“I think my work has quite a similar creative narrative, so they generally all seem to fit together.” You have to go through a battle to get it right, but that’s what I really enjoy, that fight and being a little bit uncomfortable.” “When you’re doing hair, you’re trying to make it do something that it doesn’t want to do, and hair doesn’t like playing along, it always wants to do it’s own thing,” he explains. “During the physical process of hair, there tends to be this inner turmoil that I have, but once I start to get the reins of it and the control starts to come, then I really start enjoying it. You have to go through a battle to get it right, but that’s what I really enjoy, that fight and being a little bit uncomfortable.”
“I’ll think of a good idea and then think: ‘Oh God, is that even possible?’ and then have to work out how to do it – that’s even after doing hair for over
30 years,” explains hairstylist Gary Gill, musing over a career that has spanned decades and right- fully earned him the title of a legend. Though, he’d likely reject it if you told him to his face. “I don’t think I’m a really technically gifted hairdresser,” he admits. “One of my best skills is having ideas and then working out the technique afterwards – it’s not the other way around with me.”
The London-based hairstylist somehow remains as humble as when he started out doing hair, following in the footsteps of his hairdressing mother. “I still have to pinch myself, I feel a lot of gratitude for be- ing where I am. I never get complacent; I never take it for granted,” he shares. It’s somewhat surprising, given that Gill’s catalogue of clients reads more like a fashion encyclopedia, rather than a CV, boasting an impressive roster of brands including (but not limit- ed to) Alyx, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Cottweiler, Grace Wales Bonner, Martine Rose, Vetements, and Vivienne Westwood.
Yet, thoroughly uninterested in glory, the hairstylist looks back at his work with a metaphorical magnifying glass and picks it apart hair by hair. “I’m not always as happy as I want to be with how the hair- style looks,” he muses. “I always think, ‘Why didn’t I move that piece of hair?’. I’m very, very overly critical of everything I do, I pull things to pieces.”
Gill is wrong to nitpick though, illustrated by an in- credible portfolio of his work in this issue – often snapped by the hairstylist himself backstage in a qui- et corner amid the post-show chaos – that beautiful- ly capture some of his most memorable looks from the past few years. “The goal was to try and build up almost like a human study, a catalogue of all the best bits of hair that I’ve done over the years, in a way that I’d never put together like this,” he explains on why he wanted to portray his work in this way. Whether it’s punk side-swept afro fringes for Martine Rose, highlighter dye jobs for Vetements, or delicate- ly distressed ‘do’s for Marques’ Almeida, the images showcase his effortlessly eclectic style. “It’s a good collection of how the hair has been at shows that I did,” he says.
“Authentic”, “gritty”, “real”, and “honest” are all words he uses to describe that narrative, but the com- mon thread combining them is an endless source of inspiration from the plethora of subcultures he lived through: from punk, goth, rave, ska, and everything else in-between. “I’d like to think that the hair that I do embodies who I am as a person, my influences around youth culture have been huge. My work is reppresentative of what’s under my skin really.”
The beauty in Gill’s originality comes from his spontaneous approach, often turning up to jobs without concrete ideas, but quickly making notes, adapting, and working in different ways with different designers. With Bottega’s Daniel Lee – who the hairstylist has worked with since the designer took over the brand in 2018 – he explains that “the hair doesn’t necessarily need to be a statement, but a nice addition to beautiful designs”, and for Demna Gvasalia at Balenciaga it’s more about the individual characters, choosing bespoke looks for each model. “We normally dedicate four or five days for the fitting, so we see every model and we cut and colour based on how the model looks,” he reveals. “We talk about the outfit, we talk about the character, and then design something specifically for them.”
Working with Martine Rose is where he really gets to play though. “Martine and Tamara (Rothstein, stylist) always want to go there with the hair and I feel like her show and her designs can support that,” Gill explains. “The hair has become such a big part of her show, but that’s because the designs are quite extreme, so it’s in line with that.” Previous collaborations between the hairstylist and London designer have seen everything from sleek side-swept 80s fringes for AW17 to bewildered and bewigged boys for SS20. One thing that remains though, is that they’re always a joy to behold and stick with you long after the last model has left the runway.
