A new breed of stylists

In the old days, there were these creative and talented people who dolled up celebrities and even ordinary women for special occasions, like weddings, debut parties and graduation balls. They were called beauticians.

A beautician who did the hair and makeup of the rich and famous in the ‘60s actually became a household name because he appeared in a hair spray TV commercial. His name was Freddie. No, he did not have a surname. The public only knew him as Freddie.

In the ‘70s came Ricky Reyes and Fanny Serrano, who are both still respected names in the beauty business. Mother Ricky and Fanny come from humble beginnings (maybe even Freddie) and neither denies the fact that they began as parlor assistants and learned the ropes along the way.

But there is now a new breed of stylists who often are even more glamorous and affluent than their clients. Lala Flores was a supermodel, who shifted to doing faces and is one of the most in-demand makeup artists today. The one I credit for starting this trend, Juan Sarte, also comes from a family of means, but he wakes up at the crack of dawn to work on the faces of brides who all want to be picture-perfect for their morning altar dates.

There is also titled beauty Nina Ricci Alagao and I wonder how her clients feel being attended to by a Miss Philippines winner no less? What about beauteous Cristine Duque, who can be a movie star herself?

When I was about a year or so into Startalk I noticed that on every Saturday afternoon that I walked into the dressing room that adjoins our studio, there was this team of stylists who attended to the hair of my then co-host Rosanna Roces. On top of this delegation was this pretty young girl with fair, smooth skin  and that was a giveaway that she was not just from some cheap neighborhood beauty salon. 

Later, I would discover that the names of her assistants were Chona dela Cruz, who was really trained in the ways of the parlor and Alex Vicencio, a dentistry graduate from Centro Escolar University.

Their leader was Celeste Tuviera, daughter of the esteemed Antonio Tuviera, president and CEO of TAPE, Inc. that produces Eat, Bulaga!. What in heaven’s name was Mr. Tuviera’s daughter doing  combing and fixing the hair and scalp of Rosanna Roces? The situation to me then was not running in accordance with what we had all been accustomed to as the normal order of things in this very structured society.

But that was what Celeste Tuviera was doing exactly  fixing Osang’s hair.

When I was finally introduced to Celeste (after several Saturdays), I gathered that she was an interdisciplinary studies graduate of De La Salle University. She never got to practice what she learned in college. Instead, she put up her salon, Symmetria on 17 M. Paterno St. in San Juan, Metro Manila (tel. nos. 705-1375/706-6246) and eventually went to Los Angeles and attended formal school for hair cutting and styling  at the Vidal Sassoon, which is the Harvard for hairdressers.

I’ve seen how Celeste is so devoted to her craft and to her clients. When Osang left Startalk, Celeste went on to do other clients and would follow them on location for their shoots. She does this for Regine Velasquez, Bea Alonzo, Angel Locsin, Iza Calzado and now spends Sunday afternoons fixing KC Concepcion for The Buzz. Never mind if her Sundays used to be so sacred and strictly for family.

You can’t even say that it’s fan mentality that motivates her to go out of her way and attend to these stars because as the daughter of Tony Tuviera, she grew up smelling the sweat of Tito, Vic and Joey and she cannot be dazzled anymore by local celebrities. She was raised practically on the set of Eat, Bulaga! where for a time she even worked on her knees and on the floor writing down spiels on idiot boards because her father wanted his children to learn the value of hard work. 

Oh, hard work she learned, all right. But she chose to do hair and slaves it out in this profession and flies out of the country at least once a year to learn the latest techniques in styling in the West. (When she’s not in the country, her Symmetria salon is left in the capable hands of her team  with senior hairstylist Susan Aquino leading the pack.)

Doesn’t she find it demeaning doing work that was once deemed lowly? Why, even without her father’s clout, she can do well on her own given her intelligence (she passed the qualifying exams for masscom, a quota course in La Salle, except that she later realized that broadcasting was not for her).

This is how Celeste puts it: “I don’t find the job demeaning at all. It’s no different from what a chef does. A chef studies and trains, but still has to touch intestines and innards.”

Working on clients  celebrities or not  gives her a high, says Celeste. “It gives me the chance to do what I want to do and be creative with my hands. Also, if you do it for somebody you care about, like KC, for example, it doesn’t become a job. Besides, the client and I work at it together and we both feel good if we are happy with the results,” she points out. “KC is also the type of celebrity who doesn’t have airs and she treats everyone around her equally and with respect,” adds Celeste. Unfortunately, not all stars are as proper and well-behaved as KC.

Since it is a practice in the local industry for stars to share communal dressing rooms (not everyone can have one each  facilities are still limited in this country), Celeste gets to have a ringside view of backstabbing and backbiting among celebrities, who  to her relief  are not in her list of clients. This is the only aspect of her job that she dislikes.

But the dressing room scenario may soon change with the entry of this new breed of makeup artists and hairdressers. I don’t mean to belittle the beauticians of decades past, but this new generation of stylists went to proper schools and basically conducts their business with the decorum expected of a professional.

In the old days, there was nothing more to talk about between stylist and client, but gossip, which always has nasty repercussions. But if you have a Celeste Tuviera, who is well-traveled and has dined in some of the world’s fanciest restaurants, there’s more to discuss between the client and the hairdresser other than tsismis.

These young celebrities should take advantage of the situation by asking their more knowledgeable stylists about the finer things in life. The more intelligent and sensible stars will surely do just that. So expect a more learned batch of movie-TV stars in the next few years.

This trend of having a Celeste Tuviera, Juan Sarte, Cristine Duque and other stylists who come from affluent families, of course, is bad news for the poor, but creative souls who plan to get into styling as a way out of poverty, particularly those who are unable to afford even regular schools due to lack of finances.

Celeste and company may be slowly changing the dressing room landscape, but I still see a positive side to this: The underprivileged who don’t have the same resources can always take this as a challenge. Poverty didn’t stop Ricky Reyes from being a huge success in the business. To this day, he still continues to learn by attending hair seminars abroad. In the end, the playing field is still fair in this world. 

But there is one reason why I truly applaud the backstage invasion of Celeste and the other stylists from well-off families, who dirty themselves up working on other people’s hair follicles and pores: They are a constant reminder to Filipinos that there is dignity in labor.