Royal hairdresser speaks: Duchess Kate is overdone, Princess Anne is scary
The royal hairdresser speaks! What does Duchess Kate hide in her Sausage Curls of Secrets? Is Princess Anne able to cut someone with just her eyes? Does the Queen collect her royal follicles in her purse?! These questions and many more could be answered by a woman named Denise McAdam. Denise was the official (??) royal hairdresser for years and years, and now she’s part of a reality show in the UK. While promoting the show, Denise told all… except not really, because she’s very discreet. Still, she managed to shade Kate with one word (“overdone”) and it’s pretty clear that the Princess Royal is all about ruling through fear.
While the rest of the world continues to gush over Kate Middleton’s long, luxurious and flowing tresses, there’s one person who remains relatively unimpressed: former royal hairdresser Denise McAdam. Click here for more recent pictures of Kate.
“I think her hair is wonderful, maybe a little overdone at times,” McAdam, 55, said in a new interview with Radio Times magazine. “But she always looks lovely,” she continued of her “good friend,” the Duchess of Cambridge, 32.
“I don’t do the royals anymore,” said McAdam, who worked with the Queen’s family for about 35 years. These days, she has made the swap from royal secrecy to reality TV in a new BBC series called Hair — a styling competition show. “I’ve heard some very good stories from my clients over the years. I could write a brilliant book,” she told the Radio Times.
“There are things that William and Harry have told me. But you have to be discreet. That’s why the Queen awarded me the Royal Victorian Medal,” she went on. “It was for 35 years of keeping my mouth shut.”
While McAdam spoke fondly about most of her clients, ranging from her very first royal (and former movie star) Princess Grace of Monaco, to Sarah Ferguson on her wedding day to Prince Andrew, the stylist recalled working with one particularly terrifying member of the family: “Princess Anne was the scary one, particularly when I was young,” she said of Prince Charles’ sister, 63. “It was a simple up-do, so I just used to go in, close my eyes and do it as quickly as possible,” McAdam said of styling her hair.
Gearing up for her new show as a judge, McAdam will be joined by celebrity hairstylist Alain Pichon, who’s worked with David Beckham, Madonna and Claudia Schiffer. “Madonna has the best hair of anyone I’ve ever worked with,” Pichon told the Radio Times. “If you want it straight, it goes the best straight you’ve ever seen, but if you want it curly you get brilliant curls. Contrary to what you might think, she wasn’t difficult to please.”
I would love to know Kate’s hair secrets, but I suspect that we already know the big one: weaves. As for Anne and her up-do… it’s sort of a wonder that Anne even agreed to sit with a hairdresser. Anne just seems so… salt-of-the-earth. You would think that she would just tease up her hair and toss it in a bun herself, and it would take all of two minutes. Two minutes she’d rather spend on a horse, for sure.
I actually thought the Madonna part was interesting – who knew Madonna had a hairstylist’s dream hair? That’s the problem with my hair – I have “good hair” (Indian hair) if you just want to wear it long and not have any drama. But my hair refuses to take a curl. You can’t really “style” it at all.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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