Jonathan Antin

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Stick to Your Guns

Find out why Jonathan disagreed with the other judges on Brig's win.

Apr 13, 2010

Bravotv.com: What did you think of the finale? You disagreed with Linda and the judges.

I overwhelmingly had Matthew as the winner and Janine in second place and Brig in third. The reason for that—like I said on the show—was that Brig did no hair. Linda Wells told me she did do hair. She wrapped it in cellophane and made it feathered and made shapes with it, but that's not what the show is about. The show is about someone being able to do hair on people the very best. Brig took pieces of hair, wrapped them in plastic, and taped them to peoples' heads. In addition to that, Brig, based on what Henry Duarte had said halfway through the competition—he liked that one model where she was halfway through that one model with a piece of plastic over the top of the front of her crown with one piece of pink hair to taped to the side of her head—and stopped what she was going to do on that model and said that Henry said he liked it so I just thought I'd let it fly. That's the cardinal rule of sin when doing a fashion show. You have to stick to your guns and stay true to your concepts and your designs. Not only were her designs lacking in the world of hairstyling but they were not completed. Comparatively, if you look at what Matthew did, he used the model's hair in addition to hairpieces and completely changed the looks of these girls into sort of sci-fi supermodels. Brig was talking comic book in the beginning, but Matthew ended up with more of a sci-fi, comic book feel. Also, Matthew's models looked absolutely phenomenal. What he did with the skull caps where there might have been corner or an edge peeling up, he might have bitten off slightly too much. In doing a big fashion show, generally you have somewhere in the area of 5-6 hours to prepare hair, at the very least 3 hours. He could have finished had he been given the right amount of time to finish and had a team of 5 or 6 as we do as key hair stylists when we do fashion shows he would have finished.
If you're going to do skull caps you are going to have someone there who knows how to do them. Generally, a big fashion or editorial stylist like myself does not do skull caps very well. I could do them about as well as Matthew. I would have had more time so mine might have looked better. The glue just didn't have enough time to set up. However, the fact that he was even willing to go there, in my opinion, just won it right out of the gate. I think that America will undeniably and overwhelmingly agree with me. Matthew won this competition by a stretch. He certainly wasn't squeaking in, he noticeably and obviously won it right out of the gate. The judges went in the other direction. I personally think they wanted to go against me! Kim Vo is a master colorist, he's not a master fashion hair stylist and he doesn't do fashion shows. However, I would seven days a week and twenty four hours a day send a client of mine to Kim Vo for color before I would have anyone else on the planet do it. Not taking anything away from his skill set or his level of expertise, but when it comes to being backstage at a fashion show doing models under the gun and on the clock, there isn't a whole lot that Kim Vo can really say in comparison to what I have to say.