Illinois Salon owners Jeffrey LaMorte of Jeffrey LaMorte Salons  and Vance Theodore of Salon Evangelos have been joining forces to bring their staff advanced education for several years. Five years ago, when these inspirational events were so popular with their teams, they realized they could make them even more meaningful by adding a charitable component.  So each year, since, they have selected an organization to benefit from their fundraising dollars and to receive a donation check. 

This year, their chosen charity is BrainUp, which promotes brain cancer awareness and treatment. On April 28, 2018, at Park West in Chicago, LaMorte and Theodore invited their staff, friends, and family to view the talents of Wella Top Artist Dana Lyseng and Sebastian International Artist Anthony Cole, onstage, demonstrating color, cut, and style techniques during a live runway show.  

"We started doing these events together to pool our resources for our staff and  to make things bigger and better than each of our individual salons could do alone," LaMorte explained. "In addition to ticket sales, we raised money with raffle tickets. Each salon put out huge gift baskets for our salon clients and everyone wanted in. We raised $10, 000 to benefit BrainUp." 

The charity is near and dear to LaMorte, as one of his longest client's only daughters died of brain cancer. 

"Wella gives us full support to put on these events," says Theodore. "They just say, tell us what you want to do and we'll help. We first started by supporting a Crisis Center that helps abused women. Our hairdressers love being a part of getting behind these different causes."

Onstage, Cole and Lyseng tag-teamed on models, creating stunning before-and-after looks. Both artists talked through their work, sharing tips and tricks that can have immediate application in the salon.