The Hair-Raising Work of Guido Palau
From the supermodels in George Michael's "Freedom! '90" video to the custom headpieces for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute's "Punk: From Chaos to Couture" exhibition, the stylist has created many of the industry's iconic looks
"AT THE END OF THE DAY, I am a hairdresser," protests Guido Palau, as he sinks into a faded floral sofa at London's Charlotte Street Hotel. Wearing a love-worn blue shirt, sand-colored jeans and desert boots, and with a very full head of dark hair himself (he is a fan of the hair nutrient Viviscal), he seems much younger than his 50 years.
And there's no sign that the hotel bar's regulars have any clue they are near one of fashion's elite tastemakers, who's behind many of the industry's most memorable images. His vision will influence the way women will want to appear.
"In fashion, you want to be on the cusp," says Palau, whose career spans three decades working with photographers Steven Meisel and David Sims, makeup artists Pat McGrath and Diane Kendal and designers like Sarah Burton and Marc Jacobs. "When I work with designers and photographers, I can express what is about to happen." His imaginative prophecies can be seen all over the fashion world: This fall season, he racked up 32 major womenswear shows: proposing sleek modernist ponytails at Alexander Wang; wet, deeply side-parted and sexily tousled looks at Prada; and choppy, just-out-of-bed starlet wigs for Louis Vuitton. And when he's not backstage, he's ricocheting around the globe creating game-changing looks for magazine shoots and ad campaigns for clients including American and Italian Vogue, Dior, Lanvin and Valentino. He can be credited for such styles as the return of the once-maligned ponytail and for the recent obsession with girlish braids and chicly undone buns. For men, rockabilly quiffs and foppish Eton schoolboy hairdos have all had their moment in Palau's lexicon. Meanwhile, his tips and techniques are filtered through to armies of salon hairdressers who wield the styling products Palau helps create in his role as creative consultant for Redken, the professional hair-care line.
Imbuing hair with gesture, mood and personality is what Palau excels at, say his fans inside the industry. His imagination is one that fuses and sculpts all manner of references, from Japanese manga to neoclassical art, into an ever-changing vision of contemporary beauty. "What Guido brings is more about art direction than just hair," says Katie Grand, the editor-in-chief of the cult fashion publication Love and the show stylist for Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton. "He likes to understand who the character is. He views the whole image, and then he works out the proportion: Should the hair be small, big or should they wear a hat? Would a curl be right or wrong—or so wrong it's right?"
That "wrongness" is of key importance to Palau, who particularly enjoys pushing his audience to question the accepted norms of attractiveness. "My inspirations are classical, but it's how you twist them," he explains. "I might create a chignon, but rather than one that's dry and perfect, I will make it stringy and wet—it's a classic shape but not how the eye is used to seeing it. That's how hair can be modern now. Every era has been plundered, and every youth trend has been explored, so subtlety and classicism is what I try to achieve."
Of the sculptural "Adonis" curls he created for WSJ. Magazine, Palau explains: "It is neoclassical versus avatar. It is something from my imagination; something from the past—referencing Greek mythology—and something from the future."
PALAU NEVER GREW UP dreaming of being a hairdresser, ending up in the profession completely by accident. The son of a hotel manager and real estate entrepreneur father (Spanish by origin) and stay-at-home mother, he grew up in the sleepy seaside town of Bournemouth, Dorset, with his three brothers. He dropped out of school at 16 to bum around Europe, earning his way by waiting tables and working in bars. When he returned to England, he discovered a few of his mates had begun working as hairdressers, prompting him to make the move to London and land himself a trainee position at the Vidal Sassoon salon on South Molton Street.
But the strictures of salon life were not for him, and he was fired after 18 months, being told, "We don't think this is your career." "I never could imagine myself behind a chair doing 10 appointments a day," says Palau. He assisted a friend on a fashion shoot and was hooked, scrapping for any job he could get: women's weekly magazines, makeovers, even working for mail-order catalogues. Despite the limited platform, his later style was already emerging as Palau began seeking ideas beyond beauty's conventional references in the era's exuberant street style. "In 1984 and '85, the street was like a catwalk. I was informed by that," explains Palau of the inspiration that has since fascinated him.
His first big break came in 1990, when he landed a dream job styling a roster of supermodels including Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford for George Michael's "Freedom! '90" music video. "George Michael had seen a beauty story of mine in British Vogue that he really liked and sent it to the director, David Fincher," recalls Palau. "And I was booked." The video ended up on seemingly permanent rotation on MTV and ushered Palau directly into fashion's inner circle.
