March 26, 2025 |
With nearly four decades of experience coiffing the runway’s most memorable hair looks, Guido Palau is still at the top of his game. As he settles into his latest role as creative director of Zara Hair, his singular influence is poised to go global.
PORTRAIT #1, DOHYUN, PORTRAIT #2, JACK
“I can’t believe I did that job,” Guido Palau says with a laugh. It’s a bitterly cold winter morning in New York and Palau is Zooming in from Long Island, allowing us both the privilege of enjoying the warmth of our own homes. After a career that has spanned nearly four decades, the 63-year-old hair artist could be speaking of any number of famed moments that have left an indelible mark on the annals of modern beauty history: his mastery backstage during the Calvin Klein and Helmut Lang grunge era; the decades of Prada and Versace shows; the extensive body of work with photographers including Steven Meisel and David Sims. But for the moment, he’s reminiscing about styling George Michael’s David Fincher-directed music video for Freedom! ’90, which officially made Linda, Naomi, Christy and Cindy ‘super’ and marked yet another milestone for Palau. “Sometimes, I look at my career from those very early beginnings to now and I think, ‘God, how did that happen?’”
Palau, who, much like the supermodels he helped canonise, goes by Guido, was born in Dorset to an English mum and Spanish dad, and quickly stole away to London when he was 17 after a stint travelling around Europe. “I didn’t do well at school and hairdressing came about just because I didn’t really know what else to do,” he says. But the foundational interest was there. Growing up in England in the ’70s and ’80s, a young Palau was influenced by the punk-inflected haircuts that helped define the youth culture of the time. He got a job at Vidal Sassoon, but the rigid curriculum of five-points and architectural bobs didn’t sit well. “Sassoon’s own archival work was so important to me, but it was like a finishing school,” Palau says of the experience, which lasted just 18 months. He found his way to other salons, eventually assisting another stylist on a shoot; from the moment he stepped on set, his mind was made up. “I very quickly decided that that’s what I wanted to do.”
PORTRAIT #3, ANNA, PORTRAIT #4, MAYOR
Pre-social media, that meant an arduous process of testing with young photographers, young models and young make-up artists to build a portfolio. “Then you would go around and get rejected from magazines,” Palau says. But the process was important. Testing led to assisting and assisting led to relationships, which is how Palau met Sims. “David started taking his own pictures and asked me to do the hair. And even though he was [five years] younger than me, he was like a mentor. He helped me see hair in a totally different way – with a very English point of view,” Palau says of Sims’s photography, which had a raw realness that helped define the ’90s anti-beauty movement. “He taught me that,” Palau says, describing Sims as family (he’s godfather to Sims’s children).
Palau, who is handsome, with his scruffy beard and perfectly dishevelled crop of brown hair, has a long-standing role as part of the editorial power trio that he has formed with Steven Meisel and Pat McGrath, and it is perhaps his most visible calling card these days. It’s a pedigree that portends high-octane glamour and a level of polish and versatility that has defined more than 20 years of image-making. But it’s his time with Sims that’s laid the groundwork for much of his unique point of view. “Hopefully, there is always a slightly exaggerated, anarchic kind of angle to my hair: it’s too big, too exaggerated, too curly, too something. The viewer has to look at it and question, ‘Is that beautiful or is it ugly? And who has defined those terms?’” It’s the pushing of these boundaries that keeps Palau interested in the medium, and keeps the fashion world captivated by him. “Anything that pushes that envelope and makes us question the way societies conform is a good thing. At its best, hopefully my hair does that.”
PORTRAIT #5, JANE
It’s likely one of the main reasons that Inditex chair Marta Ortega Pérez sought out Palau when she began conceptualising the idea for a full hair-care range from Zara. “I think it’s important to build bridges between high fashion and high street, between the past and the present, between technology and fashion, between art and functionality,” Ortega Pérez told WSJ Magazine in 2021, around the same time she recruited Palau to build a collection of hair products with the Spanish retail giant. A holiday drop of gilded looks that arrived in 2023, featuring a gold glitter spray and a gold-flecked gel plus accessories, was quickly followed by the Everyday Basics collection – a six-piece line of essentials – with geometrically-shaped bottles designed by Fabien Baron in a palette of contrasting colours inspired by a Japanese glazing technique he saw on Palau’s personal mood board. In the last six months, Palau has upped the drop cadence debuting last summer’s Undone collection of air-dry must-haves, a four-piece Shine collection for autumn and three hair perfumes created in collaboration with superstar perfumer Jérôme Epinette, which launched in December with a campaign starring Daisy Edgar-Jones. “I’m such a big fan of yours,” Jones is seen telling Palau in the black-and-white short-form social video.
It’s a common refrain from actors and models, many of whom have been on the receiving end of one of Palau’s career-making cuts. “My first big shoot was with you, and every time I’ve made a rash decision to cut my hair, it’s been with you,” Kaia Gerber tells Palau in the campaign for Zara’s gold collection, which he cast but also co-stars in – something that’s taken a bit of getting used to for someone so used to being behind the camera. “That’s not something I was taught, and it actually isn’t natural to me,” he explains of doing tutorials. “So to do that kind of thing pushes me to learn another side of this job as it is today. It’s not about just being a great hairdresser.”
PORTRAIT #6, GRACIE, PORTRAIT #7, LUTHANDO
Palau is, by all accounts, a great hairdresser. He’s proven it in countless magazine pages, on endless runways and in a series of monographs in which he occasionally plays photographer: #HairTests, a book of his signature profile-facing iPhone snaps, which live on Instagram and in his portfolio, was published by Idea Books in 2021. But enjoying the kind of longevity he has had, which he credits to hard work, luck and “being ready when the luck comes”, does come down to keeping himself curious.
“You asked me what still motivates me all these years later, well, even doing those tutorials keeps me motivated. I think, ‘How can I do it better?’” Continuing to surround himself with best-in-class creators is also part of Palau’s secret sauce for staying “150 per cent in it”. Meisel’s expectations, for example, do not decrease, no matter how many times they work together. “You just want to do your best for him, and that keeps me at a level of curiosity about my work and wanting to do the best, not only for him, but for myself,” continues Palau, who is never content to sit on his laurels. “It’s always the next thing that’s really important.”
PORTRAIT #8, PORTER
Taken from 10 Magazine Issue 74 – MUSIC, TALENT, CREATIVE – on newsstands now. Order your copy here.
GUIDO PALAU: HAIR RAISING
Photographer and Hair GUIDO PALAU
Fashion Editor EM KENDALL WATSON
Text CELIA ELLENBERG
Models ANNA THOMSEN, JANE KEALEY, LUTHANDO NGEMA, MAYOR DUTIE, PORTER GREGG and JACK at Next Management, GRACIE RAE at The Society Management and DOHYUN KIM at IMG Models
Make-up JAMAL SCOTT
Hair assistants SANDY HULLETT and SUMMER KEY
Producer KATE MCGRATH
Retouching GLOSS STUDIOS
Casting MIDLAND AGENCY
GUIDO used ZARA HAIR HAIR SPRAY, ZARA HAIR DRY TEXTURIZING SPRAY, ZARA HAIR CURL ACTIVATOR and ZARA HAIR VOLUMIZING MOUSSE
Clothing throughout by ALAINPAUL
