Legend Insider | Chuckie Amos

Anyone who is familiar with Amos knows he has no co-equal. For decades he has been the foremost name in hairstyling.

The inimitable Amos has conquered the worlds of celebrity hairstyling, editorial high fashion, the high fashion runway and advertorial campaign. He not only ascended the pinnacles of the celebrity hairstyling across all genres, (mastering all hair textures) but has stayed at the top of the game for the entirety of his career. This is no easy feat.

With reference to celebrity, Amos has worked with everyone who is anyone. He is the celebrity hairstylist of the greatest celebrities of all time.

For instance, he is notable for being the name behind the singer Brandy’s iconic braids at the height of her career. His work with the singer and actress set the hair trends of the nineties.

He is the genius that is responsible for that moment in time which is the Beyonce debut album cover. The multi Grammy award winning album has a place in the history of popular culture and changed the hairstyling standard for the music industry and album covers at large.

Amos is also responsible for Donna Summer’s hair on her final album before her death.This man has worked with everyone including the first Black Miss America, Vanessa L Williams, Naomi Campbell and her immaculately pressed hair in the 90’s and aughts, the legendary Iman, Kerry Washington, Mariah Carey, the iconic Diana Ross, Alicia Keys, Solange Knowles, Mary J Blige, Sarah J Parker, Erykah Badu and many more.

Please see Amos with the some of the aforementioned names as below.

Amos is responsible for a lot of the most iconic red carpet moments, unforgettable magazine covers and memorable hair trends. His contribution to fashion, beauty, culture and entertainment history is infinite.

Today we are honored to speak to Mr Chuck Amos (might we add incredibly humble, warm and genuine) himself. Please read on to hear from the maestro himself. His answers are in-depth, profound and generous. Read on for an unforgettable interview.

1. Good Afternoon Mr Chuck Amos, we are very honoured that you have granted Story Magazine this interview. We know how precious your time is and cannot thank you enough!

We are blown away by your great body of work. As a celebrity personal stylist you have conquered the worlds of the red carpet, the editorial, campaigns and the runway. You are the celebrity hairstylist to celebrity hairstylists. You have done the hair of the most important celebrities of our time and your relationships with many of them like Vanessa L Williams has surpassed a simple working relationship. Could you tell us about your career to date? Could you please share the story of how you got your start?

I’m from Massachusetts and I went to hair school there after high school and then I stayed in my town for two years and then I came to New York to FIT to study Fashion Merchandising and I started to do hair on campus and I met this girl called Lisa Fernandez who was working at a magazine. She was an upper grad student. She took me on set and I started doing hair for her and for shoots and that is how I started doing hair and got my foot through the door.

I wrote to Orlando Pita for two years, he finally answered me, I got to meet him and I assisted him for the Donna Karan show at Bryant Park. That was the first show that I ever worked with him and he loved me and his assistant came over to me and was like “we want you to do the rest of the shows” and I was like great, fine but I was also a club kid, my stuff was a little kind of crazy and out there, I knew it was a reflection of Europe but I hadn’t been to Europe. I knew that if I were to go to Europe that my style could have a little solidity in the fashion world. And so another year passed by and Orlando finally brought me to Paris and I was ecstatic and doing all of the shows with him; Christian Dior, Galliano, Gucci, Versace, Prada, like all the big shows.

That just took my career to a new height.

Then I came back and started doing a lot of stuff with Black magazines, Essence and a lot of more Black videos and more things with women of colour. I was bringing the styles to them and they were loving it. That’s basically probably how I got to be the legendary first black person to do shows in Paris and get the shows here in New York too. I was doing fashion, six months before it comes out and celebrities wanted that, they wanted that hair from my mind and with my skill. That got me a lot of advertisements as well.

Then I met Beyonce and I did her for an editorial first and then she loved me so much that I pressed her hair out while she exercised, and I got the job for the ‘Dangerously In Love’ album cover which changed my life in the music and that speared me to celebrity styling. People really looked at who I was and when they saw me, they rewound my career from there. They were like this guy is incredible and I became the number one asked for, for everybody and it is still happening now. There is Coronavirus and other things, but they want the people with a great stripped backbone who know how to act and how to always move forward. I think that I have gotten a lot of jobs because of that and that’s basically how my career got started. That is basically it.

2. You are responsible for hair moments that have become part of popular culture. Two such examples are the Beyonce ‘Dangerously In Love’ album cover and the Brandy and Monica ‘The Boy Is Mine’ video. Both have remained as pop culture favourites of the masses. What did those both take at that time?

The Beyonce album cover was the fact that a lot of people were still doing not grungy looks but we were coming off this trend of like flat hair and I remember doing the Versace show and I did the Michael Kors show and it was about big bouncy curls and 1970s Charlies Angels hair, beautiful locks of hair and I said that we should just do that with Beyonce, we should just give her this new fresh look and blow it with fans, make it look airy, make it look like she is under water and we used four fans and it was just incredible. The hair flows and it was very much that time. It was the time that people wanted to see something inspirational and I was able to deliver that for Beyonce for that one and that was great.

For Brandy’s ‘Boy Is Mine’ video, we wanted to do her hair and she wanted it to have that regular hair style that is black and parted in the middle. She came with rollers on the ends with curls at the bottom so if you see the video and it is curled under, that is her old Georgia ways of curling it. It pretty much was that and we braided her hair for the bedroom scene where she is in her pyjamas. If you see it in the video we laid them on a tray, on the front of the hair, on the front of this little ledge so when she moves her hair they kind of make a swirl shape which didn’t have any wire or anything. It just happened to work out. That was great. Brandy was great. We wanted to make her braids look like hair because her mother wanted her to have braids but the record company wanted her to have hair.

3. Your client list is legendary. Who have been your most memorable celebrities to work with and what have been your favourite moments?

My most memorable are Diana Ross, Donna Summer and Beyonce. These are my top three most memorable, where in that moment I couldn’t believe I was doing their hair.

For each of them I have a top memorable moment.

Donna Summer’s most memorable moment was that my assistant burnt my upper arm and we were looking for Neosporin and wondering whether we can put it on the burn and Donna Summer said no. She said to put saliva on the burn instead and that is the best way.

I was like “Donna no” and she spat in her hand and wiped it on my arm and it was like a raw open wound like a cut so at first I was grossed out and then I realised that this is the saliva that clears her throat before she sings her songs and so I now rub the scar every time I see her name or hear her songs because I know there is a little piece of her DNA in my system because of that. I now have a little scar on my upper left arm and it is because of the Donna Summer burn. So that is my Donna Summer moment.

My Diana Ross moment was that I had bought this huge poster that was 4 x 6ft in height for my mom and it had ‘Mahogany’ the film starring Diana and ‘Lady Sings The Blues’ on it. My mom couldn’t come to the photoshoot, so I got her this poster that I wanted Diana Ross to sign. She tried to sign it while everyone was holding this giant poster and because it wasn’t working out she said that we should put the poster on the floor and she got down on her knees and hiked her dress up with one hand and signed the autograph and wrote some things for my mom.

For the fact that she got on the floor had me in tears because I thought that was overwhelming because anyone who comes from the Sixties knows that you don’t get down on your knees like a wash woman or house cleaner not after you are successful, not after the depth and breath of her career and where Diana was already and for her to do that for my mom was very humbling.

That showed me that Diana Ross was really a real girl, they could have called her diva and all that but fame was not who she was. Also she kept telling us at the shoot to call her Diana, to call her by her first name and we kept saying, “yes Ms Ross”, “thank you, we will Ms Ross” because we couldn’t call her by her first name because she was the queen.

My third memorable moment was the Beyonce one.
She had just gotten a new apartment. There was nothing in it but brown boxes in the kitchen and I was scheduled to do her hair again and this was before the ‘Dangerously In Love’ album cover, and we sat and there was no mother, no pr people, not a manager or Jay-Z. There was no one just us. Just me and Beyonce solo in her kitchen in a house that was brand new but not furnished yet.

She sat on a crate and she looked through boxes and found some cool ranch flavoured Doritos and she opened them up (off course before she became vegan or plant based) and we shared them. She would take some, then lift the bag, and I would take some and I would do her hair and we just had an intimate conversation on life and the power of attraction and all the great things about spiritual things. It was just a real moment just to have just me and Beyonce quiet time. That is one of my memorable moments.

4. You have worked with the crème de la crème of the music, fashion and entertainment world. From supermodels to the best of Hollywood. Who inspires Chuckie and who would Chuckie still like to work with?

I am inspired by popular culture and what the kids are doing. That really inspires me. There are people that I would like to work with. For inspiration I am inspired by street looks and things that are different that are done with hair. Then I like to place them on people who are influencers. If it influences me from the street and I can put it on and influencers hair, it will also influence people who are looking at that celebrity or influencer at that moment. So those things inspires me but I would love to do Miss Piggy. I had the Miss Piggy doll, I had three of them. I love Miss Piggy, I love her hair and I would have loved to have done her in real life.

It is funny that soon as I am inspired to do the hair of a celebrity, I get to do them. Like I was inspired by the show ‘Pose’ and then I got to do Janet Mock’s hair. My friends tell me that everytime I say I’d like to do someone’s hair, I get to do their hair.

So hopefully I get to do Miss Piggy.

5. What inspires you work? Where do you draw inspiration from? What are the things and people that are inspiring you?

I am inspired by the kids and the street. I like to take that inspiration and make it different on influencers and celebrities. Yes I’m inspired by the young kids and taking things and turning them on their head on a celebrity or influencer.

6. You have reached the pinnacle of your craft. Does Chuck Amos still have goals and dreams that you are still working on with regards to your work?

I would love to write a slavery book about the lives of the gay in a non gay world, in this world today.

I would also like to do a book about myself and my journey and the great things that have happened to me.

I would also like to so a hair art museum that teaches the world about Black hair and all it can be. It would be hands on, like about how to braid so the whole world could understand hair and it would have a Black section dedicated to hair and textures and also have art for those people who make flowers and pictures and those who sculpt hair, the medium for art and I love that.

I would also like to do a glam awards event like how Beverly Bond did for ‘Black Girls Rock’. I would love to do a ‘Glam Rocks’ where people can be nominated and people can be seen because in this world of fashion no one knows who did the hair and makeup of each celebrity.

You can name check the designer a celebrity wore but no one knows who did the hair and makeup.

This is particularly true of old Hollywood red carpet looks. Like Jane Crawford, who did her hair? Nobody knows. Like Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner and others from back in the day no one knows who did their hair or makeup. On a massive scale we don’t know who did the hair and makeup of these celebrities.

With the 90s came the phenomenon that you could be a celebrity by doing the hair and makeup of celebrities and have a following but before then nobody knew who did each celebrity. I think that some sort of show or some sort of thing put together that people can actually watch to see and know exactly who we are as celebrity personal stylists, celebrity makeup artists and celebrity hairstylists.

For those who have become household names, we can start a new legacy so when people look back fifty or a hundred years from now they can say these were the people.

7. So many fledgeling hair artists look up to you and want to reciprocate what you have achieved. What career advice could you impart to them? What does it take to make it and what do you suggest to them?

Know your skill of hair. Any texture, any wave. Learn everything you can, whether it is from YouTube or classes or practicing on someone. Learn the skill one hundred percent. From there you have to learn how to move forward with art directors or celebrities saying no to your ideas. You cannot get stuck, so you have to learn to move forward and not to hurt yourself and say you are the problem or that you cannot do hair. It is not that, it is just that the client is not wanting what you want so you have to learn to move and have pace.

Also keep your eye open to what is new and fresh and learn to do it in different ways so you can put your mark on it yourself.

Also, to be nice and talkative but know when not to speak but also know how to speak because you are dealing with people with loud voices. The client never remembers the hairstyle but remembers the hairstylist, the moment and conversation. They don’t just want the skill which already is supposed to be impeccable but they also want the comfort level because this is their time. When you are usually doing someones hair, especially a celebrity, they are not practicing or having a choreography session and they are not talking about business. They are not doing anything. Usually, they are eating and having their down time and on the phone and to be comforting in that area of time because it is just a small grey area and then they are back up when you finish their hair they are back up to show it. You have to expect that. Your personality has to complement that.

Finally, you should always take your shoes off. You should never have to be asked to take your shoes off. If anything is best for them to say that you should keep your shoes on.

8. You are known for putting Black hair on the map like no other. I know this wasn’t intentional on your part. What would you say about this? You are celebrated for putting Black hair out there. How did this come to happen?

In my early years with hair I had this ‘White is better’ mentality and there was more work back then for White artists, the hair and people who were doing White hair and White commercials. So I said I want those jobs. I want to learn how to do White hair impeccably because they are going to try and throw me to the Black world which was like one job, one opportunity, one magazine because they didn’t give us a lot of opportunities. So I did not want to be pigeonholed in that box. So I was on the Brandy ‘Sitting In My Room’ video and Billy the makeup artist, a white man from Georgia told me that he thought that I was the greatest hairstylist and that everyone talks about me but I said to him I don’t want to do Black hair, that I wanted to do White hair and he said to me while rubbing my arm that I would be doing Black hair so I needed to practice and get a stove.

So I got a stove and it changed my life.

I was able to do curls that looked real. That were buttery and soft and I could manipulate curls to the way I wanted them to be manipulated because I had a stove. So I got the stove and that propelled me to do the curls in different ways. When I was in Europe it got a lot of the Black girls like Naomi who wanted their hair pressed out and there was no one pressing hair. There was basically no Black people doing hair at the shows. So to have someone who was not just Black but had a stove, I was able to do the hair of a lot of the Black women especially like Naomi Campbell. I met Jay Alexander too that way, I used to press his hair. The same with the stylist Patti Wilson, I used to press out her hair and edges while in Paris.

So the stove was really it and what was happening was the Essence magazines and those Black magazines had Black celebrities who wanted the hair that was straight off the runway so they were like this guy Chuckie is doing this hair for the shows and what he is doing for the runway will not be off the runway for another six months or a year, which is the mainstream. They said I had all the ideas and the skill and that basically was how I started doing hair and getting more accolades in the Black community and then I went and got the Pantene contract. They showed me how to do hair and they took me to their labs and I learned to do all kind of textures. I learned everything about hair and this was so interesting to me, I sort of jumped to the other side and now I can do both Black and White hair.

I am glad I can do a lot of African American styles and manipulate every texture. Now I know and can manipulate every texture through and through.

9. How important is representation? Kamala Harris being voted in as the Vice President has changed things for girls of color. How important is it for women of any race to see your work representing them? Please tell us your thoughts on the importance of representation.

I love that we are represented and I love that we are shown because I think a belief is just a thought repeated. Pictures are so important because you can think of a thing and if you cannot see an image that represents it you start to believe that ‘White’ is the only thought.

But now that we can see a representation of us and for those of us who are older and were around during the sixties, the seventies and eighties and nineties we have already seen all of the White images and only one image here or there of someone Black or of colour but now we are seeing representation of that which is Black all the time.

Now the kids who are younger, like five, six, seven or eight can see those images all the time and comprehend images and thoughts that they are now seeing more people and women of colour so their thought pattern will be different as they grow into these belief systems as they grow older. They will believe that Black is equal to White. They will believe that colour doesn’t really matter and that everything is included and that there isn’t one colour or race that is only being shown all the time

Therefore I think representation (and this is important when it comes gay people and other groups too, they need to be seen and represented too, everyone needs to be included) is very important for the future of our children’s belief system.

I have to say that as a stylist represented I know we want to have a seat at the table but we are represented so much that we are building another table and before we can sit at the Black table, we have to learn to be able to be seen at the White table. Hairstylists and makeup artists when I was working had a chance to do the White girls at the fashion industry because there was only one Black girl. Now that is a catch 22 because now there is five or six Black girls and if you are a glam creative of colour they give you all the six Black girls and in turn you are now just the ‘Black hairstylist’ who does just the Black hair girls instead of showing them that I can sit at the table over where you are too and blow out the White girl’s hair and give her volume and texture, whatever you need to do. My advice is also to not allow yourself be boxed in. You need to show that you are a full hairdresser who can work across races and represent everyone, not just one race or ethnicity.

10. You have achieved so much and broken all the glass ceilings. How would you like to be remembered at the end of your career.

That I was just a nice guy in spirit who people learnt things from.

It is basically my conversations and who I am as a person as opposed to work done.

I want them to remember that Chuckie was fun and that he gave us advice that we never would have thought about. That I gave something (be that a book, a saying or some advice) that helped someone out.

That I made people feel beautiful inside as well as outside. I know how to make people beautiful on the outside with their hair but it is the inside that really stays with a person.

Follow the legendary Chuckie Amos on Instagram at @Chuckieloveshair

Kind thanks to Chuckie Amos from Story Magazine for granting this interview and for his phenomenal in-depth answers.

Many thanks also go to Danielle, Amos’s representation for her kind assistance facilitating the interview.

The interviewer would like to note that this has been her most profound interview to date.