When you hear the word visagismo, do you associate it with visagisme?

Many people think that visagismo is simply the translation of visagisme. However, the truth is that they are very different concepts.

Visagisme originated in France in 1937 and has become a method that facilitates the aesthetic harmonisation of personal images. It is applied, mainly, to hair and, with some applicability to clothing and glasses.

Visagism has its origin in London, in 1971, and was established in Brazil in 2003. It is a method that allows the analysis of the client's temperament and stimulates him/her to define what he/she wishes to express, by means of a consultancy, and uses visual language to create a customised image for the client. It applies to all areas related to personal image.

Soon after the end of the First World War, around 1920, Paris attracted all the leading artists, writers, musicians, and thinkers of the world, who met there, mainly in the cafés and restaurants in the Quartier Latin, around the Boulevard Montparnasse.

The meeting places were in three cafés, side by side, in Montparnasse: Le Dôme, Le Select and La Coupole and, just ahead, La Rotonde, all of which still exist today. The greatest artistic and literary movements of the 20th century emerged there, and a counterculture was established, as almost all of them were materialist, socialist, or communist, and followed the nascent theories of psychology. It was a movement that celebrated materialism and intellectualism and was essentially political and artistic. That is why they stood against the principles of the upper class bourgeoisie and, to show this stance, they started a differentiated fashion, of women's liberation, evidenced in loose dresses and short hair.

That was when Coco Chanel and other great designers appeared, who created the main haute couture brands of today.

Fernand Aubry was living in this environment when he created the term Visagisme, but he never established his concept, because he did not leave any book or published method. One can tell from the fragments left from interviews and courses that he was thinking of some kind of de-standardisation.

Paris gradually ceased to be the epicentre of the avant-garde and after the Second World War it became the capital of haute couture, haute coiffure, and luxury, and came to represent the upper bourgeoisie. It remained, however, an important centre for socialists, communists, and political protest, as evidenced by the May 1968 protests.

Visagisme was also transformed. It became standardised, a technique for harmonising haircut and make-up with the shape of the face and skin tone. The term fell into disuse until, at the end of the 1980s, Claude Juillard renewed interest in Visagisme by creating a method which made it possible to evaluate the aesthetic preferences of clients by analysing their behaviour and gestures.

The method makes it possible to evaluate a person's momentary emotional state and to understand what their preferences are, in relation to their hair, but it applies to the female public. It is not a method that allows the analysis of temperament and much less of personality. It still focuses on aesthetics, with the professional indicating what will be aesthetically favourable to the person.

Visagismo, which was born in Brazil in 2003, has its origin in London and in the ideas which emerged in the 1960s. London had taken over from Paris as the capital of counterculture, and of avant-garde movements in music, theatre, and fashion. And it was in London that the clamour for freedom of expression and the protest against a society that promoted privilege, the division of social classes and exclusion was heard.

Freedom of expression and de-standardisation are the fundamental pillars of Visagism. The entire process revolves around the question, "What do you wish to express?" That is why consulting is the most important part of the process.

These longings gained expression in popular music, with rock ensembles, such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who and Pink Floyd, among many others, whose songs spread around the world, influencing young people, and changing the world. In parallel, young people began to dress differently and wear long hair, images that expressed freedom and lack of commitment to standards and uniformity.

First in Carnaby Street, in Soho, next to clubs like the Marque Club and the UFO, where rock bands were appearing, and then in King's Road, in Chelsea, and in the Kensington area, the boutiques where this new fashion was sold appeared. The fashion was characterised by miniskirts, bell-bottom trousers, short sweaters, hot pants and flowery shirts and wide ties. Young women let their hair down, in a demonstration of freedom and nonchalance. The make-up was bold and contrasting. The boys also let their hair down, which they let grow and began to wear beards and moustaches. It was the harbinger of the hippie movement, which appeared in the USA at the same time, stemming from the beatnik movement.

That is when Mary Quant, Vivienne Westbrook and Biba's appeared, the ultimate symbol of "Swinging London". The male symbol of this fashion was Christopher Gibbs, who I met in 1971. In Beauchamp Place and in the World's End there were several beauty salons, which provided a personalised service, where the rule was not to standardise. And that was when Vidal Sassoon transformed the art of haircutting, introducing geometric cuts, brushing and hair colouring.

Veruschka, Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton became celebrities, the first top models, along with photographers David Bailey, Richard Avedon, Terence Donovan, and Brian Duffy, among others.

This movement also had its expression in cinema and theatre.

And the world changed.

Freedom of expression was conquered. And so, the rebellion was replaced by questions: "And now? What do you want to express? Who are you?" These are difficult questions to answer, and they can only be answered by the person themselves, after introspection.

I spent my adolescence and youth in this environment, first at a traditional school in England, with stints in London, then at art college in the USA and finally back in London in 1970.

In 1971, when I was studying art 10 hours a day, trying to fathom the fundamentals of drawing, and developing my language and style, I discovered Carl Jung's work on archetypal symbols when my friend Paul lent me the book Man and his symbols.

I realised that, as the structures of compositions are geometric forms, they are archetypal symbols, so, I could establish the intention of my painting by structuring the composition with the geometric forms/archetypal images that expressed my intention. I began to think beyond aesthetics and visual representation. The effect was extremely powerful. I soon realised that geometric structures are in all images and because they are archetypal symbols, this makes anything visual have a visual identity, including the face. I had discovered why we regard the face as the seat of identity. This also gave a new dimension to the creation of the personal image, which became more than the creation of an image with harmony and aesthetics. It means that the image created needs to express the personality of the person, otherwise it will not be in tune with the person’s sense of identity.

I then realized that, besides geometric shapes, lines and colours are archetypal symbols and, as an image is a composition of lines, shapes, and colours, an image is entirely formed by archetypal symbols that establish what the image expresses.

So, I began to experiment with reading a person's temperament by interpreting the lines and shapes contained in the face. I did this with my art students, who, we art professors are prone to discover, reveal their temperaments when they paint and draw. And the results were exactly what I predicted. Hence, I had created a way to read the temperament in a person's face, in a much simpler, science-based method than physiognomy.

I then became acquainted with Joseph LeDoux's work on the emotional brain and made the final association. His work clearly indicates that archetypal symbols are processed emotionally and not rationally. This reinforces the hypothesis that the face is a visual identity and explains why changes in image affect the person emotionally and modify their behaviour.

To complete the creation of the method, I used the techniques I had developed to stimulate creativity, which stimulate reflection and meta-thinking.

This method was not presented in the first book Visagismo: harmony and aesthetics, as I did not have any case studies, because I do not work directly with customers and no beauty artists even knew about my method. So, I introduced it in the interviews I gave at the end of 2003. The impact was stunning. I was invited to speak at the major trade shows and gave dozens of interviews, and, in 2004, I started to give courses. What was entirely unknown became the talk of the town very quickly.

Since then, thousands of professionals are using the method and have changed the way they serve their customers entirely. Various aspects of my work, such as analysing a face or a person’s temperament, are particularly alluring. Their work is a convincing testament of the transformative power of the method, and the testimonials of their clients attest to the beneficial effects on their self-esteem, self-confidence, and their personal and professional relationships. It has spread to many other areas, and spawned hundreds of theses, academic papers, and research. Universities in Brazil have created courses and majors in Visagismo. Therefore, the origins of Visagismo and the scientific, artistic, social, and philosophical basis are very different from Visagisme.

VisagismO is not VisagismE.

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