Sam McKnight, stylist to the stars, is having a bad hair day. News of The
Sunday Times photographer’s arrival hasn’t filtered through the PR chain and
he doesn’t feel that his casual garb — green polo shirt and shorts — sets
the right tone. “If I had known, I would’ve had my hair cut,” he says.
His head and chin are stippled in stubble a couple of millimetres long. It’s
hard to see how you could take any more off without scalping him. It is,
however, reassuring to discover that the man who puts the gloss into Kate
Moss has his own insecurities.
But McKnight is much more than a celebrity crimper. He has been at the cutting
edge of style for a generation and has played an important part in the
democratisation of fashion. A power behind the rise of the supermodel, he
has worked with the most talented photographers to create the high octane
looks that fuel a multi-million-pound industry.
Tonight he will leave his luxury suite in One Devnshire Gardens to collect an
honour for his achievements at the Scottish Fashion Awards at Stirling
Castle. Thanks to a galaxy of young, talented Scottish designers such as
Jonathan Saunders and Christopher Kane, it is now a glittering occasion in
the fashion calendar. Vogue.com have come in as backers.
There is nobody who understands the importance of a good haircut quite like
McKnight. A cut from him can turn a model into a household name,
turbo-charging their earning power.
Two years ago the model Agyness Deyn, then virtually unknown, arrived at a
Mario Testino shoot with shoulder-length hair. McKnight cut it into a
peroxide, androgynous crop. It made Deyn one of the hottest models around
and has since been copied by Pixie Geldof, Kimberly Stewart, Mena Suvari and
Selma Blair.
“She had this long, straggly hair, but she was kind of cute,” says McKnight of
Deyn. “She just had this lovely energy about her. I asked if I could cut her
hair and she agreed. We bleached it the next day and she ran with it.”
“The Aggy” has been deemed by those who know about such things as “the Rachel”
(after Jennifer Aniston’s character in Friends) of the noughties. How does
it feel to be the Professor Henry Higgins of hair? “Ten per cent would be
nice,” he quips.
There are few female icons of the late 20th century that McKnight has not
styled. He recalls a 15-year-old Naomi Campbell turning up in her school
uniform for a shoot, worrying about missing the bus home because her mum
didn’t know she was modelling. He cut Uma Thurman’s hair when she was a
teenage model and has worked with her ever since. He was at the Oscars with
Cate Blanchett when she won. He has worked on about 80 Vogue covers. But the
woman with whom he is most closely associated is the late Princess Diana.
“Vogue introduced us,” he says, lolling back in the enormous grey sofa that
dominates his masculine flat in London’s Maida Vale. “Patrick Demarchelier
was doing the shoot. Security was very tight. We didn’t discover who we were
photographing until she walked in. It was the shoot where she wore the tiara
and the white strapless gown and the pictures became iconic images.”
Within a couple of months of meeting Diana, McKnight was accompanying her on
her first solo trip. It was the start of a seven-year relationship.
“It was quite humbling,” he says. “I was living in New York and I wasn’t quite
sure I wanted to do it, but when I saw it from that side, I realised she had
an amazing gift. She could light up a room. She would step into a crowd and
the whole place changed, but she didn’t.
“She was genuinely compassionate. She was able to deal with the blood and the
guts and the dying mothers. We would be at Mother Teresa’s hospital and I
would be round the back crying my eyes out while she would be calm and
composed out front. It was a gift and she knew that.”
The contrast between the glamour and the poverty did not always sit easily
with McKnight, who eventually told the princess that she didn’t need him:
she could go to these places with her hair messy and people would still love
her. She retorted that people didn’t want to see her but “Lady Di”.
“She had a role to play,” he says. “She understood that. She knew she could
achieve more by being that person. Eventually, she became a great friend
really. My abiding memory of her is how happy she was with the kids. The
sheer pleasure of that relationship was amazing.”
He was touched to be invited to Diana’s memorial service last year by the
Princes William and Harry, whose hair he often cut. In a world of gossip
magazines, where news of Naomi’s bald patch can shift tens of thousands of
copies, McKnight should be a columnist’s dream. But when it comes to the
private lives of the women he works with, he is renowned in the industry for
keeping his counsel.
Madonna is “fantastic”, Kate is “great”, Kylie is “lovely”. No matter how
turbulent their private lives, his clients can count on his silence as much
as they count on his scissors.
“Watching Kate Moss blossom from this mousey little thing who was smaller than
everyone else has been great,” he says. “You watch them grow up. You get
very close. Of course I feel protective about these girls.”
He says he can tell almost immediately which ones will go on to be the catwalk
superstars. “It’s about their energy and desire, but it’s also about the way
the camera reacts to them,” he says. “Sometimes it can be hidden and it
takes a photographer to draw it out, but you can usually tell in the first
five minutes. Kate wasn’t the norm, but photographers saw something in her.
All the most photogenic women have a vulnerability, a rawness.”
His definition of beauty is “confidence”. But what about the ugly side of the
beauty industry — does he worry about size zero models with eating disorders?
“There is a downside to it,” he admits. “I do worry about the pressure the
girls are under. In London this season at the shows I was a bit
uncomfortable with how thin some of the girls were. If I am worried I will
say to the girl maybe she should get a good meal inside her.
“Only a very few of them have a problem. These girls are naturally
gangly. At 16, a lot of them are still growing and 5lb can make all the
difference. The supermodels were all freaks at school — they were the tall,
skinny ones. Most of these girls don’t have to keep themselves in shape —
they are like that naturally.”
He does not have children, but, at 55, he is a grand-uncle to his younger
sister’s grandchildren. And he would have no hesitation recommending the
business to his nieces.
“The education these girls get is amazing,” he says. “Eva Herzigova speaks
five languages. Most of them have to speak several languages because they
are constantly working in studios with people who don’t speak English. They
travel. They learn to appreciate art and fashion. Many of them go on to run
their own businesses. They are much smarter than they are ever given credit
for.”
He is particularly close to Moss and refuses to discuss reports of her drug
taking. He believes the modelling industry is sometimes unfairly tarred.
“There are alcoholics and drug addicts in every industry,” he says. “It may be
more visible in our industry, but it’s part of modern life. Drug and alcohol
abuse is a personal, selfish thing. I’m more worried about the knife and gun
culture.”
The evidence of a peripatetic 20-year career is packed in boxes in the sitting
room. There are thousands of CDs from his former apartment in New York. The
armchairs are covered in prince of wales check, the bathroom is stuffed with
expensive male grooming products. It’s a far cry from the mining town of New
Cumnock in Ayrshire where McKnight grew up. His dad, Jimmy, who died
recently after a long illness, was a professional footballer for Ayr United,
Queen of the South and Stranraer, but by the time his eldest child was born
he was working for the Coal Board. McKnight’s mum worked in the Co-op.
“Mum and Dad instilled me with the work ethic,” he says. “It was the best
thing they did. We had to work for anything we wanted. We were all into
fashion. It was the era of disco and Bowie. They were exciting times.”
He remembers peroxiding his hair and then squeezing the dye out of pink felt
pens bought in Woolworths to achieve the Ziggy Stardust effect. “If you got
caught in the rain it was a disaster,” he says, laughing.
It was while he was studying to be a French teacher that he started to work in
a friend’s salon for extra cash. “Within six months I’d packed my bags and
moved to London.”
A friend who worked for Biba introduced him to the fashion crowd and he
realised from reading back copies of Vogue in the library that the stylists
on the shoots all worked for Molton Brown. He managed to wangle a job with
the salon.
“Everything there was completely natural,” he says. “They made their own
shampoo from rainwater in a cottage in Wales. We weren’t allowed to use
hairdryers. It was a great training. Nowadays I can do a shoot on a beach
with no electricity and always figure something out.”
His break came when a stylist didn’t turn up for a Vogue shoot and he
volunteered. It was the start of a 30-year collaboration. He was the first
full-time session stylist, and within seven years of leaving Ayrshire he was
living in New York, helping to shape the bobs and the lives of the women who
would dominate the fashion pages for the next decade: Linda Evangelista,
Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer.
“For years there were only five models we worked with,” he says. “Their
workload was mental.”
He is friends with all the women. “I was working with Naomi the other day,” he
says. “She’s very loyal and lovely. She’s also very funny.”
However starry his work is, he always returns to Ayrshire. He will drive his
mum to Stirling Castle for tonight’s award ceremony.
“I do feel Scottish,” he says. “I think the Scots are very stylish people.”
It’s good to know McKnight may set the trend in highlights and lowlights,
but whatever magic he conjures, he is never going to eradicate his roots.
www.scottishfashionawards.com
