Lunch with Yolly ten Koppel

I'm going to go ahead and tell you how to pronounce her name before I get into today's post: Yo-lee Ten Kah-pull. "Who is Yolly ten Koppel?," you may ask. Yolly is Pivot Point International's Creative and Technical Director (according to pivotpoint.com). She came all the way from the Netherlands to visit us at Penrose Academy before going on to NAHA in Las Vegas. While she was visiting, we had to opportunity to watch a presentation by Yolly on trends in fashion and finding inspiration that we can translate into hairstyles. One thing she mentioned was creating textiles from previously-used materials, otherwise known as trash, like old magazines and newspapers. Another trend is environmental awareness and incorporating that into design. She also discussed the “faux real” trend and how bloggers are leading the way in helping spread trends much faster than they spread in the past. After the presentation, Yolly followed up with a demo. In her demo, she spoke about new techniques and one lucky student was treated to a haircut. The haircut was done completely with a razor and Yolly even address the issue of making sure you have enough hair to cover the nape area between the hairline and the ear. Good stuff, for sure. After the haircut, Yolly followed up, but demonstrating a technique for forming hair by backcombing and flatironing the hair. At the end of assembly, all of us students were dismissed for lunch, but members of Penrose Academy Student Council (which includes me) and Jill Kohler joined Yolly for lunch where we were able to take some photos and ask questions. Some of the questions included how Yolly approaches product sales and how she became a trendsetter internationally. I later ran into Yolly as she was preparing to leave and thanked her for an opportunity I may not have until after some years in the industry. Now, I can't finish my blog without mentioning the fact that she is FIERCE. She wore some really cool, studded knee-high white boots and wore a white coat and had some orange hair. Far be it from me to compare myself to Yolly, but she did kind of remind me of myself when I was younger. I always wanted to wear clothes that would make me stand out and sometimes I was made fun of for it. I remember once instance in high school when a friend of mine told me I wore the most bizarre shoes. My mom worked long hours at the salon to support us, and my stepfather worked long hours outdoors. She didn't always have the time to take us shopping so around the time of junior high, myself and my older brother would get a budget with which to do our shopping. It was usually kind of a tight budget. My brother would buy the first thing he found, but I would stretch that money as far as I could and get the most for my money. Sometimes, the best deal was clothes that some people would thing were strange, but this worked out in my favor because they were usually the ones that were on clearance. Seeing Yolly showed me that people who want to stand out and aren't afraid to do so may be the people who are making decisions about what everyone else wears by setting the trends. I still like wearing the most bizarre shoes.