.jpg)
We may earn a commission if you buy something from any affiliate links on our site.
Ever wondered how Dakota Johnson gets her hair so good? It’s hard to look at that perfect fringe and artfully undone texture and not fall in love with it. Save for regular haircuts with Cervando Maldonado and color appointments with Tracey Cunningham, it is hairstylist Mark Townsend who has been working his styling magic on those tresses for a decade, ever since they met when Johnson was first cast in Fifty Shades Of Grey.
“We bonded right away,” he says, reminiscing on their first job together, a 2013 Gucci LACMA event for which Johnson wore a Gucci dress with feathers and jewels. “She hadn’t cut in the bangs yet, but she told me she liked her hair up and simple. I was all about putting a little texture in up-dos and she just let me play.” The result was an ultra elegant knotted chignon which Johnson proclaimed looked “beautiful, like art.” The pair have worked together ever since.
Striking the perfect balance between red-carpet polish and a low-maintenance aesthetic, Townsend truly has the golden touch. His aim for Dakota is always to create hair that is “touchable and never overdone—just young and fresh,” and he believes that hair should move, rather than be stiff and frozen in one place. A little frizz is fine. “We never want her hair to look like newscaster hair, where everything is in place—we’re not afraid of a little flyaway here and there,” he says. “If there’s a breeze, I want the hair to move with it!”
One of his favorite red carpets the pair have worked on together was the Independent Spirit Awards a few years ago, which was held on a windy beach. “While I suggested we try a ponytail or up-do, she wanted to wear her hair down,” he says. “In the end, she actually went to the event with a scrunchie on her wrist, just in case, so she could tie it up into a ponytail. Actually, half way through it, she did.”
Townsend makes a moodboard for all of the events Johnson attends, and draws inspiration from everything from music to architecture to history. “Sometimes it’s an image from the 1920s or ’30s, others it’s a picture of a sunset,” he explains. “But a lot of my inspiration for her hair comes from Jane Birkin—Dakota has seen an awful lot of her on my moodboards!”
With their similar features and face shapes, Birkin and Johnson are kindred spirits, so it’s clear to see why Townsend references the icon and her hair in his work with Johnson. “She is a woman who [at the height of her fame] had beautiful hair but wasn’t owned by it,” he says. “I like Dakota to pull her hair or tuck it behind her ear, it’s so important that it is touchable. I love hair that moves!”
Here, Townsend shares his process and expert tips for getting hair like Dakota Johnson’s.
Dirtify the hair
“Dakota always loves to have very clean hair, so my challenge is always to make it look not-so-clean. I want it to look like it’s the second day post-wash. We’ve found dry products work better on her hair, so it’s all about dry shampoo. Kevin Murphy’s Doo.Over Spray is my absolute favorite product—it’s a powder-based hairspray. That’s all we ever really put in her bangs, and then I use the Kevin Murphy Hair.Resort Spray from the mid-lengths down to give it a little piecey-ness.”
A classic curtain bang
“The real secret to the perfect bangs is cutting the fringe right in the middle, at the base of the nose. And for length—it’s a very narrow window, but the magic sweet spot is when the bangs fall between the eyebrows and eyelashes. Dakota has a classic curtain bang which gets longer at the sides—it goes from the base of her nose to the top of the cheekbone at the sides. I always use thinning shears afterwards to chop up the bottom of the bangs a quarter of an inch.”
Effortless hair takes work
“I always want it to look like she woke up, ran a brush through her hair and walked out the door, but it does take a little bit of work, especially now her hair is so long. We recently worked together for the Sundance Film Festival, which was all virtual this year. We kept her hair very natural—I just gave her a really pretty blowout each day, using a large round brush, then set it in a bun while she finished make-up. It creates natural bends in the hair.”
The new beach wave
“The beach wave is a trend that has stuck around for 15 to 20 years now—it’s never going away because it’s accessible, people can do it on themselves and it looks cool. But it has changed—it’s not the super crunchy beach wave that it used to be; now, it’s softer because the products have evolved. I love just spritzing Resort.Spray (which is a salt spray) into my hands, and then raking them through Dakota’s mid-lengths to ends.
How to blow dry curtain bangs
“You have to start with very wet bangs. Dakota has a strong cowlick so I hold the blowdryer directly over her bangs and blow them straight down, using just my fingers at first, and roughing up the root a little bit. If you go in with a brush straight away, you make the bangs too flat. We get them to about 90 percent dry and then at the end use a Mason Pearson brush to smooth it out. After that, I hold a round brush vertically (instead of horizontally), and blow dry the sides away from the face to flick them out. That opens them up and creates the curtain effect.”
- The Best Met Gala Beauty Looks of All Time
- Olivia Wilde on Making Sustainability Sexy, Freeing the Nipple, and the Importance of a Social Media Cleanse
- 14 Healthy Meal Delivery Services for Easy At-Home Dining
- Six Approaches That Will Help Redefine Your Daily Nutritional Habits
- Sign up for Vogue’s shopping newsletter The Get to receive the insider’s guide to what to shop and how to wear it
