Photography Mitchell Stafford

Ryan Mitchell Likes It a Little Wrong

Ryan Mitchell likes hair after something has happened to it. A little sweat, a shape beginning to collapse, the evidence of a night out or simply a day spent wearing it. That instinct sits on top of years of very formal training: perfect blow-dries, set shapes, colour theory, the muscle memory of knowing how hair is supposed to behave. Mitchell learned all of that first. The more interesting part came later, when he began figuring out what to leave alone, what to pull apart and when a hairstyle looks better slightly past the most perfect moment. Somewhere between the punk bands of his adolescence, Australian salons, years assisting in fashion and the people he watches on the street, he found the version of hair that still interests him: believable, a little wrong and already belonging to whoever is wearing it.

PHOTOGRAPHY WILLOW WILLIAMS @willowwilliamsphoto SIMON EELES @simon.eeles
MITCHELL STAFFORD @mitchellstafford JOSÉPHINE LÖCHEN @josephinelochen JAI ODELL @jaiodell
INTERVIEW JESPER GUDBERGSEN@yessirjesper

Ryan, when did you first start thinking about hair as something you could do with your life?
I was probably 15 or 16. I started colouring my own hair a lot. I was obsessed with colouring my own hair, and I used to get in trouble for it at school. I would show up with mental hairdos. It was from bands I was listening to and skate videos I was watching. I just wanted to look like the people that I thought were cool.
I was in a band, and my friend’s mum was a hairdresser. He was the drummer. We used to practise at their house and they lived on this orchard in the middle of nowhere, so we could run amok and make as much noise as we wanted.
His mum was this crazy hippie stoner who grew her own weed and had a little salon in the house. She used to let us use the salon and do whatever we wanted. We were a punk band, so we’d go in and colour our hair green and stuff like that.

That space allowed me to feel creative. We could kind of do what we wanted there.

I also had a teacher from the city move to our town. She was teaching multimedia, I think. This was early MySpace, and she was helping us edit our skate videos. She was the one who planted the idea. She was like, “Your hair’s really cool. Who does it?”
I said, “I do it myself.”
Then she invited me to her house, as a 16-year-old, to colour her hair.

Oh dear
I know. I was putting bleach on her hair and I didn’t even know what I was doing.

There was a colour called Fudge, which was like Manic Panic. Me and my friends would put it in our hair before a concert or going to Warped Tour and spike our hair up. It was that early-2000s California skate-punk world - NOFX, Millencolin, Pennywise. That whole scene was a huge part of it.
So I think it all happened around then, around skateboarding and punk and those couple of influences.

At that point hair was connected to the music and the way you wanted to look. When did it switch into, “Actually, this is what I want to do”?
Where I grew up, at 16 you could leave school or stay and go to university. My grades weren’t good. I wasn’t doing well at school, so it was like: go get a job.

They encouraged apprenticeships. You could be a hairdresser or a chef or an electrician. I tried a few different things - construction, mechanic work, I think I worked at a music shop part-time - but in the back of my mind the hair thing was there.

I went to the local cool salon and asked for a job. They didn’t give it to me. They gave it to this other guy who was like a David Beckham, metrosexual-type jock guy.

It was that time…
Exactly. Then he got fired. I still didn’t have a job, so I went back and asked them again.
The whole salon was full of TLC wannabe girls. Very R&B, very pretty, fake tans, big hair. I didn’t fit in at all. I was this little punk kid.
But the owner was like, “Sure, why not?”

It was very weird in my hometown for a guy to do hair.

What did your friends think?
I got bullied. I got beat up at a house party once. My town was very homophobic, very racist.
But I think a huge part of me wanting to do hair was tied into being in the punk scene. I wanted to rebel. I wanted to do something completely different to everybody else.

Doing hair felt like a rebellion against the small-mindedness of the town I grew up in. It was very tied into that mentality of, ‘I’ll do what I want.’

It was weird to do hair in my town, and I wanted to be weird. I wanted to stand out. It was a way of expressing myself and being different.

Hair school took Mitchell out of his hometown every few weeks and introduced him to a new mix of people: city kids, kids from rural towns, apprentices from barbershops and large salons, people already working on hair competitions and shows. It also gave him his first sense that the profession might take him somewhere else.

I remember thinking, “Oh, okay. This is what you can do with it. I can actually get out of my shithole town and do something with this career.” It also made me realise you didn’t have to fit the mold of being, like, a pretty girl to do it.

And then you eventually moved to Sydney?
Yeah. I was 19, and I knew nothing about fashion. Nothing. I thought moving there would be like going to a Michelin-star restaurant and learning the best things about hair. Instead, it wasn’t at all what I expected, as technically focused as I imagined and the environment was quite toxic - Devil Wears Prada shit. Fancy people, a really tough boss. I felt like this massive fish out of water, a country bumpkin in a bougie environment.
But I saw the opportunities. People at the salon had worked with celebrities, done fashion shows, gone to Europe, gone to America. There was this abundance of experience around me.I learned a lot about styling hair. It was big, sexy hair for rich ladies. The salon would buy all these beautiful fashion magazines for the clients. When they were six months old or whatever, they would tell us we could take them home. I would take all the Italian Vogues. My boss would say, “Go through the magazine and come back and tell me what you like.”
I would always gravitate towards Tim Walker, hair by Julien d’Ys, Paolo Roversi - all the kooky, weird, abstract stuff. It didn’t look like hair. I was like, “This is what I find exciting.”

New York arrived less deliberately. Mitchell landed in the city at the end of a holiday during Fashion Week, pulled together what he remembers as “a really random kit” and helped on a few shows. People kept telling him to move. Six months later, he did. Work at Cutler gave him a visa and a foothold; seeing Duffy outside Café Mogador one day gave him something else.

I just walked up to him and said, “Hey, I’m Katelyn’s friend. I want to work with you.” She was an assistant friend at i-D who told me which hairstylists I should try to assist.

He gave me his business card and said, “Contact my agent.”

I ended up doing a show with him at New York Fashion Week. It was a tricky look, and I knew how to do it. After that he was basically like, “Okay, you can do hair. You can work with me.”

That was it. I worked with him pretty much all the time for the next four years. In the beginning he gave me freedom, so I was also working with Luigi Murenu, James Pecis, Eugene Souleiman, Guido Palau, Rudi Lewis, Shun Jo, Shay Asual - whoever I could. I really was a sponge. I wanted to learn as much as possible.

  • Photography Willow Williams
  • Photography Joséphine Löchen
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  • It’s not my goal to transform someone into something else. It’s my goal to make them the best version of themselves. If I’ve already got a good canvas to work off, I would rather add to it and enhance it than recreate it.

  • Photography Mitchell Stafford
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When you look at the work you make now, where do all of those different experiences show up?
The first thing that comes to mind is Luigi. I used to love what he did - the big hair, the shapes. He used to do big frizzy hair and big set hair, and that really inspired me.

Then there’s being from Australia: raw textures, beach, undone hair. Then I was massively influenced by Duffy because of all that texture and that kind of edgy London grit. We used to call it “wet dog hair.”
And then, of course, punk. Courtney Love, Kurt Cobain, that whole grunge era.

I was obsessed with rockabilly for years too. I think that’s where the juxtaposition in my work comes from. I love old-school glamour and shape. The structure of a Vidal Sassoon haircut. All of that. But I also love the opposite hand, where it looks like it’s never been touched.

That’s something I kept noticing. There’s structure in your work even when the hair doesn’t look particularly “done.” What does structure mean to you?
Being trained in a salon, I had to learn how to do hair really perfectly. Then working with someone like Duffy, I had to learn how to really undo hair.

I almost half-do hair.

There’s always the thought process of building a structure, a shape and a technique, but I’ll never really take it the whole way there. Because even if you do, a lot of the time you end up destroying it afterwards to make it look lived-in anyway.
I go into it knowing I want it to look a bit day-old, a bit broken, a bit messy.

That’s probably a good way to describe my work: the hair was done yesterday.

Looking through your work, I also rarely get the feeling that you’ve come in and transformed somebody into a different person. It feels as if the hair belongs to whoever is wearing it. Is that conscious?
Very much. I’m a big user of the mirror. I always look at the girl in the mirror, look at the girl in the clothes and try to understand what we’re trying to achieve with the whole picture.
I’m big on working with what I’ve already got. If someone has something good, I’m going to work with it. I’m not going to work against it.

The hair also has to be pliable. Tangible. Movable, changeable. I never want anything completely stuck and set in place because I know how a day goes. If something isn’t working, I need to be able to think quickly and change it.
I like building things on set, but always with the intention of it looking real and believable, like somebody might actually wear their hair that way.

I think of documentary pictures by Derek Ridgers, or Bruce Weber and a girl on the beach in the ’90s. Those sorts of images are always playing in my head. I want it to look real. I want it to feel authentic. I want them to look like they just wear it well.

So the hair enhances, rather than a full character change.
Exactly. It’s about a touch and a feeling.
It’s taken me time to realise that’s what I like to do. In the beginning I tried to do everything. I tried to do Eugene’s hair. I tried to do Guido’s hair.
Eventually I found what worked for me. It was a real mix between the salon and the editorial stuff I learned.

But all of that early hairdresser training is so important. Knowing how to do a good blow-dry, knowing how to curl hair, knowing how to approach different textures and products - it all works together.

You keep coming back to something feeling real. Why do you think fantasy or illusion interests you less?
 I think it’s right place, right time. With a lot of the creative projects I’ve worked on or collaborated on, it hasn’t really been the right place for fantasy. If I were doing something where I thought it would add to the picture - Tim Walker or whatever - I would totally go there. If I do fantasy, I like it a bit wrong/imperfect/twisted rather than polished or literal. It’s more about the work I’m attracted to, the things I say yes to and the things I say no to.

One of the first people I started working with was Alasdair McLellan, and there’s such a strong narrative of the north of England in his work: red bricks, layered clothing, lightly lived-in ’60s hair.

I always think of old photographs. You’re in a restaurant and the walls are covered with black-and-white pictures of the people who used to go there. Everybody looks amazing in those pictures. That inspires me. Real beauty.

I think one of my biggest strengths is knowing when not to do anything. If somebody already has something good, leave it alone and just work it on set.
I’m just drawn to being honest.

I’m not really drawn to giving somebody something super overdone, super literal or too period. That isn’t really my taste.

But you mention Tim Walker, which is interesting because he creates these enormous fantasy worlds. What I like about his work is that something is often slightly off. Something ruins the illusion.
That’s the thing. If I were to go fantasy, I would want to be really wrong.
I would never want to do a wig that looked exactly like real hair. If I was in that environment, I’d want to do something like a twisted cabaret hairstyle.

Everything I would ever want to do would probably have 70 percent of a reference and 30 percent of fucking it up.
If I was going to do a Marilyn set or finger waves, I’d want to fuck it up somehow. I’d want it to look like a performer has been wearing that wig all night and they’re sweaty.

That’s where it gets interesting.
You’ve referenced a lot of things while we’ve been talking, but you’ve also been working long enough to see references come back around. Do you feel like everything has essentially been done?

Probably, yeah. But it’s about how people interpret things themselves, change them, recreate them, make them new and push the boundaries.
I wouldn’t actually say I’m a very referential person. I love to read a book, go to a gallery or watch documentaries.

When you think about something like the club kids, that was who they were. That was their identity. That’s why I’m drawn to it - because it’s something somebody actually wore.

Do I make a moodboard for every shoot? No. I go in with ideas and some preparation, and I like people sharing references with me because it gives me an idea where they want to go. But I never take anything too literally because everything can change on the spot.

You don’t know what’s right until you’re there, the clothes are on and the light is there.
It’s about being flexible.

When I first came back to New York a couple of years ago, I would walk through Dimes Square and see kids who were this mash-up of genres. You’re looking at them thinking: are you a goth? A raver? A punk? Are you from the 2000s? Are you from the ’70s?

Seeing five different eras and genres on one human being is pretty cool.

  • Photography Simon Eeles
  • Photography Jai Odell
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I think that’s one of the interesting differences now. When we were younger and referencing something, you couldn’t necessarily pull up thousands of images of it.
I remember seeing a documentary about Michael Alig and the clubkids randomly on television as a teenager and then having to reference it from memory for the next five or ten years. Now everything is immediately available. Maybe that changes the way references get absorbed and reinterpreted?

Everything gets recycled and reborn. Some of it I like, some of it I don’t.
There are still things that feel new to me. That’s what’s exciting.

Mitchell talks about cities in much the same way he talks about references: things accumulate. Melbourne gave him one of his earliest visual obsessions, a punk he would seek out around Bourke Street Mall just to see what he had done to his hair that week. London brought punk; Sex Pistols, skinheads, lads, mods, Derek Ridgers, Camden goths. New York gives him several versions of itself within a few subway stops.

The biggest thing I like about New York is that it’s a real melting pot. You can kind of be anyone here. There are so many different layers to it - uptown, downtown, Brooklyn. I’m inspired by all of it.
When I first moved here, it was very East Village, Lower East Side, The Strokes. Skinny jeans, moppy hair.

London has this very British aesthetic I love too - skinheads, lads, all that Derek Ridgers kind of stuff.

I guess I approach a city like a buffet. You take what you like from it.
I’m a sponge. I love seeing what people are doing with their heads.

Especially now in New York, I’ll see really young girls with fully done synthetic wigs, finger waves, curls, colours, everything laid. They’re 17 years old, and I’m like, “That is so fucking awesome.”
That energy is so New York.

Collaboration feels really important to the way you work too. What does a good collaboration actually feel like to you?

It has a lot to do with the energy and mood of the day and letting things build and flow.

Sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to get. It changes with every picture, every shot. You build and build until you find something that everybody agrees on. Sometimes that happens through lighting, sometimes through the emotion of the model, sometimes styling, hair, makeup.

I don’t mind it not being my day every day.

I want to add to the image. I want to stand back, look at the picture and be inspired by what’s happening around me. I get just as excited seeing somebody do amazing lighting or makeup or putting together a really great look as I do about the hair.
I try to see everything that’s happening and act on instinct, then add the hair that works in that moment.
When you have a good relationship and good energy with everybody and the flow builds as the day goes on, that’s an ideal collaboration.

I’ve been on shoots where we spent an entire day trying to figure out a character and didn’t get it until the next morning. Then suddenly the next day just flows.
It takes time to find the people you can do that with. You learn people’s taste. You learn when you can push and when you can’t, when it’s necessary, and when you should just have the confidence to say, “I have an idea. I really want to do this.”

That’s when the magic can happen. When you don’t overthink it and you just try.

The more we talk, the more I get the sense that you care deeply about the industry and your craft without being completely consumed by it. How do you stop yourself getting caught up in the politics and the game of all of this?

I’ve always been in this yo-yo of not really knowing where I belong. Am I a punk? Am I a fashion person? Is there somewhere in the middle?

Someone said to me once, “Go where the weather feels warm.” I’ve always held onto that.

If you feel genuine ease and warmth from something or a certain situation, lean into it. You’ll find the people you feel comfortable with. You’re not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and vice versa.

It’s really important to have separation between work and life. When I’m not working, I try to feed my soul in other ways, whether that’s hobbies, health and well-being, self-care.
I’ve had a lot of struggles with mental health and addiction. A lot of that played into the pressures of the industry and the pressures of life in our generation, this idea that success equals happiness.

Through my own experience, I’ve realised that isn’t really the case.
As human beings, we just want connection with people and things that make us feel good about ourselves.

If you have a hobby you really enjoy and it helps you take your mind off things for a while, invest time and energy into it. If you have friends you can hang out with, shoot the shit with and come away feeling recharged, that’s important.

The hard thing about being a creative is that we’re all really hard on ourselves. We’re our own worst critics. Sometimes it’s good to call bullshit on yourself.

Going to every event is not that important.

I feel like you’re talking directly to me right now.
I’m in the countryside for a family event, which means I’m missing a few industry things tonight. I had that feeling of, “Fuck, I should be there. I should be around these people. And now I’m kind of like: you’re fucking right. I don’t need to be in all of those spaces tonight. It’s good to be with family and chill.
Exactly.
When you really think about it, the best creatives in the world are too busy to go to every event anyway.
It’s about having a healthy balance of work, life, hobbies, friends and genuine connections with people. That’s what I’m leaning into.

When you look ahead, what do you want to build through your work? I don’t mean scale or recognition. What do you want to remain?
I would love people to look at it and go, “That’s great hair. It looks authentic.”
I want my hair to come across like when you put on a leather jacket and it just makes you look and feel great. That’s what I want my hair to look like on a person. I want it to enhance, not change. To be an accessory that just works with people.

I also want good representation of hair. Gone are the days of torturing hair. I want people to look after their hair. I want people to use the right products. I want anybody from any background to feel like the best version of themselves and be represented as the best version of themselves. Whatever person sits in your chair should be treated the best they can. Their hair texture, the treatment of their hair, the right products - it’s not one-size-fits-all.

I want my work to feel real. I want my work to feel timeless and tasteful.

And if there’s anything I can give back to the people who are newer to the industry, it’s that this industry is really tough. Being a freelancer is really tough. It’s stressful. It’s a hard world to navigate.

I don’t think there’s enough emphasis on people looking after their bodies, their minds and their finances. There should be more education when you enter these industries about mental health, physical health and financial security. Those are the things I see go wrong for people: they don’t know how to manage their money, they have mental health problems, they fuck up their bodies.

When my assistants are grinding and really want success, I’m like, “Are you exercising? Are you talking to a therapist? Are you being smart with your money?”

Because I’ve been through it all.
I was never able to be creative until I sorted all that shit out first. Life stress got in the way of being creative.

I think you need to center yourself, and everything else can come after that.

@RYANMITCHELLHAIR