Earlier this year, renowned hairstylist Sam McKnight, who celebrated his 70th birthday in June, was working the floor of his west London studio, conjuring with unfathomable deftness a series of show-stopping looks for Grazia Beauty. The space was full of kinetic energy as McKnight flitted from model to model, securing rolled sections of freshly blow-dried hair in place, then disappearing behind fine plumes of hairspray. Close your eyes and you could be back on any number of McKnight’s acclaimed shoots – styling Christy Turlington as Jackie O for a Patrick Demarchelier shoot in US Vogue in 1990, on set with Princess Diana and that Versace dress in 1991, and almost any Kate Moss shoot you please. McKnight’s reputation is undisputed and that’s all before he launched a successful haircare line.
Today, McKnight is the picture of cool. He’s downed tools and swapped teasing for tea – a steaming mug of it. ‘My happy place is 52 right here in my kitchen,’ says the avid gardener. ‘My roses are magnificent this year.’ Back in the ’70s, McKnight was a glam rock teacher-in-training. ‘I was all bushy Bowie hair and platform shoes at a college in Scotland.’ University was looming and he decided to quit. McKnight’s father worked in a coal mine, his mother at the local Coop.
‘I had to find a vocation, there was no such thing as pocket money.’ A slew of odd jobs followed before McKnight landed at a friend’s hairdressing salon and found his calling. ‘I loved the whole package,’ he remembers, ‘the hair, the fashion, making people feel good about themselves.’
Two years later, he moved to London. He honed his craft at the Miss Selfridge salon on Regent Street, Elizabeth Arden on Bond Street and finally Molton Brown on South Molton Street, a creative hub that was the place to trim and be trimmed in the late ’70s.
‘It was a shit-hot salon,’ says McKnight. Its exclusive clientele ranged from celebrities to magazine journalists, who cherry-picked salon staff to work on fashion shoots. ‘In 1980 I decided to leave and pursue a career styling on-set full-time,’ remembers McKnight.
‘People thought I was crazy.’ He built his portfolio and travelled to New York, where then-teenagers Christie Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford were just starting to make names for themselves.
‘Those girls had to grow up so fast,’ he says. ‘They became this phenomenon and were thrown to the lions. The scale of it was huge.’ The ’90s dawned and McKnight’s big breaks started coming in thick and fast. ‘I was in the right place, at the right time, when magazines were taking off and the fashion world was opening up – the focus moved from the ladies-who-lunch set to the young downtown renegades – it was an extraordinary time.’
The nostalgia McKnight has for that first hit of ’90s hedonism is palpable and one he got to indulge not too long ago, when his beloved supers returned to London. ‘It was Christie, Linda, Cindy, Naomi and Mary [Greenwell, the renowned make-up artist]. We met at Claridge’s, we reminisced and it felt like nothing had changed. We were still finishing each other sentences, it was wonderful.’
It wasn’t just the supermodels who wanted to work with Sam McKnight. One of his most enduring relationships was with Princess Diana. The pair met in 1990 when McKnight was booked by Vogue to shoot ‘some young royals’ with Demarchelier in London. He made her hair look short for the picture, then, at the end of the day, Diana asked him what he would do to her hair if he had free rein. ‘Fashions had changed, things were going from big and frou-frou to something much more minimalist and controlled – sharp cuts, lots of angles. I told her I’d cut it all off and we did it there and then.’
Later, in private tapes recorded by her close friend Dr Crowhurst for her biographer Andrew Morton, Diana was asked about a seminal turning point in her life, the moment she felt she transformed from ‘victim to victor’. Without pause, she replied, ‘It was when Sam cut my hair.’
‘I knew she liked it,’ Sam says fondly, ‘but I never knew it meant that much to her – hearing that really moved me. It was powerful.’ Fast-forward to 2025 and McKnight derives just as much pleasure from a weekend spent Instagramming his roses and walking his cherished cockapoo Stanley as he does from the high of a frenetic spell backstage at fashion week, styling hair for his umpteenth glossy cover or watching his brainchild haircare range, Hair by Sam McKnight, fly off the shelves. He launched the brand in 2017.
‘I wanted great formulas and something fun that ditched the negative narrative around haircare – a lot of brands sell by giving you a problem you need to fix, but the job of a hairdresser is to make you feel great about yourself. I wanted to bring that into haircare.’ Housed in an array of millennial-pink bottles and scented by British perfumer Lynn Harris, Hair by Sam McKnight doesn’t just offer up good hair, it promises an entire mood. What better way to market a texture mist than by writing ‘Cool Girl’ on the can?
So, in-between supermodel reunions, shoots and product development, does he ever take a beat to think about his legacy? ‘As I get older, it’s the now that’s important to me,’ he says sagely. ‘Yesterday forms you, but I’ve learned in old age that you have to focus on the moment.’ And as he signs off, he makes for his garden, aptly, to smell the roses.
Annie Vischer is Beauty Director at Grazia. Annie was previously Beauty Editor across a number of lifestyle titles at TI Media (now Future Plc) including Woman & Home magazine and Feel Good You.
Photographs: Matt Easton
Hair: Sam McKnight using Hair By Sam McKnight launching soon at M&S
Beauty Direction: Joely Walker
Styling: Sophie Van Der Welle
