as long as you understand what you're doing, right? So we have this ongoing joke when we teach that we start naming techniques after foods and it's kind of funny because like, hey, a little taco layer and a burrito layer. As long as you understand what the cause and effect is then you don't necessarily need to have a set word for it. It'll be whatever you want. So I'm moving around the head now. We have that diagonal forward section angle. So that's gonna make sure that I am keeping that longer front. So I want to keep my comb and my fingers parallel to my section. And you'll see even though it didn't look like it was that different in the back as far as one being horizontal and one being diagonal by the time you get to the front that the impact it has is gonna be quite a lot more than you thought. So let me cool to see the asymmetric feel to it. Push that section all the way to the front hairline. Once again, thumb goes in, comb the hair down. Now all I do is I then take my clip and I'll put it right where my thumb was so it can hold the hair out of the way. Now I've got a guide all the way from the front and the back. So this can tell me that I could work from front to back or I could work from back to front. It doesn't matter now because I have hair that is my guide underneath. So whatever's most comfortable to you there's no right or wrong way to do it. I'll demonstrate a little bit of both. It's whatever gives you the best end result. I'm always under the impression that I'll never tell you anything is wrong unless you don't understand why you would do it. Hold my elevation, comb the hair down. There's my guide working my way all the way from front to back this time. So like I said, as far as working through your sectioning and your shape if that gives you a better end result working from front to back, then do that. If it works better from working back to front, do that. Like I said, there's no right or wrong way to do it. Whatever gives you the best end result and makes your client the most happy when they leave. Once again, push through, hold it with my thumb or finger and I'll just clip that out of the way. Comb that hair back. Once again, I'm trying to keep my fingers and comb parallel to the section. Check for my guide. And what's cool about this is we've started to play with the idea of counting sections like I mentioned before. And the reason why is for balance and consistency. Now on this particular haircut, we're creating something that's asymmetrical so it's just as important to count your sections with that as it would be with something symmetrical. So comb that to natural fall, already sitting into a nice graduated shape, parallel section. We're getting into the top of the round of the head and we're on the heavier side of the part with this particular side. So a couple more sections. The coolest part will be when we start to put an outline in it, what an impact that has on the overall shape. Check for my guide. Because I'm going parallel to my section line, it's really quite easy and consistent to find that guide. And I always hold the hair and add to it. I try not to drop my sections too much. Trying to pick it up at the same elevation I started at was too challenging for me. So I started to try and maintain it through the whole thing. It just left a better end result. Cool, parallel section. So our zone on top is getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. And as you can see, this is gonna be dramatically longer on this side than the first side. So could you do this on like a longer spectrum, longer choice of length? Absolutely. Could you do it on a shorter choice of length? Absolutely. I think what's cool is going through stuff like this, it's more like an exercise, right? The first exercise. And could you take this haircut and put it on someone like, you know, that would fit them? Absolutely. Could you take bits and pieces of it and create something that's suitable for your client or your model? Absolutely. And I think that's what's cool about us as hairdressers is we get that opportunity to be as creative as we want and we're only limited by the choices we make. So it's pretty cool. So we'll come through once again. Got about two more sections, I would say. So coming from the front, same thing. Checking for my guide, nice and strong. Tells me I'm in the right place. Sitting good. So here's the last one. Now my elevation slightly increases and it's been slightly increasing through the entire graduated part. So I don't want to have too much of a heavy weight line. A little bit is okay, but during the refinement and the dry hair cutting, we'll talk about kind of how to adjust that or soften it. So we'll have a little bit of length in the front that we'll refine when we go into the blow dry, but we have something that sits asymmetrical, but from the back, we'll sit a bit more balanced once we put our outline in. Little bit of quick slip, so just reduce my drying time. And I like to make sure the product's like all the way in the hair. Where's your comb from? It's my favorite color. The army green one? I was just telling the story the other day. It's a Cecibon comb and I've had it since beauty school. I'd give it to you, but it means a lot to me. So you can't have it. Yeah, so I'm gonna use a wrap drying technique and it just allows me to keep the haircut pretty small. And the reason why we call it a wrap dries because we're using the roundness of the head to stretch the hair. Throw a nozzle on now, so that way I can get a little more stretch, a little bit more control, just to bevel the ends. I'm gonna use a little hot off the press to just keep the hair nice and healthy. For stuff like this, I always use like a thermal protectant, especially when you've got color on the hair. So we've got six R demi on the hair. And I wanna make sure that I'm keeping it healthy, keeping it protected from any thermal usage tools, whether it be a curling iron or a smoothing iron. And I tend to spray it all the way through the hair, give it a little comb through, and then start my iron work. Just works a little bit better for me. So just as I cut the hair, I tend to work through like the iron work with the same methods, with the same approach to discipline, just keeping it nice and clean. And I tend to try and pass through the ends of the hair just once. So you see me kind of use the iron and like regroup and reorganize, but I really only pass through the ends of the hair one time slow and hot. So this one is Paul Mitchell Express Ion Style. So it's a 1.0, it means it's an inch wide on the plates. And it's the same one that goes with this blow dryer. So we released these two guys together. Mine have been around the world and back. And what I love about it is the plate is skinny and the iron heats up really quick. And I like the finish. So we have a silver one. This is the Invisible Wear Edition. So this one they designed to have this flat white on one end faded into this flat gray, which is super cool. So I wanted the matching set so that I looked cool. But this one is great. I love it for shorter lengths. Also a great tool if you like, are that person that curls hair a lot with a smoothing iron or puts texture in here because it is a smaller width. It does create a really nice tool for like creating flips and bends and curls and things like that. So drop it into the back. Same thing I did on the other side here. Let's try and stay clean. We also like my friend Clinton. You don't follow him, Clinton Norris. He's a great haircutter, great mentor of mine. Look up to him a ton. I got a great circle of friends around me that really motivate me and push me to be better at what I do. And he has a saying that if you're the best person in the room, you're in the wrong room. And such a valuable like lesson, not only just in hair, but also just life, you know? I wanna surround myself with people that are better at what they do than I am. Okay, now the outline. So everything we've done so far has been internal, meaning that it's everything within the outline. What I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna put an outline in that is really gonna make the internal shape pop. And I think that's one of the biggest things is one of my biggest mentors in haircutting says it's not about what the haircut looks like when they leave, it's about what it looks like when they come back. So with that being said, I'm gonna look to make sure that this haircut looks good when it comes back. So little bit of a spray. This one I'm using hold me tight and this one I'm choosing because it's lightweight and I can actually put it in and help hold some of this hair in place as I put my outline in. So it's light enough that I can comb through it but also has enough hold that when I start chipping into my outline and cutting my outline, that'll give me a little bit of control so the hair won't push around as much. Now, based on what your client wants, you can decide what your outline looks like. I'm assuming that my client wants exactly what I want which the mannequin always does. So my outline I'm going to actually connect this to the back. So I'm gonna get pretty low. I'm gonna start in the center back and I'm gonna go forward to my outline. So, okay, so I'm gonna start by club cutting or blunt cutting. And when I do that, that's just my rough draft just to get some of that length off. Now, I'm gonna start working on the overall shape. I know I can come in a little bit more at this length on the back dialed in a little bit. Now I've shifted to using the points of my scissors just to put that little bit of an outline in there. So comb the hair, comb the hair, comb the hair. Like to stabilize my scissor with my other hand. Okay, so this is something that I could sit and do for like two days. I could sit and chip an outline. Now, does that mean that you should do it? Probably not, unless your haircuts were a really expensive, I guess. But yeah, one of these like, you know, it's one of those things if you're a nerdy hairdresser like me, you get really like dorky and in the zone and you could do this all day. And this is one of those things where your mirror would come in handy quite a lot. A friend. And it's all about just combing it and working it, combing it and working it. Cause I basically want this to look like she could walk out into a tornado and have her haircuts still look good. So the last tip I was talking about was when you're cutting backhand, especially to make sure that that gets longer towards the front is to always make sure that the point of your scissor is pointed down below the pivot point. That's always gonna make sure that the hair gets longer. Cutting backhand, we have a tendency to hold the scissor quite flat. And then what will happen is we won't end up saving length in the front. We'll end up just cutting it flat. So if I always make sure, and I'm looking here, that this is angled forward, that's a good visual to know that if I put a marble on my scissor, it would roll off the tip of it, okay? A lot of times we're looked so focused on this area that we forget to look at the scissor that putting the line in. So once again, just club cutting my length off and now I'm gonna work my two shapes together. So this is kind of that little point where we're gonna bridge the gap. Feeling pretty good about my outline in the back. I've got that moving short to long through here. Now I'm gonna look to tie the two together in the front. So what I wanna look for is, am I looking at the shadow or am I looking at the actual length of the hair? So tilting the head forward can make sure that I am looking at the actual line. Because sometimes our eye gets so distracted by shadows and things like that, that I always wanna look at the line. So my connection now is gonna be just loosely through here, basically from this little point right here where it's a little bit weaker. That's just because the hairline underneath there, that's right where it changes. That's right where that front of the hairline changes. So from that point, I'm basically just connecting weak points in the hair. And that's always a great way to do it because if you look at the weakest point, that will help you create the most ideal outline on a haircut is to make sure that those two points are connected. So from here in the back, I worked from back to front. Here I'm gonna work from front to back and we'll keep that little bit of length in the front. Gotta head out, but I wanna say thanks. Oh, thank you Mary, better. You snapped, that's a good thing. I've heard that, that's a good thing, right? Like you snapped on that one or slapped on it? Something, something's good. I'm gonna take it as a good thing. So I'll put a little spray in here. So for this particular look like I was saying earlier, I wanted it to be like pretty fluid, but also be very commercial if you wanted it to be. So a lot of those clients that come in and they want like some sort of disconnected, maybe asymmetrical haircut, we don't have a really clean approach to it. This is a great way to do it because you can do it by just counting. So it's a bit more foolproof, kind of ensures that the end result's gonna be there because you're counting your sections and you're also working methodically. So it makes a nice fluid, graduated shape, has some longer length towards the front and you can kind of dress this either way you want. I cut it with a side part over the left eye. You could, if you wanted to cut it with a center part, you could cut it with a part on the other side, completely up to you and whatever suits your client or what you're trying to accomplish. So in the back, we cut a graduated shape, meaning that our length here was shorter than our length here. So it created this graduated effect. On this side, we pivoted up all the way to horizontal and we worked horizontal sections all the way through to the front. So our graduated shape sits balanced in the front. Then on this side, what we did is we created a graduated shape that then pivoted but not all the way to horizontal. It still remained diagonal. And what that does is by matching parallel sections, created a longer side, which swoops in and you can see like how nicely this comes in and gets way longer, created that nice asymmetrical feel and then we put an outline in it. And I think the outline, even though it gets overlooked a lot, that's what really makes the haircut stand out is having a clean outline. So when they walk down the street, somebody sees the outline from across the street, they're gonna be like, dang, that looks good. So check it out, jump on Instagram, shoot me a message, tell me what you think. I'll try and jump on later and answer a lot of the questions and texts if I can. And thanks for tuning in everyone, appreciate it. Once again, my name's Lucas Stoney, International Trainer Artist for Paul Mitchell. Follow me on Instagram, it's the same handle at Lucas Stoney.