Fashion Neurosis with Sam McKnight

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1:10Hi, come in.

1:18Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Sam McKnight. Thank you. Lovely to be here. can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes oh i'm wearing a fred perry top of which i have probably hundreds and it's quite warm outside so into the first short sleeves of the summer and i wanted to be comfortable lying down on the couch and not wear anything too bulky and i'm wearing my lovely comfortable uniqlo sweatpants which is a kind of uniform for me yeah i was eyeing those up actually they're very they're a very elegant shape they're great aren't they they're great and they're about 30 quid or something so yeah i'm gonna get some how did you go from growing up in a mining town in scotland to becoming the top hairdresser in the fashion industry for maybe 40 years is that right well it's actually 50 years this year yeah this is my 50th year of being a hairdresser I know I just said it out loud um I went to I'm from a mining village in the southwest of Scotland called Newcombe Nook it's like a little council estate dropped into the beautiful green hills of southwest Scotland.

2:44I went to teacher training college when I was 17 or 18 and it was all very exciting. I was going on to further education and it was at that time when university courses and further education started to be open to you know children, teenagers of all classes before it really had only been the kind of select few that got to university, but things were changing. It was the early 70s. And I was the first person in my family to go to university. I first went, I did two years of teacher training college first, because that was close to my home. And then the next two years, we're going to be at university in Glasgow.

3:31But by the end of year two, I had had enough I was fed up being in the education system I was bored I felt like I wasn't really learning anything I was just learning to pass exams and I wasn't very good at exams and I knew I wasn't going to do well and I had done really well at school always this was a big change for me to start not enjoying what I was doing so I started to my family didn't have any money but my my dad's a coal miner and my mom worked in the co-op and I um so I always had jobs I was I did window cleaning I worked at a sock factory I worked in a jeans factory I did all kinds of things uh to get pocket money basically during the school holidays in the evenings and um I had an odd job working for some friends who owned a hairdressing salon or a few hairdressing salons and they owned a disco they had a burger bar it was early 70s yeah i suddenly i gravitated towards the hairdressing salon i guess because people were fun and that was the beginning of my kind of life in hair because hair salons in those in the early days they were like hothouses for young people trying to connect with fashion and they were such a big it was such a big deal the local hair salon and the that changing and what were people wearing then and what what did you wear when you went into work I think back then it was I think by the time I started doing our jobs in the salon I had been wearing huge platform souls i mean i'm talking huge platform souls for well i think that went on for about three or four years in the early 70s uh and by 75 we were turning towards americana it was becoming more i remember having a catherine hamlet jacket that i bought in miss selfridge it was a girl's jacket but it was a safari jacket kind of army jacket basically and uh and i remember buying a pair of smith's jeans smith's sort of painter's jeans i think they were red yeah they probably were red they were red yeah i think so we were heading into bomber jackets and americana by then But we were coming out of that kind of glam rock of the early 70s into the Americana and kind of disco of the mid 70s.

6:13And I had discovered discos a couple of years earlier and I discovered the Philadelphia sound, you know, sort of black American music, which I'm still addicted to to this day. God, those platform shoes were such a thing. thing I remember going to a jumble sale and buying these really high platforms because my mum wouldn't let me wear anything apart from desert boots and and they were I had size four feet and these shoes were size eight and I'd carry them in a bag and put them on and they were really ugly and I knew it but it was such a I'll never forget them I mean this is so long ago now and they just they had so much gravitas and it was such a thing wasn't it it wasn't i remember my prize pair were black silver black silver quadruple sole with a wooden stack heel and they were lace-ups and i remember they were they were 26 pounds now i think my mom and dad probably would have been horrified if they thought i'd spent three pounds on them So I never told anyone how much they were.

7:29Luckily, it was my own money because I earned my own money. And it was the most expensive thing. I mean, it was crazy. It's probably a thousand pounds in today's money. It was crazy. But I loved those shoes. Yeah. God, did you have an obsession about anything, any particular clothes when you were a child that you just felt you had to have? in the 60s and 70s from from when we're children even even now we like our fashion right and we like our tribes and we like to belong to this one or that one and i was a beatles fan when i was a kid and then there was then i was a t-rex fan and then of course like everyone in my generation we discovered david bowie so everything was about copying david bowie i had a very very

8:30happy association with fashion since a very young age. God, that's so nice. Because fashion and music is intrinsically linked, isn't it? Totally, yeah. Or it was. No, it was, maybe more than it is now, isn't it? Yeah. We look to those pop stars and rock stars for an image and how to sort of start experimenting with identity. Well, we idolize them and you identify with someone. I think it's deeper than image, isn't it? It's an identification. You think, oh, there's someone that I can see a bit of me in. And I think that's a really sort of quite an intoxicating realization when you're a teenager.

9:21Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I know I went to a school, when you say you had a happy association with fashion, I went to a Steiner school where fashion was just regarded with absolute sort of contempt and bemused patronizing. So of course it was so difficult to be interested because you felt absurd you know and then this girl came into my class when we were 12 I think who come from London called Rusty and she was into David Bowie and she had these great clothes and she was so pretty and she had like dyed her hair and everything and we just couldn't believe it and she was so fantastic that we sort of it was like a spell had been broken we woke up and was like oh my god that's what we're missing we we need to be part of life and rusty's showing the way and and she became my best friend and uh she was a yeah she the whole david bowie she sort of introduced me to david bowie and he seems to have had such a big influence on anyone who's interested in fashion well that that music and fashion uh mix is really it's quite a heady mix isn't it it's incredibly um it's inviting and intoxicating and makes you feel great yeah because and it stays with you it never leaves i mean every time i hear life on mars i'm transported yeah i know same here it's That same pleasure that woke up when I heard those songs is right there waiting.

11:13And it's just, it's like a balm. It's better than any antidepressant. In fact, I remember a psychiatrist telling me that they can always spot when something's up if someone changes their hair. And I thought that was so interesting. and can you see someone's insecurity in how they how they're wearing their hair I think I see insecurity in not so much how they're wearing their hair but how they're not wearing their hair I think people use their hair in my experience I see people using their hair as in many different ways. Some people use it as a shield, well, we all do. We use it as a shield or as armor.

12:04I mean, it can be two very opposite things or as to make a statement.

12:14I think people use it. It's a useful tool, your hair. I mean, it does tell a lot of stories. I think a lot of people and a lot of people don't use their hair don't know the power of their hair And they don't use it at all and that makes me sad Yeah, how in what way do they did? Can you give an example? Well, I think I think a lot of people get stuck in not doing anything with their hair And I think I've worked with a lot of amazing people and I remember when when I I did a couple of years with Lady Gaga about 10 years ago when she was kind of first on the radar. And I remember at the time thinking, wow, this woman completely uses her hair in a way that I have never seen anyone use it before.

13:03Because she would just go from wig to wig to wig six times a day and outfits changing, changing, changing. because she tapped into the power of the internet and the social media, the power of social media and the power of sending out all those different images multiple times a day because she saw how things had changed and this monster of social media needed to be fed. And I think she used the word monster very well as well. And I thought that was very, very clever. of her to do that. Yeah, she did it with a kind of freedom as well. It didn't seem... Well, she meant it. It came from her heart.

13:50It was something that she felt. And every look was really thought through. It wasn't... nothing was an afterthought. Yeah, it was very, like, performance art almost. It was performance art. And I think she changed, she raised the bar and she changed the way other artists had to perform from then on. Yeah. It wasn't enough just to have one look and stay with it. Gosh, she really did raise the bar. She did, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So also people say hairdressers receive people's secrets. And how do you reinvent someone's identity? What's the first clue to getting in there? I think for me, it's about, well, the relationship with your hair and a client or a celebrity or whoever, whoever's hair you're doing.

14:56It has to be based on trust. And I think if someone wants a dramatic change, I have to really get the message that they really mean it, that it isn't a whim, or it can be a whim sometimes, but they mean it. They really want it. They're not going to regret it. So there has to be a conversation.

15:25and i think i have to understand why they're doing something the reason why this because your hair once it's gone it's gone it's not coming back you know if you're going to do a haircut so and i think you pick up signals so you quickly understand yeah this person really wants to do this and sometimes i go you'll have the conversation you don't really want to do this do you you just want to talk about it and you you realize that that's the case yeah so it's it's uh it's just something you pick up with experience but you must have an incredible sixth sense of reading someone because you know this kind of ability to know when someone wants you to take charge of them like i mean that sounds like the thing that happened with princess diana when she kind of invited you to suggest changing her image and you just did it.

16:23Well, I'm going to contradict myself here because that was the first time I'd ever met her. Oh my God, really? And I'd only met her for a couple of hours. Didn't know anything about her at all, apart from what I'd read, but I didn't read much because I wasn't really paying much attention. And it was 1990. We were on a shoot doing portraits of the young royals for Vogue and she was the last person on the shoot. And she came into the studio, charmed us all immediately because she was just, she was incredibly charming and just killed us all with a smile immediately. Disarmed us all and we were all putty in her hands.

17:08And we had a couple of hours of shooting and we laughed a lot. It was with Patrick de Marshalia and patrick's french uh is almost indecipherable he's english sorry because he's french and i was translating i was kind of and it was very very funny as it always was and we did some gorgeous images um one of her sitting on the floor it was the first time she had been photographed in such a kind of relaxed less stuffy less royal portraiture patrick had her on the floor laughing and um i've got that picture now as a fringe magnet i found oh my god which i love so she's on my fridge good and uh and i made her hair look short and uh after the shoot i because she had the big fluffy perm of the 80s which was you know very of of that time but this was 1990 things had changed and I said she said do what you want to do so I made her look as if it was short with a TR on and at the end of the shoot she said what would you do if I gave you free I just said do whatever you want and I said honestly I would just cut it all off get rid of the 80s and move into the 90s because we were heading into sort of the the sort of minimalist power dressing of the 90s got we'd gone from the fruity 80s this was 1999 and and and we're working for vogue and vogue was vogue was about the business power woman yeah so um i didn't know anything about her background but in retrospect she was heading for a divorce and her life was changing but i didn't know any of that but i knew from the way she was talking that she wanted a change and we cut her hair off there and then after the shoot and then I spent the next seven years looking after her hair yeah so that was a that was a fortuitous decision how incredible I suppose it's so interesting that she was going you know heading into this complete change and transformation of her life and you came along and she realized you were a trustworthy person that she could begin this new phase I mean I'm making all this up but it's just it's funny you say that because a couple of years ago a friend of mine sent me a recording because there was a there'd been a documentary on TV and they had some recordings of her speaking with her voice coach and that he had made into a documentary and in that recording she actually says that her life changed when I and when I cut her hair and that was honestly that that's almost 30 years after her death that was the first time I had I mean I I knew she liked her and she you know she but but that was the first time it really kind of deeply resonated with me of of how much that haircut had affected her that's so moving isn't it yeah I it's it's it's very it's a it's a it's a powerful thing here it's it's it's it mustn't be underestimated but you have this ability to be with people at these key moments in their life because of how you you move their identity into a place that sort of catches up with their almost their emotional courage you know that they're setting out on a new journey and you just have this you have this kind of instinct and and I imagine that's why you've stayed at the top of your game all this time and when I watch you I remember coming to a shoot that when Kate Moss was just doing Topshop and we were all in this basement I don't know what I was doing there but I was just hanging around and I saw her sitting there and you appeared and something completely changed it was like a molecular change in the atmosphere and she just settled and sprang to life and it was about you and her and then you started doing her hair and it was fantastic and I I never forgot that it's like I can feel it now as I'm remembering it how this kind of magnetic thing happened between you and and you've worked with all the supermodels and great actresses like Nicole Kidman and Kate Blanchett and Kate Moss said you've done even more Vogue covers than she has I think you've done 150 or something is yeah I think it was well over that oh my god and the last counts the thing you have you have this way of always knowing what is modern and i wondered what does modern mean to you what does modern mean to me um it doesn't mean just one thing i think it means what's what's right for that moment does that make sense yeah completely i think it's what because hair isn't about something that looks good.

22:56It's about something that makes you feel something. And I think modern hair is something that makes you feel really good about yourself. It almost doesn't matter what it looks like. It's something that makes you feel good about yourself. So it gives you confidence. Yeah, I suppose it's the whole thing about fashion. is when you can find the things that work for you, you can forget about yourself. Absolutely. And with hair, it's the same thing, almost more so, because you can literally go out in your pyjamas and your hair is... Well, I always say that with actresses and models, we're seeing each other at six o 'clock in the morning when everyone is raw.

23:45So that person who sits in the chair, having just got out of bed with no makeup or hair or or armor or shield whatever you like um that character has to be built in that couple of vows where they're in your chair so we makeup hair wardrobe we're all there to enable that person to become the person that they want to be does that make sense yeah totally because i always remember kate talking about you know being backstage and saying the hairdressers and the makeup artists have your back and thinking it's such a nerve-wracking situation that really you know there's such a high level of pressure and expectation and and I wondered how how do you deal with fear when it's you know it's on you I don't know I think you I and that's you have to work through it's like you have to get through it you know that you have to there has to be a result at the end of the day so you're all going to have to get through this so I think it's about it's about collaboration it's about all having each other's backs it's it's not just a one-way street it's it's about everyone working together to the same end I think you've got a touch of the Yoda though as well you you You have this very calm demeanor, but it must be very hard one.

25:18And I try to have a calm demeanor, but I'm probably like a duck, you know, paddling furiously underneath this sort of, you know, the smile. But I like to have fun. I like to laugh a lot. And I do, I guess, I guess my go to thing is to try and make people laugh, trying to diffuse the situation. yeah it's a very good technique because when you see someone else relax you know you're kind of it's it's going to be okay yeah Kate Moss is rather good at cutting hair have you ever seen any of her handiwork I'm good I'm not so sure she loves doing it but um I've never had the pleasure But I've seen the results and the jury's out on that one.

26:07I saw her. I didn't see her literally do it. But this older man with very bouffant hair and the next time, he looked like a hundred times better. And she said, oh, yeah, I thinned it out or whatever. She's got a very good eye. She's got a great knack. She knows how to make people look good. Yeah. Yeah, I trust her. I mean, she's cut my hair before. She's got the clippers to my hair. Really? Yeah. I love the way she takes over. You know, it's just so relaxing. You think, oh, well, she's in charge now. And how did you deal with losing your own hair? It wasn't a problem for me. My hair went slowly.

26:52So I never really had an issue. I mean, it went over the course of 20 years, really. I remember when I was in my late 30s, we were bleaching hair for Jenny Howarth. Jenny was a big model in the 80s. We were dear friends and we were bleaching Jenny's hair. And there was loads of bleach left over, so I did mine too. And I remember I had that for about a year because I knew I was about to lose it and I wouldn't be able to do it again. So that was my last hurrah with the bleached hair. I loved it. I loved every minute of that year. It was great. And then it started to go and it was slow and it was fine.

27:32A friend of mine has recently suggested that I get a hair transplant because they're so good these days. But I think at this stage of the game, no, thank you. Maybe if I was 20 years old, I'm not going to do that now. It looks good though. I'm fine with it. I'm okay with it. I'm all right. I like bald heads, I must say, and I like bald patches, like that guy on White Lotus, Walton Goggins, I think, who has a much younger girlfriend in the series. And she says, you're like that other guy. He's old and he's got a bald patch. You've got a bald patch. I'm not loving this series. I've struggled with it.

28:18I like those two. Yeah, it hasn't grabbed me, this series. The other two series were amazing, but this one, I kind of fell asleep the other night watching it, so that's a test. I kind of quite like that it's a little bit boring. I need that. I enjoy it. And you worked on many of Vivian Westwood's shows. I did. I started with Vivian in like 91, something like that. And yeah, I worked with her. Yeah. Because she had all these. She was gone. I loved Vivian. Really? I mean, it was a great relationship. We understood each other. Because as you know, Vivian too, and she could be quite indecipherable.

29:08You know, her rants of how she wanted the hair and makeup for the shows could be, you'd kind of go, at first you go away thinking, thinking what on earth was she talking about but after a few seasons you kind of picked up her her vibe you know and and as she and she knew that I wouldn't have a meltdown because quite often backstage she would be running her hands through the hair wiping the lipstick off dude and she knew that I wasn't fazed by that so so um because I knew she knew what she was looking for does that makes sense yeah it does because i was because i work i work for her and i'd already left before you started and um because sometimes i'd remember i remember her making this this kind of shawl thing with tons of gathered ivory silk but it was glove lining silk which is so fine you you pick it up and you've snagged it even with the end of your fingers and she made this thing and you couldn't tell which way it went on or anything and she said I'm going to call this the mess and it was so great and it was a mess but when it was on it was just ravishing and and I wondered what kind of things she told you when she was oh there was one time she she wanted um she showed me a drawing a very old drawing of a man running down the stairs with his hair on fire I said that's what I like so we did we colored all these hair pieces into flames and we did this sort of flame and she had it herself too she she she would often have the hair make-up of the show so she had her hair was in flames and um and just before and and it was kind of it was a difficult thing to do time-consuming thing to do and we made it perfect and of course she never wanted perfection and i should have thought that so just before they were going on she took her hands and she messed the whole thing up so they looked like they'd been dragged through a hedge and um and she absolutely loved it she absolutely loved it so you you know what can you do um well it was her show yeah um there was quite some of those um amazing shows in the 90s uh which went on for 40 minutes were just incredible they were absolutely mind-blowing when when she had all the I remember I remember early on Naomi and I persuading uh Linda and Christine the big girls to to do her show because it was she had just started showing in Paris yeah it'd always been English girls before you know Yasmin and I think Yasmin and Naomi and I got got the other girls to do it and And it kind of really elevated her shows into the stratosphere, really, because those girls just looked absolutely incredible in those wonderful, well, they were couture outfits, really.

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34:11I mean that picture of Christy with with that kind of frizzy yes those two like bear bag trees almost yeah there were that was amazing and Kate with her sort of little she was holding a little bunny rabbit yeah it was just amazing and there was one show that was sponsored by Magnum and And they all came on licking Magnum lollies. Oh, my God. And it was just extraordinary. Yeah. Things were so much more wild in those days. I mean, the order backstage was, there wasn't any. It was chaos. I don't know how it happened. It just does, though, doesn't it? You just make it happen. And I guess that was really good training.

34:53Yeah. I think what we know in the fashion business is how much crazy stuff, how much disorder there is and how I'm always so impressed how people can take that and run with it and make some order out of it and that order is beauty you know I mean you're a master of that well it's it's it's that it's that idea of collaboration because it's not a single it's not a single person it's not a solitary craft it's it's a it's a it's a it's a huge team effort it's all about the team it only works if everyone's doing their thing do you have a favorite show that you worked on i've been lucky to work on hundreds of incredible shows with people like Vivian I spent 12 years with Carl at Chanel and Fendi which was just absolutely incredible and that that was recent uh I spent 15 years with Dries van Noten doing amazing things I've been lucky enough to work with um incredible creative talent so it kind of rubs off on you yeah hopefully because carl i mean carl was just a byword in fashion it's so strange that i mean i remember when i was coming up originally with the questions for fashion neurosis a few years ago when i was developing it one of my repetitive questions was going to be do you have any anecdotes about carl lagerfeld because he was like an alter ego for you know not just for fashion people but he was such a he was like an avatar and he sort of was one in the end and do you have any anecdotes about carl about carl oh god so many anecdotes about carl he he he was so funny and he was so welcoming because you know my first few jobs with chanel is it's quite intimidating to be in his incredible studio with the 40 foot high ceilings full of books, you know, and all these amazing creative talents around.

37:15But he makes everyone feel welcome. He goes around and says good morning to all the assistants and goodbye, big kisses. And he was incredibly warm and very, very, very clever and very funny. so every job with him was um it was an absolute joy and the funny thing is we did six shows a year for chanel we did i think four for fendi and um we never did the same thing twice if it was a ponytail it would be on a different side or it'd be a double ponytail or something it was he loved the idea that you never did anything twice. And he never spoke about a job after it was finished. A show, a job, anything.

38:05You never heard of it again. He moved on to the next thing. And that's something I took from him, the kind of the constantly moving forward. I mean, it was quite incredible. He never mentioned yesterday's news. It was all about today and tomorrow. Wow. Because I used to hear stories of him suddenly deciding someone was out, you know, someone who'd been close to him and then they fell. They were cast out of the Garden of Eden. It was quite a devastating thing. Well, when I worked, it was towards the end of his life. So I think he probably mellowed out a bit. Yeah. Yeah. But yes, I did hear those stories, too.

38:53Yes. And if you fancy someone and you don't like something they're wearing, does it kill your attraction to them? Oh, God, my days of fancy are long gone. I think what you're wearing is what someone's wearing is. I hate to admit it, but yes, it is very important to me. If someone if someone's wearing. Oh, how can I say this? Oh, I don't know. shoes if someone's wearing awful shoes i find it really off-putting what are awful shoes awful cheap nasty shoes like trendy shoes unflattering shoes cheap shoes cheap shoes are awful i think cheap cheap shoes that look cheap are awful on anyone i think i guess it's from me being very head conscious i look at faces and hair and then i guess the next thing you go to is the feet and i i think i think the feet are really important i can be very put off by someone's footwear because it's estate agent footwear that's very good that's so good estate yeah yeah there's a particular bad suit and bad shoes that are certain the sits sits fine it's the shoes right it's the shoes yeah you can't get away with bad shoes no it's true and a good shoe really makes you notice you just elevate it changes the way you walk it elevates everything and has you know such a personal thing it is clothes in its way and what about disasters has has anyone been incredibly upset with something that you've done God, not that I know about, probably.

40:48I mean, you're such a master. You just have this, it's like watching a chef. You just conjure up these things and you're such a maker, you know, watching how you shape these incredible kind of beautiful creations that you make with people's hair. the the reason for i tell you the reason for that is uh i i use my hands as tools really i when i first came to london um i came to london on holiday and my friend a friend of a friend was the pr at bieber in high street can and within two years i hadn't moved to london and uh because i i'd just fallen in love with you know the whole that whole london biba look of the early 70s it's just it was coming from a mining village where there was only three days electricity a week we were in that sort of world and everything was bleak and london was pretty bleak but there were these sort of little blips of lights like biba and um fiorucci and you know that that kind of world was opening up and um i saw the bright lights and i ended up working i had a few jobs i worked in miss selfridge which had a hairdressing salon i worked in elizabeth alden hairdressing salon and then i ended up in a place called malton brown which was malton brown you probably know as hand wash but it was the coolest hairdressing salon in London in the 70s it was in South Moulton Street and the building is still there it's a beautiful listed building with a curved window when Malt South Moulton Street was the happening place in London after the King's Road yeah King's Road was kind of on the way and Mrs.

42:51B had opened browns Mrs. B's daughter married a hairdresser called Michael and they opened Malton Brown so Malton Brown was the first place to do organic hair products really yeah they made them all themselves and we we were taught to to do to be the opposite of Vidal Sassoon so we weren't allowed to use electrical equipment we had to dry the hair with towels in our hands so everything had to work in a much more natural way so i learned to really rely on my hands and not rely on electrical tools um so that i learned that very very basic thing there when i first started and that has kind of informed my work ever since.

43:49I like to get my hands in. Yeah. God, that's so good. Because if you can do, I mean, any idea that can travel from the brain down the arm and into something is every single time you repeat that, it's an education, a new idea seems to come out of it. It does, you're right. Yeah, you're right. I mean, in a way, technology really interferes with that process. And I think, I imagine it's harder for a young person to make the leap from having a fantasy about doing something or being someone to actually making it. technology interferes with that but I I take another view on that I I'm so glad I learned that I learned to do that so I just absolutely am fascinated by the new technology in in um you know hair dryers and and and um tools and straightly arms and curlers it's just it's extraordinary what you can do with the right tools um i remember when straighteners first became when i got my hands on the first pair of straighteners it would have been the 90s i'm sure and they were great big flat of things with wooden handles that you got in italy they looked like torture contraptions now looking back but it changed my life suddenly yeah you You didn't have to, you know, iron hair with an iron or, you know, blow dry it for hours.

45:24Suddenly these straightened, whoosh, and they straightened. I think technology is an incredible thing if you use it properly. Yeah, I suppose you can mould it yourself. In the end, it's incredible. The person who is the creative and any tool is another way of extending that. Yeah. and you've talked about liking to go out of your comfort zone what does that look like to you now to me well I mean when I was 62 I launched a line of hair care products which took me right out of my comfort zone but I think as I've gotten older I think it's really important to push myself out of my comfort zone I during COVID I was 65 during COVID and my 65th birthday on the first second month of May in the COVID when it was, you know, peak COVID.