A celebration of coiffure art will fill Hall 3 of the National Palace of Culture on Sunday as part of the International Hair and Beauty Festival. The annual forum, organized by the Bulgarian Hair Stylists Association, has been held since 1996.

The festival consists of two parts. The morning will be devoted to the competition program, which includes presentations of men's and ladies' commercial haircuts, evening hairstyles and daytime make-up. It starts at 10am.

"The purpose of that part of the festival is to show technique and mastery, not necessarily practical and everyday hairstyles," said popular Bulgarian hair stylist Kristian Kapanov. Kapanov is chairman of the hairdressers' association and president of the Kapanov Stylist company which owns a chain of four high quality hairdressers in Sofia.

The Show of the Nations will present distinguished hair styles from around the world from 3pm. Famous hair stylists from France, Holland, Italy, Germany, Romania, Greece, Macedonia and Bulgaria will show their mastery. Bulgaria will be represented by Vassil Atanasov and the Kapanov Stylist team.

Individual presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes and should have an artistic rather than technical character. Kapanov explained that the second part of the festival was to show the general public the entertaining side of coiffure art. Every participant will come with their own collection of hairstyles.

"We are very glad that we have so many participants this year," said Kapanov. "For the first time there will be 102 stylists taking part. Last year, at the International Hair Stylists Convention in Paris there were only 84 participants."

Kapanov revealed that next season's hairstyle fashion will be shorter hair. The festival will not aim at showing the latest tendencies but will show the artistic and technical side of the art of hair.