Sam McKnight has so many great fashion stories to tell. But he doesn’t romanticise the past. When he talks about it you can feel the electricity of a very different fashion world. The one where he worked with Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood, Karl Lagerfeld, and a generation of supermodels who defined the very idea of cool.
“I had the best, most amazing time … it was incredible working with Karl and with Vivienne and with Dries,” he says, effortlessly rattling off names that shaped entire eras of fashion. “When it was Lee and John and Karl… I’ll never forget some of those shows.” Then he adds, with the kind of blunt finality only someone who lived it can offer: “It was a golden age.”
He’s not being dramatic, he’s being honest. And McKnight has earned the right to tell the truth. From London and Paris to New York and Milan, he’s spent more than four decades inside fashion’s inner circle. But today, instead of chasing the next runway, he’s doing something far more disruptive, making sustainable hair care products designed for the needs of industry experts but available to all. And as luck would have it, his award-winning line, Hair by Sam McKnight, is now launching across the GCC. Finally bringing his backstage secrets to a region that has major hair moments every day of the week. “Hair is taken very seriously here and there are so many different textures… and you have the humidity to deal with,” says McKnight about the locks landscape of the Middle East. His products, which are light, potent, and ready to take on the challenge of humidity, feel almost tailor-made for this part of the world.
In the beginning McKnight started by creating products that he felt were missing on set and backstage during countless fashion shows he worked on. “Everything on the market was really heavy,” he recalls. “People were using dry shampoo as texturizing spray, and that’s really bad.” He needed fast, clean, brushable results. Something models’ hair could withstand after weeks of abuse. So he made his own solutions. Cool Girl, now a global bestseller, was literally created to give Kate Moss her effortless volume. “Kate’s got that fine English hair… to get that volume, it was a half-hour process,” he recounts. “So we did a super-light texturizer… we couldn’t call it Kate Moss, so we called it Cool Girl.” It became a cult classic almost immediately.
But if McKnight has a gift for reinvention, he also has a sharp, unfiltered view of how fashion treats the people who keep it running. “Before, there were six or seven people on a shoot… now there’s 50 people,” he says. “As soon as they started calling us ‘glam squad,’ I knew we were in trouble.” Budgets have gone up, but not for the artists. McKnight sees the respect for the work hair stylists do fading away . And he’s over it. “When I hear the stories of the younger generation… how they’re being treated, it’s not fair,” he says. He’s even backed the creation of a backstage union in the United Kingdom. “I’m being vocal because I can speak up… I don’t [care] if they don’t want to book me again.”
What worries him even more than budgets is AI. He has seen digital models, also called Digital twins, begin to pop up. Entire campaigns that no longer require living, breathing people. “As soon as I saw that, I saw the end,” he says flatly. “There’s gonna be no need for me. There’s gonna be no need for you either,” pointing to yours truly. He is convinced that real shoots will soon be a luxury experience. Rare, expensive, and reserved for the highest tiers of fashion. “Real life will become the luxury,” he predicts.
However, McKnight isn’t scared. Not really. Because he’s doing something that energizes him. “This brand has given me a lot of new energy,” he admits, and he has the pandemic to thank for it. “I was at home for six months and it was a period of reflection, and figuring out what am I gonna do now?” he shares. The answer was simple: Focus on growing the brand he launched in 2017 into a global business. Afterall, there will always be events in need of the perfect up-do or bombshell blow out.
His new expansion into the GCC makes perfect sense. The region demands high-performance haircare that fights frizz, withstands humidity, and supports thick, textured hair types. McKnight already has a line up of whimsically named products for that, from D-Frizz, Happy Endings, and Modern Hairspray, to Cool Girl, and Pure Genius Scalp Oil. And his partnership with Powder Beauty means he’s entering the region through a platform that understands ingredient-conscious, performance-first consumers.
“We’re very small, very independent… all developed by me and two other hairdressers,” shares McKnight. “We don’t go to a big company and say, what have you got? We go and say, ‘this is what we need.’” It’s a refreshing level of transparency in an industry filled with private-label shortcuts and marketing-first formulas.
For someone who helped create some of the most iconic hair moments in modern fashion, the latest chapter in McKnight’s career feels like a fitting evolution. He’s still working, still choosing projects he loves, still connected to the people who shaped him. But he’s no longer chasing. He’s building. He’s protecting the next generation. He’s thinking critically about the future. And he’s pouring four decades of backstage genius into products that make everyday hair feel effortless.
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Images: Supplied & Featured Image: Supplied
