Kicking Off A Hair Revolution with Taiga

When I visited Taiga in his studio for our interview, he’s finishing up a bleach and haircut for a customer who’s come from Leipzig to get their hair done by him. It isn’t unusual for the Berlin-based stylist to get appointments from people only visiting the city, even though they have to book about a month in advance. His clientele come from Paris, New York, Tokyo and other metropoles— once you’ve seen his work on instagram or in person on a friend, it’s no surprise that people are traveling from abroad to get their hair cut, colored, or styled by the artist. Taiga’s portfolio— which doubles for a lookbook of Berlin’s prettiest people— is a cascade of flashing color, spikey mullets, chunky raccoon-tail stripes, and feather/metal/bead embellished braids. Not to say he doesn’t do natural styles as well, leaving hair shiny and sleek in simple layers or clean lines. It seems like he’s singlehandedly styled half of the city, or at least half of Kreuzkölln: DJs and tattoo artists, models and ravers. But the now-legendary hair stylist, whose work has become the face of Berlin-style hair, only moved to Berlin five years ago.

In our interview, Taiga recalls that when he moved here from Tokyo, he had “nothing”— no money, no connections in the city, and he couldn’t speak English. Training non-stop with volunteer models, wigs, and Youtube tutorials, after work and sometimes into the early morning, Taiga perfected his technique and honed a creative vision. His depth of hair knowledge, however, goes beyond studying to the natural instincts he’s always towards hair. Taiga says he loves touching hair, how complicated it is, and how delicate. He describes imagining how the hair he’s styling will change in the wind, how it will shapeshift with the model’s natural texture, and how he predicts the colors will take on hair that’s been dyed and bleached before when he dyes it again. In his five years in Berlin, Taiga has touched a lot of hair: cut, dyed, and blowdried hundreds of clients, styled models for magazines like ID, Sickly, Gala, and SLEEK, and recently installed wig-based exhibitions at Club AI and Sameheads. Throughout our conversation, it becomes clear that Taiga’s creative genius is found in his basic curiosity about hair as an artistic medium, and his untiring pursuit of the question it presents: how far can you take it?

SLEEK: How did you get into hairstyling? 

TAIGA: I was studying in Tokyo for like two years at a design school. They had fashion design and graphic design and makeup, and then there was the hairdresser course as well. It was nice, but I heard it’s supposed to be the most strict school in that part of Japan. It was super intense. During the exam period, everyone has to have black hair, Japanese natural hair color. Very typical strict school rules. In a university I’d never heard of that before, but at mine we had that rule. 

I wanted to work in Tokyo, but then I met a guy that had hair salons here in Berlin and London as well as Tokyo. I was into something new, so I came to Berlin, but I didn’t have anything. I couldn’t speak English and didn’t have any friends. Literally nothing. That was five years ago. I was just an assistant at the time, but I tried some new things, got models for some crazy stuff, and now I’m here. 

S: Have you noticed a big difference between the hairstyles here in Berlin and in Japan? 

T: It’s difficult to say. In Japan, for example, Japanese people have mostly straight hair, but still a lot of colors. It’s also connected to the strict school situation, that they couldn’t do anything at the school. After they graduate they can explore their style and have crazy hair. 

I feel like here, even when you’re really young, like a teenager, you can do whatever you want. 

People are more chill about big changes. Specifically in Berlin. Having crazy hair is normal for them. In Japan it’s not normal, but when someone has crazy hair it’s really really crazy. 

S: What made you want to do hair? Was it the strictness of the school that you went to that made you want to branch out even more? 

T: I’ve always been really into hair. Touching hair. At the same time, I was doing a lot of different stuff where I was using my hands, like music. And I was good at everything. But hair was way too complicated for me. I was like “I don’t know what to do with it”. 

But I love touching hair. At some point I was like, okay, maybe I should be a hairstylist. And I just got more into it. 

S: You recently had an exhibition at Sameheads, showing that your work is not just hairstyling, but really a form of artwork. How/when did you decide to pursue this more artistic side of your work? 

T: I kind of figured out my style. It’s more than just hairstyling, but connected with hair because I still love hair.  When I do an installation based on hair or something like sculpture,  I can make anything from hair. Any shape. You change the shape and the colors, the textures, whatever you want. That was always really attractive to me. It’s very flexible, but also very sensitive and complicated. When you’re styling something and the wind comes in, it can break. You have to control everything around it. 

I saw someone displaying wigs at an exhibition space, and I thought that was so cool. Like hair is also art. And afterwards I thought about using hair to make some art piece. But I thought only making a wig was boring. So the installation is also acrylic and some parts from a motorcycle. I was thinking about balance. It’s a head, it’s a wig— but also something else, this mysterious human shape.

S: How do you feel about bringing Japanese styles into western culture, to Germany? 

T: I love it, to be honest. I’m really into exploring the culture that I learned in Japan, and sharing it with other people in the world. Now so many people know about Japanese culture, but maybe only from the internet, or instagram or whatever. They’ve never actually experienced another person sharing the culture. 

When I came here, there were not many Japanese artists doing these kinds of things. Even in Japan it’s still rare to see these kinds of things, and I wasn’t copying any of these Japanese artists. I wanted to explore my culture here, but still have it be my style. That’s why there’s so many people texting me from even Tokyo, saying “Oh I love your work”. I got even more connected with Tokyo. 

I think if I was doing these things in Tokyo, I couldn’t explore so much and I wouldn’t have so much of a connection with Tokyo.

S: How have you built on the connections that you’ve made in Berlin? 

T: To be honest, I’ve just been enjoying the city. I am such a curious person, I am curious about everything. I love music, I love clubbing, punk live shows to classical concerts. So many different things, and there’s so many different types of people in each place. So I made a lot of connections.

At the same time, I was a very shy person when I got here. But as a hairstylist, I was like, okay, maybe that doesn’t work. You have to be more open and a social person. So I pushed myself to talk to so many people. I had to learn English as well, when I got here I couldn’t speak any English. I had to push myself and try to be a very funny person. 

Of course when I talk with people, I also say “Oh I’ll cut your hair.” And if I didn’t have the skill, it wouldn’t work. At the same time, I was trying so hard every day until like midnight. I was training every day after work or before work, I brought in models or worked on wigs and hair. I was working so hard. Even when I went home after work, I would watch YouTube videos about hair. 

S: How do you describe your own style? 

T: So many people have only one style, like one type of picture. I’m not like that. I love many different styles. I do very simple straight styles, natural colors, and tiny detail accents. But I’ll also do like mohawks and crazy styles. I want to be very flexible. I want to have a style that everyone can enjoy. I don’t want to have only specific people that enjoy my style.