The 67th annual Cannes Film Festival kicked off yesterday, and as expected, we’re already knee-deep in glamour. (Just check out our Day 1 red-carpet roundup.) Olivier Dahan’s biopic Grace of Monaco opened the festival, and all eyes were on leading lady Nicole Kidman. She opted for an embellished lapis-blue gown by Armani Privé that conveyed her status as Hollywood royalty. But our favorite detail? Her hair, of course. A smooth, side-swept plait (a beauty trend that appears to have carried over from the recent Met ball) was both elegant and slightly unexpected. John Nollet, Kidman’s go-to hair pro, spoke to us exclusively about her look and sent over a few of his sketches.
Ahead of last night’s red carpet, Nollet attended one of Kidman’s fittings to see the dress, but he usually waits until the day of the event to really shape his ideas. “It’s a bit of an improvisation at the end. In the moment, you create it and use your intuition,” he explained. “This time it was very easy, because she had bare shoulders. So I decided to do a twist on the back, and after that I added a feather made by hand from my new collection of Maison de Coiffure [a line of hair accessories crafted by the embroiders of Métiers d’Art and Lemarié Ateliers],” he noted. To add “movement near the eye,” he twisted back a front section and blended it with the length. The result was a soft, undone braid that paid subtle tribute to sixties-era Grace Kelly. Even better, the products he used to get the look don’t don a price tag only a princess of a sovereign city-state could afford. “I always use the L’Oréal Elnett hairspray,” he said. “It makes the look very natural. I also use Frizz Ease by John Frieda, although I don’t use it as a spray. I put a comb on it, and it makes an amazing, beautiful, shiny film on the hair, which I love.”
