On April 13 and 14, 2025, the city of Berlin became the global epicenter of hair creativity with the launch of the Hair by Schwarzkopf Professional Festival. This event, hosted by Schwarzkopf Professional, brought together over 600 participants from 45 countries for a vibrant gathering that combined art, innovation and community, while celebrating the brand’s new positioning and slogan: FOR EVERY YOU.



 
Held at the iconic Motorwerk Berlin, a former industrial building transformed into a striking and inspirational venue, the festival featured sixty immersive experiences across four stages and several experiential zones. Over two days, the connection between hair, culture, fashion, identity and self-expression was explored through live shows, workshops, interviews, panel discussions and showcases that pushed the boundaries of creativity.



 
The Beautyland team was in Berlin to witness and share this global celebration of hair up close. From behind-the-scenes access to the main stage moments, we captured the energy of the festival, the transformative ideas and the unforgettable experiences that defined this inaugural edition.
 
The festival was marked by the presence of some of the industry’s most influential names. Chris Appleton, Schwarzkopf’s Global Color Ambassador and celebrity hairstylist to names like  Jennifer Lopez, Kim Kardashian and Dua Lipa, captivated the audience with an engaging presentation about his career, shaped by iconic looks and high-impact hair transformations. His message was clear: hair has a transformative power that goes beyond style, it touches confidence and identity.



 
Another standout moment was the “Celebrity Hair: Hollywood Glamour” session with Tracey Cunningham and Jacob Schwartz. Tracey, known for her work with Emma Stone, Khloé Kardashian and Michelle Monaghan, shared her creative process, signature techniques and heartfelt anecdotes from behind the scenes in Hollywood. Jacob followed with a detailed breakdown of the looks he created for stars such as Margot Robbie, Bella Hadid and Troye Sivan. The live transformations left the audience captivated.



 
The festival also featured a breathtaking runway presentation of the Hair by SchwarzkopfPro collection, with artists like Lesley Jennison, SHY+FLO and Patricia Nikole showcasing the key trends for 2025: Contract Blonde, Curly Pop, and Embrace Grey. Each look was a bold statement of identity, technique and emotion, elevating hairdressing as a powerful form of personal expression.
 




Cultural diversity took center stage with the “Azteca” show, where artist Javier Romero immersed the audience in the legends and ancestral aesthetics of Mexico through daring hairstyles and a mythical narrative.



 
The renowned Japanese salon SHIMA brought the sophistication of Tokyo style to life, presenting refined cuts and oiran-inspired hair ornaments in a fusion of tradition and modernity.
 



We also had the privilege of interviewing Rankin, the iconic British photographer known for his irreverent eye and his ability to blend beauty, personality and imperfection into unforgettable images. His collaboration with Schwarzkopf Professional culminated in a striking series of portraits and the release of Issue No. 1 of Hair by Schwarzkopf Pro magazine.

John Rankin Waddell
Photographer and director

Your work has a very distinctive eye, almost like a visual signature. That signature often seems to appear from imperfections. How do you find beauty in the accidental?
 
I find it all the time. The beauty of beauty is the accidental. I think what is interesting is people don’t really talk about that when they talk about beauty in terms of hair or in terms of makeup. I’m a beauty photographer, as well as being a portrait photographer, and what I love is the combination of the two. I don’t take pictures that are like still lives, I take pictures where the person is full of life, and showing that in a beauty picture, the way that I work, the accidental is a part of the process. So many times, when you’re doing an image something on the hair might go wrong and we all go “What the hell, that looks amazing!” and we lean into that. It’s a very different way of working, not many photographers work like that, especially in the beauty genre, they want to be in control of it, I’m the opposite, I’m looking for those mistakes all the time and they’re the little kind of extra especial bit. Also, I really like pictures where you can see the skin, you can see the human life within the image. One of my friends, who is an actor, once said “on my face you can see the map of my journey” and I think that’s a really beautiful way of putting it. I’m looking for the map of people’s journeys through my photos.
 

Your work captures more than just faces, captures attitude and a story. How does makeup, styling and specially hair, help you tell that story?
 
Beauty, in the broadest spectrum of the word, and fashion as well to some extended, have become such a massive part of people’s identity, in a way is because we’re all so visual these days, we’re all communicating visually in a way we’ve never done before and I think that that has been heightened how people want to be seen. Also, people aren’t really working for trends anymore, they’re taking things from periods and borrowing things from lots of different sources, I think people are much more aware of how they’re being seen and they’re very focused on it, my skill is to break that down a little bit. The modernity of most camera phones work around beauty, around fashion, around selfies, and it’s really f* boring. Lots of people want to look like Kim Kardashian, but they don’t really, they just feel like that aesthetic is something that they maybe want to represent. The younger kids are not interested in that, no one wants to look like they’re grandmother or they’re mother. People want to look like they’re children. We’re in a period where it’s literally a free for all of where you borrow your ideas from. I think that now kids are going “I want my identity to be what my identity is”. What’s great about Schwarzkopf is that they’re at the pinnacle of creativity so they’re perfect for that young generation because hair and makeup, finally, is now about culture like it’s never been before.
 



How did your vision for the magazine Hair by Schwarzkopf come to life? What impact do you hope to have on the beauty professionals?
 
It came to life through lots of discussion with each of the hair artists. What I love about the Hair magazine is that each of the subject isn’t really your traditional subject, it’s not a traditional hair model, is someone that exemplifies the hair artist vision, so each of the people that we cast were very specific to the hair artist and then how we photographed them was really leaning into their personality subject, so they wanted still lives, real lives. On top of that you have this extraordinary creativity that is what younger kids want these days, they’re looking for something that is specifically them, and they’re looking for references that they can kind of go “that’s super different from everybody else and that represents me”. I think that one of the nicest things is how is culturally all so different within it, it’s not all one look, or one aesthetic. I’m there to bring all the different aesthetics together, but the reality is all people are different, if you look at another hair brand, any of the other ten top hair brands, they all got an aesthetic that is exactly the same in every single picture. I think we are at the center of what hair is becoming and how it’s going to be discussed. I also think we’re not going to be calling people hair stylists for very long, I think hair artist is going to become an expression.