TRESS TO IMPRESS
How this Clinton Hill hairdresser became Spike Lee’s mane woman for amazing Afros
M OST weeks, you can find LaWanda Pierre braiding, cutting and dying hair at Salon 921, an unmarked beauty shop located on the second floor of a brownstone in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill.
That is, when she’s not dreaming up ’ dos, picking out curls and fashioning wigs for filmmaker Spike Lee’s latest project.
“Most of my clients know,” says the 37-year-old Crown Heights resident of her ultracool side hustle. “They’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so happy for you — but I need my hair done!’ ” They may have to sit tight a little while longer. What started as an occasional gig assisting on Lee’s local sets has blossomed into a full-blown creative partnership for his newest movie “BlacKkKlansman,” out Friday.
Based on the true story of a black policeman (played by John David Washington) who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in 1970s Colorado, the movie marks Pierre’s first time heading the entire hair department of a major studio film. And it’s a star-making turn for the stylist, who masterminded the gloriously gravity-defying Afros, feathered disco-era shags and oily car-salesman wigs for the cast.
There’s even a rousing black-is-beautiful speech given by Corey Hawkins (playing real-life ex-Black Panther Kwame Ture) near the beginning of the movie extolling the virtues of “nappy” hair.
“That’s what I’m all about,” Pierre tells The Post on a recent Sunday afternoon at Salon 921, her own unprocessed tresses in loose curls. “I feel like hair is beautiful at every length, every texture . . . As a black woman with natural hair myself, it is very empowering to work on a film that celebrates black beauty.”
Pierre didn’t intend to go into the hair business. The second child of a mechanical-engineer dad and stay-athome mom, she was more interested in running track and singing in the choir — she even won an amateur night at Harlem’s Apollo Theater when she was a teen. But when she was 15, she tried her hand at straightening her tresses at home, after a stylist “burned the mess out of ” her hair.
“I just read the directions in the box,” Pierre says. Soon, she was styling coiffures for her three siblings, her mom and her friends. “I didn’t go back into a hair salon until I became a hairstylist.”
That took a while. Pierre studied business and marketing
and spent a couple of years in the “corporate world.”
But nine years ago, she quit her job, got her cosmetology license and grew out her chemically relaxed hair, embracing her natural curls. “I realized that I’m an artist and needed to leave the 9-to-5 life,” she says. “I never looked back.”
In 2011, one of Pierre’s clients, the actress De’Adre Aziza, nabbed a role in Spike Lee’s “Red Hook Summer.” When the film’s stylist couldn’t make it to set one day, Aziza asked if she could have Pierre come in and do her hair. Lee — known for promoting and hiring local black talent — took notice, and when it came time to film his Kickstarter-backed 2014 follow-up “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus,” he called up the young stylist.
“It was intense,” says Pierre, adding that the production was so low-budget that she had to style every single actor’s hair. “I think at that point, [Lee] realized, ‘OK, she can handle it.’ ”
“BlacKkKlansman” was unlike anything Pierre had ever done: Not only did she have a second-in-command (local barber Shaun Perkins) but she had to manage as many as six stylists on heavy filming days. And since the movie was a period piece based on a true story, everything had to look authentic.
“Spike’s main thing was to make sure the Afros looked real,” says Pierre, who studied photos of “Shaft” actor Richard Roundtree and activist Angela Davis for her two romantic leads. Unlike today’s more freewheeling natural styles, ’70s ’fros tended to be “very defined and perfectly round.”
The process was so meticulous that on days when they were filming crowd scenes, Pierre would distribute Afro picks to hundreds of extras so they could get started picking out their curls. Plus, she says, “It was important for me to show different textures, colors and shapes. Sometimes in films or TV shows you will see the same Afro on everyone. I wanted to show how one’s personality might be displayed through their hair.”
The white actors also had some hair-raising coiffures, such as Adam Driver’s John Travoltainspired shoulder-length shag. But Pierre’s biggest challenge was transforming Topher Grace into a young version of Klan grand wizard David Duke.
“We had to get a custom wig made,” she says of Duke’s sideparted sculpted waves, which were as hard to maintain as some of the flashier ’fros. “It wasn’t the best research I had to do, be- cause I had to look at photos [of Duke], but it was important.”
“BlacKkKlansman” is one of several high-profile projects Pierre is working on these days. She recently finished styling Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming “High Flying Bird,” and she’s currently shooting Season 2 of Lee’s Netflix series “She’s Gotta Have It.” When the latter wraps, she’s looking forward to spending time with her DJ husband and their almost-3-year-old son Russell, as well as getting back to her clients — until the next time Lee calls.
“Growing up in Brooklyn, Spike is like a legend,” she says. “I remember when I was 11, waiting in line to get his autograph. I grew up loving his movies . . . Never could I have imagined that I would end up working with him.”