Adele’s Lustrous Hair
Photo Credit: Moroccanoil
Adele’s Mub, or Mum bob, is pretty, but we think it could be cooler. Inspired by this Moroccanoil photo shoot with our fave chirp’s fellow Brit, model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, our own hair guru Devin Toth relates his vision.
“Adele hair should aspire to have eye-catching color, an imperfect cut, and most importantly, seductive styling,” he says. “The feel for this whole look is rocker-surfer girl meets romantic Hollywood. I don’t typically use those words but that’s really what it is and makes it interesting and appealing.”
If you can’t get to Salon SCK in Manhattan where the master lurks, show this story to your stylist and colorist. Little Kendall Jenner will have nothing on you. And P.S. Adele, please say hello to Devin and good-bye to hot rollers.
The Color
“It’s a sandy blonde single process, but with dimensional, vibrant, bright highlights, especially around the face,” Toth says. “It’s the perfect rock’nʽroll chick hair. Who doesn’t want to have that hair color? Those bold pieces really make the look.”
Toth means ombre.
“Adele clearly has an inch of darkness regrowth from the scalp. To grow out well and blend better, bring it down a notch with babylights.”
Those are subtle, finely woven, baby-thin highlights at the top. You barely see them but it makes the roots blend with the few natural pieces more. And now that we’re in midsummer, the sun may change the color of the new hair, but not completely, to create a whole new natural color.
The Cut
“It should be imperfect,” Toth says. “More deconstructed, with no thick horizontal lines, tiers, or obvious cascading layers. The ends of the hair should all be wispy and soft, with visible strands instead of visible edges.”
Meaning your stylist cuts the tips with no blunt ends, keeping it all piece-y. However, length matters when you’re going chunky. Any hair past an inch below the collarbone, Toth says, shouldn’t go there.
“On longer hair, chunky comes off heavy,” he says. “A shorter Mub gets rid of all that weight. In Rosie’s hair, you see layers, not bulk.”
The Styling
As Devin Toth and I say, Beauty is pain. So assemble your arsenal, take your time, and attack that sucker.
Here’s how:
Moroccanoil Volumizing Mousse ($28)
Macadamia Foaming Volumizer ($25)
Rowenta Curling Iron ($199)
“Prep with a voluminizing mousse and go with a deep, clean side part – that’s the beginning of seductive style. Then do the opposite of detail work: a super-fast round brush blow-out. Next, create basic loose waves. Take a medium or large curling iron and wrap vertical sections of hair around it, leaving out the last two inches of the bottom of every section. As you unwrap the still- warm sections, stretch and pull down on the ends to make them straighter. This helps set the curl you just made into a wave.
“Now we get to get into the fun stuff. Take a water bottle and shoot a quick mist of water over everything. Take a golf ball-size amount of mousse and put it everywhere, beginning at the crown. Use a very wide-tooth comb and comb it all the way through to distribute. Now scrunch that with your fingers and blow-dry it with high heat and low air flow, almost diffusing it. Scrunch and let go. Tousle it dry that way. All the magazine covers, that’s what they do.
“To finish, as an option, you can barely, quickly re-wave the very front piece of hair on the side of the part that has more hair in the iron for a second. You’re redefining that wave, just the front piece. Take a dry texture spray, pinch areas of the hair and rub in the hair spray to blend. Rub it in parts of the hair you didn’t curl. You’re not spraying everything, just a little here and little there. Only three to five spots. It’s not supposed to be symmetric.
“For extra height and extra bed head, you can take a take a little texture clay -- you need, like, literally a fleck of clay -- and you’re gonna pull the hair at the back of your part away from the face. Pull from the roots upward and away from your face. It makes your part stop. That’s a nuance that makes the hair a lot more flirtatious.
“About the side part: part of what makes this look so seductive is that one eye is hidden. You can do that all night or you can part it in the middle -- which would still be edgy -- so you can actually see. ‘I’m kind of hiding but I’m not. I have a little secret. You don’t see all of me.’ Too clean a part would be too glam but the clay brings it back to rocker. Round out the look with a big fat trout pout.”
