When Harry met Gisele
HARRY JOSH
HAIRSTYLIST; CREATOR, HARRY JOSH PRO TOOLS. NEW YORK
“I was casting a show in London in 2000. A 16-year-old comes in, Gisele. She’s never done a show before, she doesn’t speak English—she was just being called in to be a fit model because she wasn’t the right look, quote unquote, that girls were emulating at that moment, which was very CK One. I befriended her. She ended up getting the show because she charmed them. I saw her in Milan and Paris. And we were in touch via email; a year later she moved to New York and we started hanging out. She was bummed because her hair used to be bright in Brazil, but now it’s dark all the time. I told her I could do it. I told her I could paint some bleach on her ends and it would look like that, which is now known as ombré thirteen years later. If you look through the food chain of ombré, it has always been her. Simultaneously, she was starting to work a lot, too. She was starting to grow and with her stardom was her hair.”
I love Lily Aldridge as a human being. I love Gigi. I love Karlie and Candice. Gisele to me is a sister more than a client—we’re friends first and foremost, she doesn’t even care who does her hair. I love the conversations we have; she’s molded me so much as a person. If there’s any celebrity client who’s shaped who I am, it’s been her. She’s such a mindful person, so private, so uninterested in being famous—doesn’t go to parties. She was on Larry King and I’ll never forget this quote. She said, ‘The bigger the branches grow, the stronger the roots need to be for that tree to never fall.’ And she’ll call me out on my ****, too.”
“I’m a people person. I love to make people feel good. And my brand was built on social media—that was how it spread. I’ve had Instagram for three years and I’ve never shared anything personal about me. No one knows where I live, that I have a partner, that I have dogs. It was a conscious decision not to show off. It was two months ago, I was having dinner with Gisele and she said, ‘I know you keep your Instagram quiet and I appreciate that you don’t pimp us out, but who you are as a person should be shared. People don’t know you the way I know you.’ So recently I started post quotes and my real feelings and people relate to it!”
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