Brad Johns, the celebrity colorist known for his “chunking” technique and influential work with the likes of Christy Turlington, Kate Moss, and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, died last week at his home in Los Angeles. He was 70.
Here, revisit Vogue’s July 1995 profile of Johns, titled “The Color Czar,” by Vanessa Friedman.
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High above Fifth Avenue, atop the self-enclosed universe that is the Elizabeth Arden Red Door Salon, is a world of rococo mirrors and gilt-edged armchairs, of candelabra held aloft by intricately carved moors (lighting peach- and rose-tinted walls), and rooms opening into rooms, every space filled with the muted hum of discreet conversations, the splash of water into porcelain basins, and the slicing of scissors through hair. This is Versailles-through-the-looking-glass, a.k.a. the Oribe Salon: a palace of beauty that is really dedicated to beauty. And, just as the original had its Sun King, this citadel has its sun-kissed king: Brad Johns, commander in color, tyrant of tints, dictator of dyes. For him, hair is not merely hair; it is a calling.
“My mission on this planet is to make people’s hair look good,” Johns says, running a hand through his own yellow-brown, blow-dried, shoulder-length locks. “Everyone’s hair, no matter what the exact tint, should be bright, beautiful, and expensive-looking.”
As it happens, this is a good time to be someone who wants to make everyone’s tresses bright and beautiful. Faux hair color, from platinum to black, has never been so big: Model Shalom stole the spring shows when she went from her natural plain brown to ebony; three of People’s Most Beautiful People are bright fire-engine redheads; and even O.J. prosecutor Marcia Clark has used color to give her case an added boost. When glamour replaced natural as the look of choice, hair—and its power to call attention, decorate, and define—gained new potency. And that gave top colorists al-most incalculable authority.
Thus Johns’s color room is his kingdom, and there are certain hard-and-fast rules for admittance. No one, for example, who wants hair like a politician’s wife—think Nancy Reagan blonde—is allowed in. “That color is my nightmare!” shudders Johns. “It is so tired!” Ditto anyone who asks for beige (“Beige is the color of fur, not hair!”), anyone who uses the word frosting (“Ugh—it’s highlights!”), anyone who requests a wine-ish tint (“Not unless you’re in a rock band!”), or anyone with a hankering for a full head of highlights: “Cappellini hair! A head of little worms!”
To gain an audience with Johns, you have to give yourself over to him and his vision. “You just have to go with what I tell you,” he shrugs, and legions do: fashion editors, actresses, women who fly in from places like Bermuda and Tokyo, women who save their pennies and take the train up from Annapolis, women who just stop in on their lunch hour, and innumerable models. (Many agencies routinely send new girls to Johns for a quick makeover. “You can’t be a model and not color your hair,” he says. “Real hair just dies under the lights.”) He has taken model Yasmeen Ghauri from her natural mahogany to bright blonde for a Clairol ad and back again, made Claudia Schiffer just this side of platinum, and transformed Meghan Douglas from girl-next-door blonde into latter-day Rita Hayworth red. He has also done Jon Bon Jovi, Brooke Shields, Tatum O’Neal, and Ivana. He does 30 to 40 heads a day, four days a week, for ten months a year—an average of 6,160 heads annually. When he is really “on,” he can do five heads at once, each within an hour.
