CROWNING GLORY
Celebrity stylist I have had so many highlights in my life
In the ever- changing world of fashion, Sam McKnight has never gone out of style.
The talented hair stylist has cut, coiffed and crimped the locks of everyone from Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss to Kim Kardashian and Tilda Swinton.
He was Princess Diana’s hairdresser for the last seven years of her life – making a friend of a young Prince William by being the first person to put gel in his hair.
He styles hair for the covers of the world’s most famous fashion magazines and for stars on the Hollywood red carpet.
And he has built long-standing working partnerships with everyone from photographers Mario Testino and Patrick Demarchelier to designers Karl Lagerfeld and Vivienne Westwood.
Now, as he celebrates 40 years at the top of his profession, the Ayrshire-born stylist is marking his longevity with a book and an exhibition that showcase the collaborations behind his work as well as some of the most iconic images he has been involved in creating.
But despite the nostalgic look back over his career, he has no intention of hanging up his comb or scissors.
Sam, 61, said: “I feel so incredibly lucky to do what I do and I still have too much fun to think about stopping.
“Looking back on the last 40 years has been a real process – at one point we had 40,000 images and I’ve had big boards all around my living room for the last year covered in the ones I wanted to include.
“Some of the people in the images are not with us any more, which is obviously sad, while others I hadn’t been in contact with for ages and it’s been lovely getting in touch with them again. It’s been quite a journey.”
Sam is a styling favourite of Cara Delevingne, Victoria Beckham, Miley Cyrus, Uma Thurman, Sarah Jessica Parker and Nicole Kidman.
He styled the hair for Madonna’s Bedtime Stories cover, for Ti lda Swinton channelling David Bowie and for Cate Blanchett getting her Oscar.
As Sam reflects on his career, he is in no doubt about the client who made the biggest impact on his life – Princess Diana
He said : “When Pat r ick Demarchelier was asked to photograph Princess Diana for British Vogue, he requested to bring his own hair and make-up team. Mary Greenwell and I were told it was someone important but we had no idea who. We guessed it might be Margaret Thatcher and then in walked Diana – which was a nice surprise.” Sam is the hairdresser responsible for Diana cropping her hair short and for styling her in many of her most famous photos. But he says she did much more for him than he did for her.
He revealed: “She was a big part of my career and she let me into her life in a way I didn’t realise fully until not that long ago.
“I think it was important to Diana that ‘ her team’, as she liked to call us, saw what she did and how necessary it was.
“She took me to visit Mother Teresa in India and to refugee camps where kids had had their limbs blown off by landmines.”
Sam says his mum, 84, finally accepted he had a “proper job” after meeting the princess.
He added: “Diana had been visiting a factory in Cumnock and my mum just happened to be standing in the crowd outside to wave with her friends.
“As Diana bounded out to meet the crowd, she happened to head straight over to where my mother stood waiting and, not knowing who she was, my mother’s friend quickly introduced them. It was kind of strange but lovely.”
Sam, who travels to Scotland regularly to visit his mum, says he had planned to become a French teacher after he left school but fell into hairdressing by accident.
Not enjoying the teachertraining course he was studying, he left home and moved to Prestwick, where he got a job helping out friends who owned a local salon.
He said : “There was an American-style burger joint next door with a disco out the back. It all felt frantically glamorous for a market town in Scotland.
“I drove the van, did odd jobs and finally graduated to the salon f loor, doing cuts for kids who wanted a Bowie look or a soul boy wedge. Something just clicked.”
Sam, who is originally from New Cumnock, hitchhiked to London aged 19 and, after gaining further experience at several smaller hairdressers, got a job at Molton Brown.
At the time, the salon did much of the styling for British Vogue and it wasn’t long before Sam
found himself on his first shoot. He said: “That was 1977 and I’m still working for British Vogue. I remember I was terrified but it went well. “The model was a girl with blonde curls called Amy and I often wonder what happened to her.
“By the end of the 70s, I was spending more time working on shoots than in the salon and I loved it.” With a few private hairdressing clients, Sam made the bold leap away from the salon to become one of the first session stylists dedicated to working in fashion. His gamble paid off and he has never looked back. In the early days of his career, a new generation of young models were starting to make a name for themselves and he was instrumental in helping develop their image. He remembers Naomi Campbell as a “16 - year - old schoolgirl from Streatham” when he first styled her hair. He also worked with supermodels Christy Tur l ing ton, L inda Evangel ista, Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer. Sam said: “There have always been supermodels, girls who transcend their own moment, achieving more than what was expected of them. My generation of supermodels, however, became the ones that the world would recognise.
“They knew it was their time and we were all on their side, helping them look and feel how they should.”
Sam, who has lived in New York for almost 20 years, recalls one shoot with Evangelista which helped sum up how professional all the girls were.
He said: “I watched her open the doors of a church in a little town in Umbria, dressed to the nines, hair and make-up perfectly in place, flying out with a dozen Dobermans running behind her.
“I had her mum hanging off me in mortal fear and all Linda was concerned with was which diamonds the photographer wanted her to highlight – the earrings or the bracelet?
“She completely choreographed her own leap into the frame. Of course, she not only did it flawlessly but with not a hair out of place.”
Sam hopes the exhibition and book will be a unique reference and offer a glamorous tour through the past 40 years of style and fashion.
He also hopes it will give the public a better understanding of a stylist’s work.
He said: “After all these years, people still ask me, ‘ Where’s your salon?’ And I have to explain again what I do.
“I hope the exhibition and book will be a way of getting across just what our craft really is and that the hairdressing we do is very different to the craft of working in a salon.” Hair by Sam McKnight , published by Rizzoli, is out this autumn. The exhibition is at Somerset House in Strand, London, f rom November 2 to March 12. See www.somersethouse.org.uk