Jennifer Lawrence On Her Dream Hair Color, Launching Mes°, & Being A ’90s Kid

The nerves of releasing any creative endeavor into the world are normal, but when you’re one of the most famous actors of our generation and you’re doing something out of your typical realm of influence (aka starting a beauty brand), nerves are understandable. Jennifer Lawrence admits, as I settle down to talk to her, that on the morning of the press day for her hair care brand, Mes° (pronounced “mess”), she “felt like I was driving to the hospital to meet my baby.” Her “baby” is a performance-based hair care line that has been, in Lawrence’s words, decades in the making, and the results are not only in her legendary blond locks but in the results-driven science and clear passion she has for it.

Beyond having some of the most famous roles in 21st century cinema, Lawrence has incredibly lusted-after hair. She’s had, invariably, long hair, a pixie cut, straightened hair, natural curly styles, face-framing bangs, highlights, balayage… I could go on. She dyed it deep brown for The Hunger Games franchise, then a shocking blond, and back and forth and all over again. Her experience in the hair chair made her a prime candidate for products that got the job done, but as she tells NYLON, “I’ve never been monogamous with hair products because I’ve always been searching for what’s better.” She stopped her search when she came across a TED Talk by biologist and beauty-industry veteran Jasmina Aganovic, whose lab Arcaea takes a biology-first approach to the formulas and products we slather onto our bodies. Lawrence was so enraptured by Aganovic that she reached out, and Aganovic thought she’d give her some advice and send her off to launch a perfectly acceptable, if run-of-the-mill, beauty line like any other A-lister might. But, as Lawrence explained, she “had been waiting decades [to launch], so if you need five, 10 years, I’ll still be here.” Aganovic was charmed, and Lawrence was also adamant about creating genuinely new product categories with Mes°’ first launch.

Lawrence’s two main driving forces were performance and health. After having her hair virtually fried off from dye jobs and haircuts, she wanted to focus on building healthier hair with as little effort as possible. The resulting trio of products are in-betweeners, as I’ve come to call them, meaning they do not neatly fit into one “styling” or “mask” category, but do double (or even triple) duty. The Off-Duty Restyling Serum (which Lawrence calls “Floof Serum”) brings frizzy hair (“floofy,” you could say) back down to Earth in between washes, but also adds texture and stands in for hot tools when you’re on the go. The Multitask Repair Mask is, as Lawrence funnily described, a way to get a wet-hair look without using lube (an industry secret for red carpets), but also makes doing a hydrating treatment something uncomplicated — no down time, no waiting around for it to soak in, but instant strengthening and breakage-healing. The Good Roots Volume Mist tackles your in-between-washes greasiness while also adding lift without complications. As Aganovic explained, both the mask and the mist have cumulative effects, so using them time and time again will only increase the benefits across both products.

I’ve previously waxed poetic about Lawrence’s off-duty style — she is something of a sartorial North Star around NYLON HQ — and her off-duty hair is equally as enchanting. As we laugh about a recent paparazzi picture where her hair was flying into her face, I say it was the best advertisement her hair care line could get. The actual campaign film stars a host of street-case folks along with Lawrence, dancing, twirling, balancing sculpted frogs on their head, and showing their hair in a similarly undone fashion as Lawrence does on her walks around downtown Manhattan. It’s a refreshing new chapter in hair narratives, and as Lawrence says: “For an off-duty day, I don’t think the max effort is hot.” She even tells the story about how a model showed a picture of her mom with floor-length hair and Lawrence flew her in to appear in the film directed by filmmaker Isaac Lock.

At 36 with two children, Lawrence could have sat back and signed a multimillion-dollar deal with an existing hair care brand. But the intensity and singularity she brings to every film project was evident in her chat with NYLON, where she and co-founder Aganovic got into the creative and scientific process of building a hair care brand from scratch, making an everyday luxury feel indulgent but not time-consuming, and the one hair color Lawrence would love to try.

When was the first time you realized your hair could be a tool of self-expression?

Jennifer Lawrence: As you heard, I’m a curly girly from the South, so it was always really impossible. I had older brothers, so my mom had no experience with hair. My mom’s hair and my hair are very different from each other. Once a week, I would have to go to a salon and have my hair detangled by a wonderful woman named Princess. Eventually, I started learning to take care of my hair the night before, and that became a ritual. When other people have their nighttime routines with all of their lotions — and I like that too — but that for so long has been my hair nighttime ritual. I normally go to bed with a braid, and then the next morning with these products, I can brush out the braid, and it has that awkward kink. I give it a spritz of water, then I do the serum, and then it can fall in a more natural way. But yeah, the night before has always been an important time for me.

How often are you washing your hair these days with the products now?

JL: It’s honestly embarrassing to answer. I feel like I need to say I shower, but once a week.

Tell me a little bit about taking the product from the tester bottle to these finished products. What experience did you want consumers to have?

JL: This was such a fun part, because once you land on the baby like, “OK, this is the one; this is the product and what it feels like.” Originally the mask kind of had a... not teriyaki — I need my coffee — a terracotta look because it reminded me of a bath or a sauna type of vibe and the ritual. But we started with shape first. I loved the idea that these are going to live in your bathroom, and I always like my bathroom to look beautiful. I’ll not buy a perfume if it doesn’t have a very pretty bottle. It’s my vanity; it’s where I spend my time. The colorway took a long time, because you can pick a color on a screen and go that way, then they would 3D print it and it doesn’t fit. We were on the floor with lots of color rods and the restyling serum ended up being the girl that was going to get the terracotta vibe.

Jasmina Aganovic: We wanted it to feel really indulgent. Even though the brand is very focused on getting you out of the bathroom and getting you back to living your life, even in those moments you’re interacting with the products, we wanted the colors to feel rich, ritualistic, and indulgent.

Quick, easy, and no fuss. Speaking of fuss, what is the longest you think you’ve ever spent getting your hair done or doing your hair?

JL: I can’t imagine it’s ever taken more than two hours, but one time for a screen test, they dyed my hair red, brown, black, and then platinum blond in the same day.

Four different times.

JL: It was four different times. Blow it dry, see what it looks like, and be like, no, and then try again.

Now that your hair is back to health and your products are helping you keep it that way, is there anything you would like to try that you haven’t, hairwise?

JL: I would love to have lavender hair. That’s a big, big dream of mine. Until we find a healthy way to do it, I’m going to have to wait until Mes° comes out with a lavender hair color. I would love to go lavender. I like having a bob, but it’s a commitment. Once you decide you’re over the bob, it’s a long, long time to go.

It’s a choice and you have to deal with the transition.

JL: The transition is so horrible.

Well, you sort of answered my next question, which was what would you challenge Jasmina next with in the lab, and I guess —

JL: Lavender.

You’ve had a lot of different hair on screen. Are there any characters, yours or not, that have hair you envy?

JL: Oh, God. I don’t know. I mean, I love... Well, oh wait, she ended up being racist. Old movie star, not current. God, I don’t know, Daenerys Targaryen.

I know you said you’ve been sending the products to your friends. If you had to choose some people to give this to, who would you want to try the products?

JL: I’m lucky in that all of my friends have different hair types. It’s a very diverse group. They all got addicted to them, because once your hair is healthier and behaving differently, it’s hard to go back. We didn’t want to remake products that already exist. I didn’t want to make a really, really, really good detangler. I wanted my hair to stop being so tangled.

JA: The restyling serum is part of what we were designing there.

JL: It really is addicting. I’ve never been monogamous with hair products because I’ve always been searching for what’s better. That was part of the reason I knew they were ready, when I was like, “Oh, I actually can’t travel without these.”

It’s also a needs-based product line. You could sign a contract and work with any hair brand you wanted to, but you wanted to make your own thing and do it yourself.

JL: Yeah, and I get to be a part of the creative, which is so exciting. I got to lay on the floor with color rods.

It’s evident here, in the products and in the short campaign film, that you wanted to have that tactile feeling. Tell me about how important that was in the process and making that person-to-person contact.

JL: When it came time to make the campaign film, I was like, “This is go time because I work in film, so this cannot be bad.” After meeting with Isaac, it was so clear that he was the one. We were not only on the same page, he was coming up with brilliant ideas. He understood what I meant when I said I wanted there to be a lot of animals around, like statues of animals and creatures. And I was like, “I want one of the models to have a frog on her head.” And he was just like, “Totally.” We were very in sync.

I give Rebecca [Boston Sobel], our president, props, because OK-ing film for a startup is a big undertaking, but there was just no other way to do it. If our message was different and our message was “This is how to get perfect hair” or “Have you always wanted to be perfect?” then that kind of bright light, super glossy digital look would have been perfect. But film is unpredictable and has that unmistakable grain. I’m a ’90s kid, so that’s always going to be more beautiful to me. It’s always going to look more natural.

JA: The references are so different. We took all the hair care stuff, set it aside, and we were just focused on our person and the need state. That was what we built it for, and everything else came along for the ride. It was a very bold endeavor to say we’re not going to build this like a typical hair brand, which is why when you look at that campaign, it’s very unusual, right? What we’re looking to do is reshape this category. So our goal and our aim is to have it be like hair care before Mes° and hair care after Mes°, a clear line of demarcation of a new chapter in hair care.

I always think of the 3-foot-long hair hair commercials show cascading with perfect shine , which works for some people, but I think my favorite hair moments of yours, Jen, are when you’re on the street and the wind tunnel’s taking your hair up, and it’s that imperfect —

JL: Are you referring to the other day?

Yes. I’m referring to the other day.

JL: [laughs] That was great. I was so engrossed in my story that I couldn’t even push it out of my way.

I love those moments, and I think that’s the best advertising you could ask for.

I don’t think it’s chic to be overstyled with fashion, with makeup. Obviously, I’m doing press. It’s an on-duty day, but for an off-duty day, I don’t think the max effort is hot.

What have each of you learned from each other during this process?

JL: Thermodynamics.

JA: [laughs] It’s true. I have had to explain thermodynamics to her. I’ve learned so much about the world of film and creative references that have been very inspiring to me, and have expanded my own way of seeing things. Even today, I learned something new. Even yesterday, with the little net thing as you were changing.

We would have these meetings and she would bring up these photographers and directors and the impact that they had on a specific category or genre, and I love all of that. I’ve learned so much from her, and then I derive inspiration from it too. I’m a scientist, but you also have to remember scientists get put into boxes, and I’ve never felt like I fit into that box. I’ve always talked about creativity, which is why I think Jen and I work really well together because she’s such a creative person too.

JL: I learned the possibilities can be endless. We’re obviously extremely different, we have different experiences, but we’re really similar. We have a similar work ethic. We’re similar with our vision of this. I’ve learned to not think inside of a box in this specific way. Obviously, I can do that in films. I’m very used to breaking apart what’s existing and thinking about it differently, but I don’t have any experience with products and solutions, and what can happen. She actually has a very artistic mind as well, so I had to almost unlearn jumping into something and assuming there is some imaginary barrier or limit.

Shop the three products on mesbeauty.com now.