By now you’ve seen the snapshots, portraits and videos of the 25 models from ARROJO, Curls Unleashed, Hair Rules, Matrix and Minardi Luxury Color Care gracing the runway at “Texture on the Runway.”

These polished runway presentations were the result of hours upon hours of cutting, coloring and styling these models’ hair over the days and hours preceding the event. Here’s a peek at what went into the creating “Texture on the Runway.”

Casting for Texture

Casting the models for “Texture on the Runway” was a unique challenge as each of the brands had a different concept of how they wanted to interpret texture. While Hair Rules and Curls Unleashed sought out multi-textured models evocative of the 70s and the essence of afro-chic, Minardi wanted to focus on color to create depth and texture, and Matrix aimed to create highly textured hair from little-to-no existing texture.

Whereas many fashion week shows focus on a model’s face and body, the casting of “Texture on the Runway” was very much hair-centric. Before a model even showed a creative team her runway walk or her book, stylists had their hands in her hair feeling for thickness, looking for damage and doing strand tests to make sure she could potentially be a hair model.

Once the final models were selected, they were individually scheduled for preliminary coloring, trims and any  necessary styling tests.

Backstage Texture

On the morning of the event, all stylists and their models arrived bright and early for a day of styling at ARROJO Salon in SoHo.

With a 3:30 call time for a final run through, prep began at 8:00am, and the salon was quickly transformed into an action packed studio filled with washing, drying, crimping and curls galore.

Bloggers and editors arrived with their cameras, microphones and notepads checking on the behind the scenes process and learning from the stylists.

Here are some of our favorite behind the scenes shots taken by photographer (and fellow curly!”> Gabriela Herman.

To the Runway