Marki Shkreli credits his success in hair partly to his centenarian mentor, David Pressley. The legendary Detroit hair stylist was 99 years old when Shkreli, then a teenager, enrolled at his cosmetology school in Michigan in the early 2000s.
In Pressley’s 1930s heyday, he ran a salon inside J.L. Hudson (then the world’s tallest department store). “He had all these mannequin heads that he never brushed or shampooed,” Shkreli recalls of his classroom. “If he created a perfect hairstyle, he would leave it. There was a French twist he kept from 1965.” His original clients, by then in their mid 80s, would still stop by the school to get roller sets by David Pressley.
“He was the most inspirational person I’ve met,” says Shkreli, who, after graduating, went on to work with big-name contemporary stylists Sam McKnight and Guido. “I mean, he was a hairdresser for about 80 years. I thought, Oh my god, if he’s still working at 100 and loves his job, I want to get into this.”
The two most important things he learned from Pressley were the traditional techniques of hairdressing (like those roller sets) and the grandmaster’s philosophy of hair. “He was a genius,” recalls Shkreli, “because he said, ‘Hair is living. Even though it grows out of your head and is considered dead, it’s still alive. It’s part of you.'” Pressley told him to look not at other stylists’ work for inspiration, but at movies, “because in film you can see how hair moves.”
This is partly what prompted Shkreli to begin taking his own photos – creating cinematic worlds for his models to inhabit. In his early 20s, while he was assisting more senior stylists at fashion shows, he would go back to Michigan and Pressley would ask to see his book. “At the time, all I had was test shoots for which I’d done the hair for the photographers. And he would say, ‘I didn’t teach you this! What is this?'” So Shkreli began making his own portraits of the women he styled. Often taken at his uncle’s salon, just outside New York, the images have an otherworldly feel. “I loved having complete creative control,” he says. He would imagine plots for his subjects, instilling the shots with an atmosphere to match the styles he most loved: the glossy waves and gently backcombed bedheads of the 60s and 70s.
While he was still assisting, Shkreli met an editor at Self Service at a party and later showed her the photos. She liked them and he landed styling jobs on editorials with Ezra Petronio and Venetia Scott. “I really feel that the photos that I took kind of helped me graduate from assisting,” he says, “It was rare. I skipped a lot of steps.” He’s since worked with almost every major fashion publication as well as with real life leading ladies like Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, and Elle Fanning. Recently, he’s been developing his own product line, scheduled to launch next spring.
Pressley wasn’t Shkreli’s only source of encouragement, though. His family has a history in hair. “My father’s sister, she’s still a hairdresser,” he explains. “She is, I want to say, almost 70 and she does old-fashioned hair in Michigan. And then my uncle, his salon is right outside New York City. He loves really Vidal Sassoon, modern hair, which I love as well.” Growing up, his whole family would decamp to his aunt’s salon and chat to her while she worked. It meant he already knew the basics by the time he got to school. “But my uncle was really the one that pushed me most out of my family, because he was friends with Frédéric Fekkai and John Frieda, and his real love was doing hair. He would drive me to the airport when I first got jobs in Europe”
Directly beneath his salon, Shkreli’s uncle also ran a dojo. He was both a trained hair stylist and a trained martial artist. I ask Marki if he’d also be interested in working two careers, as a hairstylist and a photographer? “I do still have a secret love affair with taking photos.”
Credits
Text Alice Newell-Hanson
Photography Marki Shkreli