All I want for Christmas is Adele's hair!
It’s glossy, slimming — and lasts a week. And as JULIA LAWRENCE proves, you don’t need to be a pop diva to get it
FOUR years in the making, the anticipation for Adele’s new album was fevered. The video for her No 1 single Hello, filmed against a moody, windswept Canadian landscape, was viewed 500 million times in the first week alone.
When the verdicts came in, her adoring public was united in praise. And not just for her singing. ‘Oh my God!’ they gushed. ‘Look at her hair!’
Her beautiful, powerful voice, the soul-baring lyrics and prodigious talent were as impressive as ever. But it was Adele’s gorgeous, glossy mane that left women like me salivating with envy.
Her hairstyle’s even gained its own name: ‘Hello’ hair, after the song. The last hair-do to be afforded its own moniker was the ‘Rachel’ (the layered look, championed by Jennifer Aniston in the Nineties sitcom Friends).
The only other recent contender in the hair lust stakes is Kate Middleton and her ‘posh girl’ long silky locks. But even her magnificent mane hasn’t had women stampeding to the hairdressers to copy it, not least because most of us don’t have long enough hair to emulate it.
Adele’s shoulder-length, layered style is something far more women can aspire to. As she has been appear-ing on chat shows on both sides of the Atlantic, online message boards have been full of chat about her hair.
‘Look at those long layers! How does she get her hair (once back-combed into a beehive) to bounce and snake around her shoulders in thick, caramel-coloured rolls?’
‘It really slims her! The style really softens her look!’
‘All I want for Christmas Adele’s hair!’
The reason women love Adele’s new style is it’s glamorous, but not overdone. It’s hair you long to run your hands through.
The Adele mane has even won the admiration of celebrity hairdresser Jo Hansford, who this week recreated it on me to spectacular effect. ‘There is no doubt Adele has lovely hair,’ said Jo, who counts Elizabeth Hurley and Angelina Jolie among her clients.
‘It’s thick, and that’s the beauty of it. She has the volume to make a state-ment. That’s what people love about Adele: she’s no stick insect or clothes horse, so she uses her hair to make an impact, and she does it well.’
The woman behind Adele’s Hello hair is British celebrity hairstylist Pamela Neal, who’s based in Los Angeles. It was she who was tasked with making Adele look soft and sexy while braving a Montreal windstorm.
Yet Jo assured me Adele’s hairstyle is simple to pull off.
SHE said the style is surprisingly adaptable to most face shapes: long layers frame the face and allow the hair to move, not fall in a harsh, unflattering curtain, accentuating the silhouette. It can also easily switch between casual and red-carpet glam.
So how is the look created? I may not have a lot in common with Adele (it’s a long time since I saw 27 for a start) but I have a thick mane of hair. Dry, bleached, mostly ignored and horribly abused it may be — but that just makes me living proof almost any woman can get Hello hair. I put myself in Jo’s hands — and those of her top stylist Sophie Cunningham and colour technician Mia Newnham. The first thing they did was talk food.
‘We want caramel and cream. Butterscotch and gold,’ said Jo, assessing my harsh colour. She was already making me salivate.
Adele, she said, prefers a technique called ‘slicing’, where highlights are painted into the hair in random chunks, rather than woven, which is the traditional method. They give bolder blocks of colour that don’t sit squarely against the hairline, framing the face nicely.
Jo applied an all-over tint, bringing my colour down several shades, preceded by 20 ‘slices’ in a lighter colour. Jo said slicing works best on thick mane like mine and Adele’s.
Next, Sophie cut the layers in. The layers are long enough for the hair still to be heavy, but short enough to create movement. Then came the blow-dry, which was painstaking — but worth it. Tiny slivers of my hair were tugged straight with a bristle brush and blasted with the hairdryer.
They were then teased around a tube the size of a small fizzy drink can, and allowed to cool. It took 30 minutes.
Once cool, my ‘tubes’ were shaken free and smoothed into place. This cut can be styled two ways; for a shaggy, natural look, the hair can be left to fall in separate, random curls.
For a formal look, a round brush is used to tease it into long, glossy ringlets. No hairspray was needed.
Jo said: ‘This is an incredibly low-maintenance hairstyle. A blow-dry can last a week, requiring only a quick brush each day to pep it up, if you can stand not washing it for that long.’
As she talks and finishes my hair off, I can’t stop looking in the mirror.
My new do is pricey (you won’t get much change from £300 for the works) and took four hours to create, but the darker shade is more flattering to my skintone and makes my eyes seem bluer. I feel like a different person.
When I leave the salon, I walk along with a spring in my step, admiring my bounce in every window. And, like Adele in her video, I couldn’t stop touching my bouncy locks. This is hair that demands to be played with.