About Change offers top to toe packaged

Press, 13 December 1986, Page 20

About Change offers top to toe packaged

By

ROSALEEN McCARROLL

About Change opened in Christchurch this week. But “opened” is really too dull a word to describe this new concept in personal packaging which has sprung up/burst open/happened in our city.

Four beauty/fashion people combine and coordinate their specialist services under the same roof on the corner of New Regent Street. The idea is that you go into About Change and come out changed. But the young operators (and they are young) don’t like the expressions “makeover” or transformation.

It is more a case of using their expertise hair/ make-up/colour and clothes-wise to get your act together so you can present yourself as the person you want to be. Tracet Sands, who is

the inspiration behind About Change, gives an example of what she means. A daughter of a client was an aspiring model but was getting nowhere fast. Tracet and her team took her in hand, and her modelling career took off like a rocket. She had it all, but she couldn’t get it together. She finished up a finalist in a prestigious, national beauty/glamour contest earlier this year.

Tracet, at 22, is about the same age as the rest of the team (although their financial manager is still in his teens!).and she says nothing was planned ... it all just happened.

The young people seem to have happened upon each other by virtue of being one another’s clients. The personal and business association has grown from there. Tracet, who opened her own salon the same week that she finished her hairdressing apprenticeship,

has since branched out into photography and next year About Change will offer portraiture as well; Last year Tracet won the New Zealand title for men’s hair design. Hair is naturally her forte. Wellington trained Henri Downes is also a hair person. After consultation, he creates a style to suit the individual. Tracet says he is an inspired hairdresser, particularly with colours and perms. . Corrina Miller is the third hairdresser at About Change, but she also has the expertise to work out the wardrobe colours and shapes that suit you best. She can do “your colours,” and she uses another formula called “wardrobe expression” to work out the shapes and styles that suit your body. For instance, if you have a short neck, or a big bottom, there are styles that will minimise these. Once Corrina has worked out styles and shapes, you can consult the About Change in.house fashion designer, Sharon Semmens, who will create a whole new wardrobe for you, or maybe just one piece.

Sharon graduated from the Wellington Polytech in 1984, and last year she won “Cha Cha’s” award for evening wear. (“Cha Cha” is an Aucklandbased style and fashion magazine.) She started at the top, designing exclusive garments for an ultra-dis-criminating, well-heeled clientele in both Christchurch and Wellington. In fact, her “Cha Cha” dress was bought by a diplomat’s wife.

She is equally at home designing men’s or women’s clothes, and she especially loves leather. Kerry Sharpies does the make-up for About Change. Largely selftaught, she is an artist whose medium is makeup. She loves elegant and beautiful make-up, and saves her futuristic stuff for the shows.

Another mate, Jo Sinclair, will supply the art work or to quote the more

fulsome language of the publicity brochure, she will convert About Change into “an exclusive viewing gallery.” Jo went to Cashmere High School with Tracet, and she has her own shop — Art Spot — in Cashfields.

Beauty therapist Sharon Ford, who is downstairs on the same premises, operates Total Elegance as a separate business. But her full range of beauty services — from waxing and electrolysis through to laser treatments — are accessible and wholeheartedly endorsed by her friends upstairs. A member of the recently disbanded Framework Dance Company, she still teaches jazz dancing and she does the choreography for About Change fashion shows. About Change is about hair/colour/clothes and make-up, and change is what it is all about.

1* If Al®