How To Care For Your Hair Like A Model With Kevin Murphy

Models' hair needs to work extra hard! Long days on set or multiples styles and restyles at different shows during fashion week, they know a thing or two about keeping their hair as fresh as can be. We sat down with Massimo Morello from Kevin Murphy, the official haircare sponsor at the 35th Elite Model Look World Final to get his top tips for keeping hair bright and healthy every day.

Tell us about Kevin Murphy! What makes the difference with their products?

We are a brand with a small range of products, but each one of them designed for a specific need. Our DNA has always been weightless hair products that gives the hair health, shine, longevity and protection from heat and chemical damage. We never use parabens or sulphates, even when these were widely used in the industry - and still are! We always respect the environment, and we are proud to say that from this year all the plastic that we use for our packaging will come from O.W.P. - ocean waste plastic. Basically, we are helping to clean the oceans from all the plastic that float around and we make our packaging by recycling this plastic. We are the first hair company that do that!

How can a model prepare their hair for a shoot?

If they can, models should arrive with clean hair! Backstage, I don’t have the luxury of having a basin like in a hair salon, so if I need it, I use our dry shampoo FRESH.HAIR spray, brush out and the hair is as good as new! Prepping hair for a shoot or a show is like foundation for a house. You can have the best interior design, but if the house don’t sit on solid foundation, you will be in trouble! ANTI.GRAVITY.SPRAY is my hero product and I use it pretty much on every models hair, as it combines a lot of pluses like volume, shine, longevity, texture and it smells really good! Its what you will call a “win win”. 

If a model has coloured hair, what’s the best way to look after it?

There are two things to think about when looking after coloured hair. Shampoo needs to be able to clean the hair but not strip the inside of it, and having a non sulphate shampoo is essential to do that. The second thing is that each time you dye your hair, you need to restore and rebalance the hair. How? With a good conditioner, and it doesn’t mean that need to be strong one, it needs to contain vitamins and antioxidants to keep the hair structure. If you do a good colour but then you use the wrong products, your colour will always fade quickly and your hair feeling dry.

Models have to have their hair styled and changed a lot. How can they look after their hair between shoots?

Always add heat protection every time you use a hairdryer, a curling iron or straighteners. I protect the models’ hair with our heat protection product HEATED.DEFENSE , before we start using any tool. Healthy hair makes our work life easier, and it’s because we look after their hair that models love KEVIN.MURPHY! What you do in a daily basis is the most important thing. It’s like eating, if you eat well, you feel good! Products like our REPAIR.ME WASH and REPAIR.ME RINSE repairs hair that is damaged and will keep it healthy. A small action like using these every day will make a big difference!

A model has had a long week on set and their hair is feeling tired. What’s the best way to revive hair?

We have a range called YOUNG.AGAIN, and I think it has a great name. They are like superhero products to make your hair feel fresh and new, and trust me that after one week of constant work on model’s hair like at the Elite Model Look Bootcamp and World Final, we need to make them feel YOUNG.AGAIN! It is a shampoo and a conditioner to use every day, plus the hero product that comes in a serum that can be used every day, even multiple times a day without fear that then hair will get limp or greasy.  Your hair, contrary to your skin, doesn’t revive it self. Your skin repairs itself by growing new cells, your hair doesn’t in quite the same way, and we need to feed it several times a day, just like you nourish your body with breakfast, lunch and dinner. We use ingredients like Australian superfruits that are able to live in very harsh climates, and are packed with antioxidants and vitamins to help your hair recover fast, just like taking Vitamin C to fight a cold!

What’s the biggest mistake people make when it comes to looking after their hair?

Not knowing enough is the real problem! If you ask “how’s your hair feeling?" 78% of women will say "dry", and that’s a fact. But what is interesting is to understand if their hair is dry because of the colour, hot tools or the environment. For each one, there is a different solution. A common mistake with hair products is to think “the stronger the better”, but not all hair needs to feel super soft and silky, some hair needs to feel the opposite in order to resist that chemical and mechanical stress! So knowing your own hair and what causes the problems special to you is super important.

What’s your favourite hair trend for 2019?

I like the idea that masculine and feminine are getting closer and closer these days. Prada just did a show 2 days ago in Milan and male and female models had the same hairstyle, that how close it gets! But my favourite trend is that there’s no trend! If you look at the catwalk shows now, everything is mixed together, a nice dress with heavy boots, a jacket inside the pants and a men’s bag on top... anything is possible these days and there’s no one trend to follow!

What’s the secret to good hair?

Less is more! I didn’t invent this motto, but I love it so much. In a world full of “noise” where everything is at our fingertips, everything has been done before and made bigger and louder every time. I think that being natural is what will keep us connected to the real world, the one that we live in every day, and not the world on our smartphones!

You worked on Elite Model Look before – what do you think is the best thing about the contest?

The best thing about Elite Model Look is to see the youth and energy of these young models, they already know a lot through the social media but in a way, everything is new and you can see that they are really excited to learn from the mentors they have in this event. The quality of the models that work for Elite is amazing, it is undeniably the best model agency in the world and is an honour to be part of this event once again. I love the Elite team that work behind the scenes as they are nice and grounded people that relate really well with KEVIN.MURPHY team and culture. 

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