Wahl Professional put its styling tools at the heart of London Fashion Week this season, marking the leading brand’s first official appearance as a hair sponsor for Yuhan Wang’s Spring/Summer 2027 show, Sweet Nightmare.
Central to the collaboration were four hero products: the Wahl Pro Shine Curling Tong, Pro Shine Conical Wand, Pro Glide Straighteners and Vanquish Hair Dryer. Used together, the tools gave the backstage team the precision to build soft, defined pin curls and transform them into the runway’s deliberately undone finish.
Wahl Professional Artistic Lead Stacey Wright and Wahl European Artistic & Education Team Member James Parr directed a team of stylists backstage to bring Wang’s dreamlike vision to life.
“The Pro Shine Curling Tong and Vanquish Hair Dryer were our hero tools backstage,” said James. “The Pro Shine’s consistent heat and keratin-infused ceramic barrel gave us the bounce, movement and refined shape we needed to build the traditional set.
“The Vanquish’s focused airflow then helped us create lift at the hairline and loosen the finish without losing that underlying structure. Alongside the Pro Shine Conical Wand and Pro Glide Straighteners, they gave us the control to take the hair from polished to deliberately undone.”
The creative starting point was a girl who had fallen asleep with her hair set before slipping into a nightmare. Soft, romantic curls remained recognisable, but their polished shape was disrupted with lift, movement and deliberately dishevelled texture.
The styling direction reflected the wider concept behind Sweet Nightmare, which explores the unstable territory between waking and sleeping, a woman’s inner world and the different versions of ourselves that can exist at once. Across the collection, lingerie, transparent lace and silk satin met cotton, checks and sports jersey, while familiar garments and everyday bedroom objects were distorted and reimagined.
The Wahl Pro Shine Curling Tong created the defined curls and pin-curl shapes that formed the foundation of the look, while the Pro Shine Conical Wand introduced variation through the curl pattern. Pro Glide Straighteners were used to refine individual sections, and the Wahl Vanquish Hair Dryer added height around the hairline and loosened the finish through the lengths.
“Backstage, we needed to work quickly without losing control of the finish. The Vanquish’s focused airflow let us build height at the hairline and movement through the lengths, while its lightweight design made it comfortable to handle throughout show preparation,” added Stacey.
“The result was hair that looked softly set at first glance, but slightly disturbed on closer inspection – the point where a sweet dream starts to become a nightmare.”
Although the tools were put through their paces by professional stylists backstage, they are also designed for styling at home, offering flexibility to create everything from defined curls and loose waves to smooth, polished finishes.
Wahl Professional’s first official London Fashion Week hair sponsorship marks a significant step for the brand’s styling category, placing professional-grade Wahl tools at the heart of one of the world’s leading fashion stages and showing how the same performance can translate from backstage to the bathroom mirror.