In conversation with Louis Souvestre on EUSEXUA's hair universe

Louis Souvestre, the hairstylist behind FKA Twigs’ iconic skullet, is out of breath when he picks up the phone. He’s speaking in a double-layered accent, mostly French, but with a distinct London lilt, probably from hanging out with Twigs backstage. A blonde, muscular figure always busy sketching his next idea, Louis is the mind behind the operatic, hyper-physical, sci-fi-meets-stripper hair magic of FKA twigs’ Eusexua tour. Before joining her on the road, he’d already carved a name for himself at the forefront of fashion’s hair scene, crafting bold, conceptual looks for runway shows, editorials, and campaigns. The past seven months, he’s been busy transforming her, scene after scene, into new creatures: alien, industrial, grieving, BDSM’d, glitched-out, wet, wild, and sometimes just plain bald. We wanted to know more about his visionary process, so we figured we’d just ask.

Hey, Louis! Nice to meet you. What’s up?
A lot of wigs, I’m tired.

So, the Eusexua tour just wrapped. How was it? Did you travel with Twigs the whole time?
Yes, everywhere. It was quite amazing. I didn’t realise it was like seven months. It was really long. 

How do you feel now? Fuelled, drained, inspired, or just tired?
Tired, obviously, but it was such a beautiful experience to live with other artists around me for 7 months. Especially with the dancers. It definitely fuelled me with new ideas. When you’re on tour you actually see the people that listen to Twigs and you realise the impact of what you’re doing. So that was a really good boost for the next era as well.

I saw her last performance at Lowlands. I think she had, like, four hair looks in one hour.
Yes, we were changing the wigs on stage, and changing those wigs out every two shows. I don’t really want to do the same thing all the time, because you kind of get bored. 

And what was the energy like backstage? I can imagine you have to change it really quickly.
Crazy. I mean, actually, she had one short hair look and then the wigs. But I was also helping her get dressed backstage, because she had four outfits. And the hair, it was two different looks. So, it was quite hectic backstage. But it was really fun. 

Can you take me through the looks for Eusexua. The hair looks felt kind of like making her a different character completely, right? How did you manage to do all these styles?
The tour was split into two parts. For the first leg, she wore her skullet hair with a metal loop braided in the back so hairstyles could be quickly swapped using carabiners. We put all the different hairdo’s on separate carabiners so we could just clip them on and off. She wanted everything to be quite theatrical; she wanted people to see how everything was done. That’s why you had so many people coming on stage to change her hair and looks.

What a smart move, the carabiners.
I really wanted to do something that was quite mechanical. 

And how did you shape the characters?
So, the first look was a short braid for a cool girl look. The second act is a bit more techno, more electronic. So, I wanted something a bit more metallic, so I would take off the braid, and I put a short twist with a silver string around it, so it almost looked like it was done all in metal. For her pole dancing act, I wanted something a bit more alien-y, more clean, a bit more beautiful, a bit more otherworldly. I put a long twist of hair on the carabiner; it almost looked like a leather cable. I wanted nice movement when she was doing the pole dance, and I didn’t want it to look like natural hair. 

In the final part, she’s doing really, really sad songs, Cellophane, Two Weeks. The hair needed to be more sad and a bit more romantic. First, I did very long, wavy hair, which looked a bit more poetic. But I realised I actually want something a bit more extreme, as it’s the last look of the show. We did hair that looked like swords were stuck in the back of her head. She had a massive leather dress, and she was attached to each corner of the box around her. So, I wanted everything to look a bit BDSM and kind of like she was hurt; the hair had to look quite violent to reflect the song. 

Did it change in the second part of the tour?
Part two of the tour, which was from June to… I mean, last week, wasn’t it? We cut her hair short so I couldn’t do the attachment at the back anymore. As the hair grew longer at the end of the show, we started experimenting with her baby hair because I wanted to give a nod to her signature baby hair era earlier in her career.

I feel like she singlehandedly started that creative baby hair craze with LP1. But she wore wigs most of the time over the short hair, right?
The wig change was actually quite hectic. It was like a three-second install on stage, so I needed something that’s really easy to style. It was all wet look, all middle parting, very easy to put on the head. For the colourss I was very inspired by Marlene Dumas. Basically, what she does when she’s painting, she’s got this massive piece of paper and she just drops watercolour onto the paper and then moves the paper to create faces with it. And that’s what I wanted to do with the hair. So, all the wigs were coloured nude, like ballerina shoes, for the base. And even though it was two colours max per wig, I always made sure I used four different shades of the same colour to mimic the colour being diluted with water.

And did the set design influence the hair at all?
For the second part of the tour, we changed the set design for the last songs. It wasn’t the BDSM box anymore, it was literally just her with the microphone, and I felt that it just doesn’t make sense to do something that’s too stylish with the swords, because she’s singing something that’s so powerful and vulnerable. I thought it should just be literally no hair at all. 

What’s your first memory of being hypnotised by hair before you even knew it was a profession?
I grew up on a farm with cows and chickens everywhere. So hair was just not a thing. But I remember seeing my cousin, I was probably like four or five, and I still remember them coming through the door in my family home. They were probably like 15 or 17. They had such long hair, it was almost they had like a gold aura around them. Like Virgin Mary.

And that moment made you go into hairstyling!
I went to a hairdressing school in France for six years. Then I really wanted to move to London. My mom and dad didn’t know. So I saved money without telling them. They were scared of everything. So when I reached the age of 18, I saved all my money, and literally three days before leaving London, I told my mom and dad. I didn’t really want them to have a choice to stop me. I worked in London and Paris all the way until I became a teacher at the academy. Once I was a teacher, I was like, you know what? This is actually not for me. Because I feel like I’ve got so much things to learn. And then I worked as a session stylist. I met Twigs. We got on really well. And we collaborate really well! 

During her tour, did she already have ideas of what she wanted? Or was it all your vision?
We had been talking about wanting to change her hair drastically. And I wanted to do a mechanism where I can clip on the hair. But I didn’t know what to use. And then she came to me like, oh, maybe you should use a carabiner. I was like, you know what? That’s actually an amazing idea. It was definitely a collaboration. The idea didn’t come just from me; I was so focused on the hair aspect. 

Cool. I imagine if you’re not super trained in hair, you can also think more out of the box more easily. And did you have any early hair idols?
I’m 33. In my generation, when we were young, it was such a thing to be into witches and fantasy books and stuff like that. So I think my inspiration was the books I used to read as a kid. I wasn’t really a big fan of celebrities. 

I bet that would feel very satisfying for all the fantasy nerds here to read.
Hahah, I know. 

And do you have any non-hair things that recently inspired a look?
Yes. I mean, something I like at the moment is watercolour. I probably do it every night right before going to bed. I just think it makes me see hair in a different way as well. 

And do you have an equivalent of a chef’s knife? Like one tool that you would never work without?
I could probably say my sketchbook. Because I always have to draw the hair before I do it.

Do you collect anything?
I’ve got so many books. I don’t really want to look at Instagram or Pinterest for ideas, so I love books because there are so many things you don’t find on the internet. I have a ritual I do every night. I do a bit of drawing. And I’ve always got an image-based book next to me. I change it every two, three days. I feel like the last image you watch before going to bed is going to stay in your brain. And that’s going to change your… What do you call it? Your ID. 

What kind of books are they?
I don’t really look at hair books. At the moment, it’s books about planets. Also a lot of National Geographic magazines. They always have microscopic zooms at the beginning of their magazine. It can be inside someone’s heart, it can be an animal. But it’s always zoomed. So you get these crazy patterns. I love looking at them. I’ve got a book about fantasy. A book about like really weird animals. It could literally just be like, black and white pictures of normal people. I think sometimes watching journalistic images gives you a really strong emotion, and that can give you an idea as well.

Do you ever get attached to hair, even knowing that it grows back? I mean, I suppose that you were the one who shaved off Twigs’ hair. Does that hurt?
I actually loved it when I shaved her head. Because we wanted to do that skullet for probably two or three years. But the hair at the back was not long enough to get the right contrast with the shape. So we waited, also because she had a new album coming out. So this was actually such an exciting moment. 

The one that was a bit more difficult for me was when Twigs wanted a change and cut off all of the skullet. That was quite… Emotional. It really made me think of how attached I was to her long hair. But I’m so glad we did it, because she looks amazing in it, and it opened a whole new world. It allows us to do different styles at all different stages of the growth. Which is actually amazing. And I really liked how the short hair is forcing me to think deeper about other ideas.

And obviously, it taught me a lot because I was like, Louis, look, that’s not your hair. But it made me realise I put so much possession into her hair. It was just really weird.

So, can you describe a time that hair or someone else’s hair really shocked you?
It’s a traditional hair from, I think it’s from Romania or Bulgaria, where they’ve got like little braids, a lot of them. They’re very, very small, and they’re all sewn together into a fabric. Where it’s like a mat, kind of. I’ve got another one, but that’s from a movie. I think it’s The Last Emperor of China. I watched this as a kid, and I remember the hair. I was like, Wow. Once the subject reaches the age of 12, they start to do this very Chinese dynasty hair when it’s all like shaved hair, a bit like Twigs basically, but it’s a bit far back. It’s all shaved hair, and it’s only got a braid at the back. I was like, wow, that was quite beautiful. 

And the other one is, I don’t know if you know the movie Perfume. It’s a movie about this guy who killed 14 women to make the perfect perfume, basically. And the last woman he killed, she’s got ginger hair. But the colorimetry of the whole movie is all set in the range of the hair. And I mean, I love ginger hair. So yeah, this movie really mesmerised me as a kid as well, this one. And I will say, probably Nina Hagen. I really love her hair as well.

Is there anything that you’ve recently changed your mind about in beauty? Something that you first thought was really ugly, and now you’re like, oh my God, that’s actually such a vibe.
Yes. I used to hate colour in the hair. People’s natural hair colour is beautiful. I used to hate when it was like too many colours. I don’t mind if it’s just one, but if it was like red, blue, and every colour of the rainbow in the hair… I used to hate it. And obviously Twigs said, I really want wigs with colour. And I was like, oh, come on. I’m not going to do that because I really hate it. My partner is an interior designer. So he uses a lot of colour when he does residential houses and stuff like that. And he’s got a passion for colour so he kind of introduced me to the logic of mixing colours together. And that’s why I was like, wow. OK. And that’s what I started doing those wigs for the tour. That’s why I created this technique of watercolour and red colour, so I can actually enjoy doing colour. 

And if you weren’t doing hairstyling as a job, where would all your aesthetic energy go into? 
Working for a museum and restoring paintings, spending hours on a single detail. 

What’s something you wish about this industry that was different?
I still feel when people work with makeup artists or hairstylists, they always assume they don’t really have a creative direction of their own. They think they’re mostly a doer rather than someone who’s going to direct the idea. Photographers and stylists are seen as the creatives. But again, maybe it’s because in history, you don’t really have a lot of hairdressers who try to show a story behind their hair. Maybe it’s something that hairdressers need to work on.

Yeah, I guess it’s a big part of it is also that, any average person goes to a hairdresser sometimes, so perhaps it’s sort of boxed into this service thing that photography and styling are exempt from.
You know what you just said, it literally took me two years to find that. They’re seen as here to do a service rather than directing an idea. 

Who’s a makeup or hair artist that we should be paying attention to right now?
He’s called Eda Jogo. It’s a Japanese hair stylist. And I would probably say Charlie Le Mindu. We have different worlds – but I just love his bravery to push his view forward. And for makeup artists, I would say probably Tilda Mace. I like people who think outside of their box. 

Do you have any advice for beginning artists?
I wish people were less scared to actually experiment with their own ideas. I feel like too many people are trying to follow the trend of what’s going on on Instagram.  I think so many people are just too focused on doing what people like. And that’s quite a shame. When I work with new makeup artists, I ask them, “What’s your world? What do you like to do? What do you bring?” And most people, they just say, “Oh, I just like doing glam.” Which is fine. But I do tell them, you were born as an individual yourself. So you’ve got the way you were educated, the way you grew up. This gives you your culture. And I think sometimes you should spend time with yourself. Find what you really like. And then with that, you can create your world. 

On top of that, I never take inspiration from one thing. I think something becomes interesting when you take, for example, a doll, and you mix this with a cloud. Because this is an interpretation of the mix of them.  

Yeah, that way you birth something that didn’t exist yet. And if you had to name three of your all-time favourite things, just in general, what are they? It doesn’t have to be just hair.
You know, when you’re about to sleep and your window is open and you can feel the wind from outside going past your skin. I love, love, love this. The moment you find an idea as well. The clarity, you know, when you try to find something in your head, you can’t seem to find it, and then suddenly, I don’t know, it’s something magical. It lasts for like one or two hours. My last favorite thing would be the Met Gala. The one I did with Twigs.

And what are some things happening, in hair or otherwise, that you think it’s time to let go of?
The ponytail with the straight middle parting. I hate that. Plus, it’s quite bad for your hair. Another thing, it’s going to sound so controversial, but tabi boots. And really, really, really long, straight wigs for no reason.

Lol. What’s the only good reason to have a long, straight wig?
I mean, it doesn’t really have to be a reason. The thing is when it’s done all the time, you lose the impact of the length. I don’t like the use of wigs for no reason as well. I hate that. If there is a need, of course, but… But most of the time, the talents have hair.