When film hairstylist Michel Côté portrays period dramas, she favors the restrained elegance of the 1950s. But there was no restraint or grace in her recent assignment tasked with recreating the bouffant hair of the 1980s. That movie was “The Apprentice,” which dramatized Donald Trump’s rise from suburban hustler to, if not status or wealth, then at least to the top of Trump Tower.
“I tried to distance myself from that topic,” Ms. Côté said on a recent afternoon. She added, “When one of the producers approached me about this project, I thought, “This is what I thought.” Here, from the privacy of her office in Montreal, she lets out a sound that sounds somewhere between a groan and a gag. (The film was shot in Canada, with Toronto mostly complementing the dirty, gritty Koch-era New York in some way.) But Côté liked the film’s creative team, including director Ali Abbasi. , I also liked the cast, including Sebastian Stan. Donald Bakalova and Maria Bakalova as the first Mrs. Trump.
Another thing about The Apprentice: Côté began his career in the 1970s, around the same time the film opens. That’s when she got her first job behind the chair at a salon in Quebec City. This was the era of the wedge cut, and women were fascinated by Olympic figure skating champion Dorothy Hamill. Her hair was cut short, exposing the nape of her neck. Côté met Big Hair when he moved to Montreal in 1985. “I worked at a big salon downtown, and women would come in at lunchtime. Those were the days of teasing, and we were doing perms and frosty highlights.”
So while Côté rarely takes the time to style her own hair, she often mentions the various cloud formations and conch-like structures that covered Ivana Trump’s head throughout much of the 1980s. I knew. Bakalova’s actual hair was good enough for an early scene in the film, where a pre-Trump Ivana Zhernychikova wore her hair in a glamorous but simple style. A pair of wigs was alternated to recreate the more imperial style Ivana adopted after taking on the dual role of wife and brand extension. Côté speculated that the real Ivana didn’t have to spend as much time in a chair as Bakalova did. She didn’t look like her mother. ” It was Donald’s mother, Mary Ann MacLeod Trump, who also appears in the movie, and was given to a giant pouffant that resembled a knot from a giant sequoia. “She had a roller set and was in the dryer for hours,” Côté continued. Côté’s colleague was in charge of styling the film Mary Ann. When the actress who plays her, Katherine McNally, was brought onto the set, Côté recalls: But then I look at the pictures. . . . ”
An even bigger challenge was styling the female extras. “Women now wear their hair long,” she explained. “When the top is long, it’s hard to get that volume, because in the 1980s, top hair was very short, so you could play around with it and curl it.” For beginners, big hair It may seem like a contradiction that short hair is required. From a historical perspective, Côté said Jennifer Aniston’s “Rachel” cut, a 1990s standby with a long top and parting down the middle, remains popular with many women. If you’re making a movie set in the 1980s, you don’t have the budget to buy dozens of wigs. Fortunately, Côté and her team have come up with a workaround for extras with long hair. “We’re not making a documentary,” she pointed out.
But what about Donald’s styling? Côté said there was no question about using Stan’s real hair. “He has very, very dark hair, very beautiful hair. We couldn’t do this with his hair.” Côté had three wigs at his disposal. . One for young Donald, one for Donald before scalp reduction surgery, and one for Donald after scalp reduction surgery. “The second one was thinner,” Côté explained. “The effects makeup guys put a bald plate underneath it, so you could see his scalp.” In other words, some of Stan’s real hair was covered with fake scalp, and that scalp It was covered in a wig, a tonsil turducken.
Because “The Apprentice” ended in the 1980s, Côté didn’t have to solve the engineering mystery of President Trump’s late-life hair, but she did offer one two-word theory she found. It was a “small extension.” ♦
