'HAIR' BY GUIDO PALAU
Our hair is a part of us, but it is also, in many ways, something apart. So argues Guido Palau, the British hairstylist who has been, thanks to his consistent work for houses like Alexander Wang, Louis Vuitton, Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, Prada, and Lanvin, responsible for some of the most memorable coiffures to come down the runway in recent years. “It’s just a material, something to be manipulated, teased, and trussed into different shapes and colors to define a style for me,” he explains in an interview with Tim Blanks in his second book, HAIR, out this week. A wealth of those intricate and iconic styles are on display as well, all photographed in stark, bleached portraits by David Sims, one of Palau’s longtime collaborators in his frequent editorial work for W and the American, French, and Italian editions of Vogue.
Palau’s creations are a seamless blend of styling and sculpture, at once classic and contemporary, with references to both the towering hives of Louis XVI’s court and the sharp shapes of anime. Collected together, as they are here, they trace the thoughtful evolution of a creative talent who is, as Andrew Bolton’s interview makes clear, both an iconoclast and a great artist.
HAIR is out now from Rizzoli.
Jonathan Shia is the editor of The Last Magazine.
