Celebrity Hair Stylist Oscar James And Chuck Amos Discuss Their Rise In The Industry

All right, thank you so much for joining us. We are here with another edition of behind the scenes, beauty, I'm your host, Derek Monroe, and today I have with me like two of my idols as a hairstylist. I want to call them influencers before there was actual the influences that I'm going to tell you why I made this. I did this whole conversation this morning in my head, and what I was saying is people don't realize that you guys are the reason why they buy hair color while they go and try new hair products, because you guys are the face of a lot of the Hairstyles on the dark and lovely box, a lot of the campaigns in the ad from Pantene all of that stuff. So when you go into these beauty, supplies and everyone tries to decide whether or not the hair style or the color is gon na look good on them. They base it off of what you guys have put out and have been doing for years, and I don't feel like you guys, have really gotten the accolades and the shine. So, that's really why I wanted to do this so that I could really tell you guys how much you mean to me and how much I appreciate you guys so here I have with me. That was a big intro. Sorry, but I wanted to explain it, but here I have with me Oscar James and check Yates, and so I'm just gon na jump right in and I'm just gon na ask you guys like how did you get started in the hair industry? So I never thought about it as a career. I wanted to be an architect I like art, but then I saw how much math was involved. I'M like, oh that time I work and then I went to a beauty salon with my mom and I saw there was actual business where they did hair. I told the lady that I was interested, so I started dead, so I got my license in high school. Okay me too Lana I was, I was a child and I loved hair and that's all I did was play with Barbies and I started doing my friends hair and then I went to hair school in summers and I learned how to cut and do other things With hair and came to New York, because I wanted to follow fashion instead and I tried to do fashion, but hair was my love and my passion and to make money $ 10 a hairstyle at MIT campus. I was just doing hair for all the kids there, but they were like interning at magazines and they were like doing the drawer to all the clubs, and so my my hair was actually being seen, and so that's how I started it right off. The campus of fi t I started working for magazine. Oh so you went straight in a magazine, yes, okay, so we can sort of had a conversation earlier and what I realized is y'all didn't have no middle ground. Yo y'all went from here to here because Oscar who was your first celebrity, my first 11th try. It was, but that's the Williams, okay, okay. The first is like Miss with the USA. He was Miss America right, so you start out with the first black Vincent miracle. What was that experience like for you? Well, I was working in a salon in Manhattan, then, and the owner got asked to do a fashion show and she can do it. So I went in the special instead of her and there was a guy there, a makeup artist say: I'm fine who's taught me doing hair and he been working with Vanessa and he knew she needed someone I think her head. Was it just passed away, but he introduced me to her and I was scared. Shitless like beyond you know kind like I am today still oh yeah, it was. It was surreal because I was a huge huge fan. I definitely out of place. I felt nervous, but I just pushed through right kind of like now. That'S why I'm still nervous when I go to work, but I just really kind of pushed it. Yeah yeah. I hope it ever gets super easy, but yeah yeah. If anyone, I'm gon na, put you on Vanessa that if any of the young kids out there, that that only know Vanessa as Vanessa wins now back, then she was the Obama before the country had Obama yeah. We had Vanessa Williams because there was no black person of our skin tone, tag to the word United States or USA, or anything like that ever in the history of like our culture. So she was the very first one to be Miss United States of America. For our culture - and that was before Obama and the whole country was lit up so yeah. I could see how you were extremely. I was a huge fan, yeah, I remember being so excited about her just having black representation. You know she was everything beauty, though, like she had it all she's saying she could bad. She was beautiful yeah, so she was like hitting me of glamour to me. Smart college instrument, so I was out of my mind. Okay, so check. It tells me your personal. Every would my first celebrity was Tasha Jones, Miss Jones she's, where I want to be boy yes, but it was the fact that her first video was shot by hype Williams and he brought all the great kids in like SWV and monie love and a slew of Like it's Busta Rhymes and I got to meet everyone, and I didn't know the magnitude of hike Williams until we much of the party, the video party and all these celebrities there - and I was like I just couldn't believe that I was a part of doing hair For this girl who's associated with all these celebrities, so do you still find that yourself, you get nervous like Oscar? Still? Yes, yes, yes, if you have such a big personality, ask us a little bit more chill uh-huh, but you have such a big personality and it's so hard to believe. I guess I'm I'm more nervous inside wanting to make it great and wanting to like make us make a point, speak through the hair and that's what I get nervous about. I don't know if they're gon na, like let me do it or if I can, or if it's gon na, be too wild for them, but that's that's mainly what my nerves are coming from. Yes, he has big dreams, yeah, I'm trying to get to it. I want to push the envelope, but that was that was always yeah. I live in a fantasy, I'm like I'm a club, kid grounded and all that whole thing and drag-queen sort of taught in hair, so things have to be bigger than normal, like in my world. It'S a bigger place, everything's bigger, everything's, more wild, so I want to push the boundaries in this mess, the editorial that's. That was my goal. I don't like, though, that's your strong point. I feel like that's why people hire you because they know they're gon na get big and they're gon na get texture like you're, the king of Texas. Yes, sir, that thing I want to thank ya. I want to just I want when you, when you're viewing it to be in awe that, like you can't you can feel the picture, but you can never. You can never be that because that's why that's a magazine! That'S why that's a movie because it takes you to a place that you want to be a part of, but you can never be a part of. But if you can immerse those the viewer into the pictures of that hair, then they it gives them something that feels aspirational yeah, something like they're there to fall down on their knees to see, and that's what that's what I want. That'S it's like my mom. As a hair stylist, I feel like that, like I'm, always looking at just up and trying to figure out where you even started, you have an eye like I like, I wouldn't even know where to begin to build that or create that or how to make that Happen so when I look at your work, I feel like you're, like an evil genius, like you put stuff together in a way that I I couldn't ever imagine at all. So one of the things like okay so me coming to New York. I'Ve been in New York for like seven years now and you guys are like a roadmap for me. I want to know who was the roadmap for you guys like you're coming here, because I don't know a lot of the black hair stylists that you know I'm saying like it feels like. There was Vidal Sassoon and all these like different people at one point that we're like in the Caucasian realm or the European realm, where they had people to look forward to or look up to. Who did you guys with up well I'd John Atchison? He was black yeah. He said he did a lot of hair for a Cosby Show as well. Okay, thanks do it please Rashad Jonathan, I love Floyd Kenyatta he's what was Floyd. There wasn't a lot of them, but was Floyd in like the glamour, like the celebrity. Mostly a platform guy from work, so he did a lot of work with like saw Shane yes, and to me I always looked to saw scene for hair yeah inspiration and he was big and then it was a guy who did wigs my cool weeks. I think his name was he did the lion, call it's a wig and he was huge to me. He was everything yeah, but we didn't have we'd have a lot you're right. Yeah like you was somebody. I remember looking at him all the time because he was always going fusion yeah, when the hair, whenever I was under diffusion right yeah, that's big on that it was around my age, so it's like, I think, up to him, but he's definitely a stylist. So I'm sitting next to I'm, who I looked up to Oscar, was one of three for me, because when I started looking towards black hair editorials and celebrity hair, it was always when he went into the gutter. They call it the gutter in the magazines they you go in the gutter and would always say Oscar James and the hair was always slicked from the roots and and that that was one thing that when I was looking in white editorials at black hair, the white Artists would never get the roots of the hair, I mean it was like roshambo with her afro and a ponytail coming out of it and we were like what's going on, and so when they saw something like an Oscars work and Oscar was the first one. In my eyes, to make hair movable and flowable and and it had it had movement in the hair that you did like for Vanessa and all that, and he gave body to black woman's hair that wasn't product driven and - and that was that's. That was the one thing that, like I was so happy to meet you that at that time we all went out dancing. First, I met you and, and the other one was Ellen Lavar because she did Lisa Benes hair and everyone thought that Lisa Bonet is hair. Was real, it was all extensions like the entire thing, even the dreadlocks, but she did an amazing job on it. It was great that was in a time when we couldn't decipher like we didn't people we weren't grasping hold of extensions like it so yeah we were baffled like like. Oh, your hair is really curly when he relaxed it like grow like that, because, like there's like 10 inches of curl here, you would tell anyone that plus I was living in a white neighborhood, so it's only my cousins and all the white kids that were like They were amazed like a magic trick and it's funny because I used to. I will see him all the time tonight. I want to do that. I want to do what you do. It om bud kid. You know I didn't even have a stove. It was just so never. I could never had brought the hair today and then there was so many things that you did that I wanted to do like I've. Just never been that adventurous, and I wouldn't look at myself as trendy or super creative. I do I like texture and I like a good finish and a good cut. So that's where my focus is. I don't have a lot of time they like to go beyond that, I'm so busy trying to get the texture right. The body and like my third one was Janet zhushan. He does Janet Jackson's hair the sheet sheet. It was Janet Jackson's, hair throughout MTV culture that I wanted to do hair. It was now they have wigs in all kinds of textures and Remy's and blah blah blah. But back then there was only this like one texture, because if you know of hair extensions, it derives from the time when we had Jerry girls. Jheri curl was the the base form of what the extensions were given so like. If you hear an LL Cool J's song, a perm in your hair or even a curly weave with a new addition Bobby Brown button under sleeve, that is because curly wigs were it and the curly leaves were Ngata and they stay. I bet you and you edited when we were talking and and the whole shoulder would move from here, and it was like one big, like insulation, like housing insulation, I put him in in a circle yeah and it was horrible, and I thought you Jackson, on the Videos - and she was, you know what have you done - [ __ ] and it was moving. There was air and I was doing this. It was like a magic trick. It is a point in miss you much video where she goes like this and hair weaves have never looked that way, I'd be seeing it and I did it in slow motion and I was like 16 years old and I was obsessed and she did an article In black sophisticates and I was still in high school and my mom and I called her salon and talk to her about pleasure principle because we said how can you get? Is that a wig? What is she wearing and she told us herself that they earned the straight wig, the straight weave on actual clothing iron and then put them in Janet Jackson's here for pleasure principle, and I was blown over the archives hair is like my obsession. Even those like you know, challenged kids like all they want to do is that mary, j blige called me a jack russell with a ball, because every single time I'm like. Oh no, none of that little thing, and you saw me move up here and oh no, I'm doing it constantly constantly and Mary was like my hair is not going anywhere. We were doing this shoot. Mary would go like that with her hair, she go watch and she just like it, come right now. Super obsessed and super obsessed with air everything's. Here I can't get through the day without, like looking at people, say her and wanting to change it in my head. I'M like okay, okay, all right so now things have definitely changed. We were talking a little earlier where I think check you were saying people say there must be so hard without a phone. You know when you guys career was starting in and the whole influence of Instagram and social media and all this stuff was it easier or harder like how was I want to say. I want to ask you, because I watched you off absolute list as well. I don't know if it was harder. It'S just. We just did our work, you know what I mean. We it wasn't about the pictures you know or get to the right celebrity or posting stuff. We just did the work, you know, so it just kind of happened. So it wasn't a this whole like competition and who doing who and all of that kind of I know there wasn't a lot of us. So there wasn't a lot of competition right and you didn't get to see it. It wasn't so in-your-face. Whereas now is it's just in your face a lot of times, you just be like okay, well, well, I could be doing a little more right, so I think it's a blessing and a curse yeah it was, it was definitely easier. The door was open and there was not a lot. There was a lot of seats available in the industry and they say like like. I was kind of like one of the first black kids to go to fashion or to go over to Europe, but it was because there were seats open for that there. I wrote Orlando PETA letters for two years and it seems like a long time then, but like two years is quick to like have someone just open the door for you in 1991 to to go do fashion? Well, nowadays is not quick, though, because yeah watch, you know, and you can just you can reach out and reach. You can reach that beauty person. Some of those people out some of people that I've sort of come across in this new, like known hairstylist round. It feels like to me some of them are using it as a pathway to be famous in a way. Do you feel I mean I not everyone, so let me be clear right, but I feel like there are some. It just feels different, like I feel like when I was coming up same way. I just wanted to do hair. I didn't really, I didn't think about celebrities and when that option came out uh, oh right wow, you can't do that in them in that facet and one of that's very neat, but I didn't really think about that and I didn't think about how it was gon Na people were gon na beauty because I did it. I was just happy to have my work. I didn't think about me. It was the fact that your work was gon na, be seen to a broad audience, and people could see your work. It wasn't. But now I feel like it sort of changed New York, that I feel that we're in like a disposable culture, a quick disposable culture where, like even in fashion, the clothes turn around at H, & M and and Macy's and others like a big outlet stores or Stores sooner there's no there's no more six seasons of like summer and fall in with hair. It'S like the Instagram. It'S only like the the greatness of an Instagram picture lasts like a day or a day and a half and then we're on to other things. And it's it's. You get a lot of information, but you get it fast and you can't focus in on anything like why the world is so beautiful or you go to a sunset is because it takes a while for the sunset to go down. So you have time to look at it, soak it in and be a part of that, and that's probably where we were in the beginning of our culture. You can sit at a magazine and look at everything and really read the gutters and really see things, and that was the only magazines you had. You had the way the whole other month after you got through the first five magazine subscription. First, two days, you had to wait a whole month for it to come out that wasn't just there and it's like nature and trees. You go and everything still and you feel the peace of that and you could really focus in on it, and it makes you feel great where it's now, if you're going on a fast-moving train, your eyes are, and rapid movement back and forth and nothing's going on. With our culture and it's disposable and there's a lot of great things that should be focused on but you're this one and that one and that one and this one and that one in this I feel like it, was just more organic for cuz. You mentioned it. It just for me he just sort of happened like I never really wanted to work with celebrities. It'S just like you said the opportunity came up and I feel I was like. Okay, I can make the money. I made it one day that I used to make it away already Dave just between us. It was so good. I had to write soon, love and kisses Iman. You know Iman when you got it so I knew it was a lot of stress and that's why I never really sought it out. But when it came, I was like okay I'll try I'll give it a try and then one thing just kind of let led to the next well, I think people are now they have building careers like they go out to that, whereas for me it wasn't, it Was that it just kind of happened, yeah, okay, so one other thing I want to talk about is a longevity that both of you guys have had the fact that you know you started out with maybe mine and then revamped. Let'S be clear, you revamp Nicki Minaj Tiffany Haddish, like how is it that you're staying in this rotation in the same way, would you Chucky, I mean Tracee Ellis Ross. If she comes to the city is all about Chucky yeah, I remember everyone knows that Alicia Keys. All these people, so how have you guys, maintain relevancy and a forever changing world of hair yeah I've been fortunate that the girls that I started with they still work. Today I met Iman Tyra Banks, Vanessa Williams, the same year, 1994, they're still working yeah and every now and then I meet like a new girl just and I met Nikki. She sought me out: she saw Tara's hair and she liked ours. Is she sought me out, and so that was a hole that opened up a whole nother door for me like just when I thought become real, is kind of that started everything over again, so she has a huge fan base, so it was like. I was popping again my it was. I just remember everybody was like she looks regular, nothing was wrong with it, but it was just beautiful to see you know because, of course, the the the colorful wigs is what got her through the door, but it was great to see her transition to an adult Woman and the way you did that so flawlessly kudos to you, my friend she's, a beautiful woman. She, you know and a close re always right, so I just kind of put my hair on her, so it was like this new. Well, it wasn't nothing that I was well. It was kind of something because I never did that before the blonde. Wigs with the dark blue. I'Ve never done that before. So I did try that out and she loved it. Just so happened to work for her so that opened that door, which is lovely it was beautiful yeah. What about you, how you keep it longevity check? Well for me, I feel like I want to say I picked my ear to the floor, but I pretty much. Hang out with young kids in them, I'm kind of awarded to still be on shoots with young directors and young minds. And I look at everything and I look at the kids on the street and try to go where all the young kids are and and they they're just expressing things differently and if you can take whatever skill you have from whatever generation hair. There'S pretty much. The same skill with a curling iron, you know, you know what that's all you can pretty much put it together and make it new and modern. And for me it was having a modern mind like a young child, like I like at a teenager or 20 year old and ideas, but having the execution and the discipline of have being an old, faithful, like you're, not gon, na you're, not gon na go wrong. If you have Chucky on the set sort of like atmosphere, so both of those combinations to work, because you can get the young person to get the stuff, but they make it may take them, which is a lot what's going on with Instagram, it may take them. Three or four hours to create a style that you could do in like 45 minutes and with people putting their money on time that they'll go with the safe hood. Who knows that expression? Okay, he's the king of technique, though, and he's always trying something new. So I think that helps us bounce as well. Yeah cuz I mean I, I went beyond the beauty supply store, but that was going to that was that's all like drag queen club, kids stuff, because if you ever go to a drag queens house or club kids house back in the 90s, it was scattered with All stuff from like Michaels and and like hardware stores, and you know, there's they're, drilling wigs together and you're just like. I can't believe all this is happening and if you take that and make it something it it brings you to another level of hair because you're actually building things and you're building hair dude you're, letting people see that other thing you're showing them ideas that they would Not see and when I went when I first was doing that I was just considered like a crazy Club, kid weirdo, because half the time I was doing hair like on LSD or ecstasy, it I don't care if you say that, because it's in my it's in My articles better than the day, that was what that's what we would do. We were working like for ID magazine and it was free and you just do it, and when I went to Europe, I found that they, the avant-garde hairdressers, were doing the same thing as the drag queens and the club kids here only in ateliers, and they had All the money from Chanel and Gautier to like to budget their work and so coming back. My little Club kids stuff look avant-garde because I had a reputation going there and so that's that's kind of what kept me relevant and then, when I turned to black to the black culture I was I wanted to bring. I wanted to stay in the white world of hair and I wanted to just be fashion, and I didn't really want to have any association really with the black industry. And why do you think that is because all the ideas and the fantasies were coming from white magazines and then I would look at the black magazines and go? Oh, I feel like I'm in church and and I and I used to say that to essence there was there was no know that there, you know you know, there's no fashion. Jesus has nothing to do with fashion and and all that stuff, and that's what and - and I and I had a hard time, but I've opened the doors for essence. That'S why they they have such extravagant here now it used to be you. Could you couldn't have dropped the hair down for collarbones and all that stuff, and I brought the styles that I did in Europe back to essence, and their explanation was well. Those are not sister, styles, those not style that system, and I was like why just did Tyra in Nigeria, Concha and Cristal, and all the black girls in Europe with these hairstyles and they were sisters. And so why are Mickey Taylor loves me now, because I open that. I let them see that, like with that, we have to start incorporating our black women on American soil with the that what the white women on American soil are getting through folk in L and and we only have one outlet - and that was essence. So we had to break down, look scores and so that sort of really gave me a name that was like well, he can keep. He can bring the Europeans techniques over to us and then that's when the advertisement came and all that stuff and that's what kind of kept me relevant that was, that was was solidifying that gap, because now I'm doing a lot more black hair tonight and with white Hair and I enjoy it now, because black hair is being celebrated to the Elevens, where it wasn't before: okay, so okay, so how did you merge into products and working more so with the the darken lovelies, the criminate Jers, the Pantene? How how did that come? I started work with like glorious and soft Sheen because I didn't do like him like seamlessly. That was that's. What I was best at is even if I had used extensions, you would never be able to tell, because I just blend it seamless a lot of times. The companies they can hire people to do it. You know they didn't want the black people, but the black hair, just one said so, a lot of times like Tyra. I do Tyra's hair, but she would try to hire me. They wouldn't hire me because I didn't have a portfolio, so I would go to her house. Do her hair like the photoshoot and then she goes to the shoot. Then, when she got him clout, you know to ask all she wanted and be able to book them. Then then she started to be able to get me on shoes, but yeah Wow I'd do a hair at night and then she goes to shoot the next day. So wait a minute, though you said you didn't have a book, but by this time you had already done Vanessa Williams and all that that still wasn't enough. No, it takes it takes a while to build the portfolio plus. I had you know a couple of pictures here and there, but yeah. No, not when you got the other kids with you know they have a plethora of stuff in books. Probably not black, not a lot of black stuff, but you know celebrity is the way to go and if you got ta some levers in your book that that's what they want. You know I didn't have that, so it was a double credit, so for hair care, for me was through the window of Oscar James here he recommended me cuz. He was already doing it and I guess he just believed in me enough to say. Well, you try Chucky, and so they tried me as well, and so I had got my foot in the door with that too, and of course, watching Oscars stuff and knowing like what they want for black hair with the seamless in the whole thing and then um And then I was tried to push it from there and you were saying earlier about. Maybe you had worked with beyoncé and that's where some yeah they. So I start out with the on say with when she had the curls during the Austin Powers time, and so they were like. Oh, he does curls, and so let's, though, when Pantene approached me, they they saw the curls and they wanted curls like beyond, and they want that feeling and they had a new product out called relaxed natural, and so they put me on contract for one year. However, I couldn't speak or do demonstrations without nervously like sweating and stuttering, but they, but my work from the pictures kept me on for a whole year, oh wow, and then they called me back for the Gold Series, which is cool. Oh okay, cuz. I remember you, you were like this, the face of for South sheet right. No, that's how she I did. I had a contract with John Frieda for years, maybe two three years and then I did clear. There was clear it was just those two of my biggest yes yeah, because I was actually looking up stuff and I was looking at the one you had did with Tracee Ellis Ross like this whole commercial bit that you do with jay-z and you're like yeah. You just need this one oil, six in one from cream of nature, doing that before Instagram even got big. You were doing that. Yes, yeah, that was cool. Tracy asked me to do that because it was she was like his master curls, and he and I want the curls look good and this whole thing and I've had your first acting babe. You probably see this. We were like the perfect jewel because the stuff I couldn't do I can do and the stuff he couldn't do. I can yeah exactly so and then he just started coming into my territory. I'M like yeah Kentucky's known for exact texture, yeah texture, always huge of that yeah. I'Ve always admired about because you're drawing yeah because you're drawing because my the shapes and all that comes from this is that I want to give it to the young kids you're doing illustration, and I've said it before on Facebook, that you're, where illustration you're, using a Flat page to make 3d well first off, everything ends up flat. At the end of the day, the only thing that's rounded to earth, but everything that we're doing editorialize it's either on a flat tablet or a flat phone or on a billboard, that's flat or on a flat piece of magazine paper or comp card whatever it was. You and net we weren't that advanced to have like we'll look at my hair and you could just spin it around in your hand, or your book had 3d to spin it around everything's flat. So you're, basically, making illustration illustration is to make flat things look 3d. So you make thing you put things in front and things into making draw smaller, to give the depth of field and with doing hair for editorial or anything, that's going to land on a flat page or a tablet, you're doing the opposite, you're, making a 3d vision Flat, so there's so many things that you can do to make things flat that come out and no one ever sees the back and the magic trick is they will assume that it goes around to the back they'll assume within the picture that is 3d and that's Where the magic is and and most of my hair advertisements - and I can say it out loud because it's like this is real - this is real life, a lot of the advertisements. The hair is pushed to the forward to the front so much that that that's flat in the back. She turns this way and it's like a cardboard flat, but because the fantasy is the fantasy. Yes, I could have swore it was too they so come on. Yes, they stole they bit. You say yes, yes, yes, it was. It was, but I had two feelings for that, because one was oh wow. I can't believe that Tracy's letting someone go there with her hair, because I've done it for six them for like ten years at sixteen years and and we've never done things where you add so many pieces and all that kind of stuff. I know she doesn't for blackish because it's a character but when it becomes Tracee Ellis Ross, she's Tracee Ellis Ross right and um, so they, but I, but the other part of me says I open doors for that to happen, and - and at this point in my Life, I don't need the Instagram picture. I need to check from the advertisement companies, but but but that is it's great to know that, like up-and-coming black stylists are having that window like. I did because I remember when the other black stylists, even not jewel-osco, but other kids there. Oh, my god, Chuck he's the new diet, he's doing it and he's taken, and when I was like. Oh, my god, there was a lot of things that I took away from other ones, just because the industry saw me as cutting edge. So I have to release that now and I have to let the new kids yeah have theirs have their have their say. Well, I'm not a new kid, I'm like in the middle, but I love. No, I I feel like there's some younger ones that are really the new kids cuz. These wigs and stuff have taken it to a whole nother level, but I feel like when I first thought that I was like officially on my come up was when there was two moments in my life. When I wasn't will come up when I got the chance to do Iman the first time, because I was like - oh my god, if someone that Oscar does feels like I'm good enough to do her hair, then I must really be on to come up right now. Well, how'd you get there Valente Valente Valente, her makeup artist, which Valente was very instrumental in my come up in New York, actually introduced me to her. He introduced me to Tasha Smith and he he helped me out with Tyra. You help me out a lot. You know, and I'm sure yeah so it was, it was yeah I put in a good word. Oh thank you. We are do many makeup artists, alliances, because our alliances, Sam flying Sam, Sam Sam, if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have been where I am no, because he put me on to Vanessa when you weren't around he's called me up on the phone and we I Used to do tests with Sam Sam, the me Sam Keith major, would do tests and I met Sam at MIT campus. He was doing a model named rods from Chicago, and I was just doing the girls hair backstage at MIT, because I was just in hair on campus and he was doing your face seems like well. You really turned that hair out like like, and I was like. Oh, my god, you're turning this girl's makeup makeup out and he was like I'm working at the ans counter for fashion, not faster there, another one and, and so we went up there and you see women lined up buying one lipstick, so Sam Sam could do their Whole face because he would build a face because he's of that Kevin upon school, of building a face and a butt for our community and Sam. We hooked up, and he said, let's do test together and I tested with Sam and so that's how he started. He'S he's kind of our Alliance for both of us and I felt official when we worked on the box and they hired me to be an assistant over Dark Nest. It listen, there's still levels to this thing, and so, when you get to certain levels, are you like? Oh my god, they trust me enough to work alongside him. That says something, but we was on a test shoot. He was doing the beauty story because they never give me a beauty circle, but they gave him a beauty story and I was doing the fashion thing and we were talking about how long we had been in New York and probably at that time. I probably been here like three years four years and checking was like we wasn't saying it out loud and Chuck. He said Derek you've been here how long and he was like. Well, why do I know your name if you only been here that long? It'S like, why do I know your name, and I said it's official he's put the stamp on me and he knows who I am and it really did change my life because I really have it my pokeballs career, so, okay, so where do you guys see the Future for you guys with where do you? Where do you want to go neon this place in your career? I'M gon na other side of this like I'll, be 55 dis here, okay, so I'm looking at retiring 10 years or so so right now, all I want to do is union work because there's benefits attached. You know I'm looking at it come on a pension. Okay, a health insurance, okay and they take the taxes out. So I have to worry about that. Okay, a lot of us get in trouble with not paying out tax season, so I've been mindful with that, but yeah I'm starting to whine in town. Now I want to I want to retire in ten years, so I'm setting myself up for that God, you say over celebrity like Oh over it but yeah. I love TV. Now I like doing background. I really like what are you doing the background? Oh my gosh. I don't know how I'm gon na keep up my Union hours because I die on set. I really do I'm sitting there and just watching the camera and they'll just do the same scene and they cut, and then they have to change the camera. I love doing talk show like I love doing the view because got that hour we get out and we go high right. I don't know what I'm gon na do to try to keep up. All of my you gon na get to the point where you want to sit out and let everybody else do the work like I've been working. My whole life since I was in my teens, so I'm 55 like I'm. I want to be on the other side down yeah. It'S hard work me, I feel like I'm working forever, but I'm just in the funnel and the play of the fun of it, and I just I'm gon na blanket my future. I just said I want to be happy for the rest of my life and whatever that energy brings me. That'S a. I know it's a cop-out state I would want for career-wise, I mean for myself there's slowly best. Never I've never had a boyfriend. I'Ve never had like my own house, I've never had here, and there are things that are for my future. That, like well, like your art, like you and when it's wanting to retire and to take the time for yourself and to just have this, where I would love to have those in those something more interactive. I'D like to do a like a hair museum. I really would like to get our hair and makeup as our own awards show. That would happen. So kids cannot just say well this and that what they can actually point and say. Well, I want to be like an Oscar James. I want to be like because we're losing that and just to show the history of hairdressers in this world. I was, I got a an old talk, show host eyes, known as the lawrence wealth or one of those like old, shows from the 60s, and i got it because i wanted to see David Bowie with it, because he was one of the first ones to have Shoulder pads before that, 7 or 80s, and you know that shoulder pads came out when he was the first one and I came across before her before he came out on this show was Betty Davis and Betty Davis was talking and talking, and so they show the Commercial and some black guy comes out on this totally quaffing Betty Davis's hair. I was like who is this black guy with like chocolate, skin touching Betty Davis in the 1960s, and for me to not know that and - and it's the same as when I always yell at the young kids. Now, because they don't have any references when we didn't have any references, I would like to put together something for the world to see okay, so on behind the scenes beauty. My last question, which, when I x-ray even Simone, she said it before it again, what's beautiful to you, what's beautiful, oh, I think just looking just looking into people like reading listening to them and talking to them and I'm a listener. So to me, that's beauty like finding someone with a good heart. I didn't want to tear the other day and she was so sweet. She wasn't the cutest, you know, but she was so sweet and she goes. I said I told you she looked beautiful, beautiful and I was like you are beautiful. She had them biggest heart, you know and to me that's beautiful. Someone has a big big heart and they give that's beauty to me. I think there's so much beauty in the world and so everything's beautiful, but I feel that you catch it when your self is feeling great about something or there's a vibration, that's higher within yourself. So if you can capture a beauty that means that something vibrating great inside you and I think, that's the best part of seeing something - that's beautiful, because you can see beauty in any and anything if you're vibrating at that level. So true, because, especially nowadays, you can be sitting in the most beautiful places. If you, if your mind, is back there or ahead, you just don't see it at all. Yes and there's that there's a definition for editorial beauty and for import like the standard that Orlando taught me was you're, never doing the hairstyle for the hairstyle you're doing the hairstyle for the viewer of the person. So they can feel the beauty of that and Dinah Vreeland's. A documentary is called the. I must travel and Orlando would say that when you're looking at a page or anything that you're looking at the eye, if it travels comfortably around the face and then the hair well, then the mind registers that is beauty. And so, if you can draw the hair or make the the waves like when you would like Vanessa would have this mean and you'd you travel down, and you see that you go from their eyes out and and the way the eye travels, which is her documentary She'S the first editor for Vogue during the editorial era of the 50s and 60s and Abaddonn all that that um, it makes sense that it's the way your eye travels along the editorial lines or the advertisement and that's what you want to achieve in this world. I was saying before that when you open the page, you want them to look at it longer than there flipping they're flipping they're flipping they're flipping. Then they stop Oscar. Did that with me my whole life, it was so beautiful. My I travel through Oscars Beauty had the had to had to look at the gutter had to see it see what was doing, and that's the same with that's the same with everything go fund me for you to get this museum because know what ok greater up Here exactly is so I'm starting to go fund me today. Please it's not a game. I watch it. I wanted to give it to me. Thank you so much for doing this. It'S um! I appreciate you so much. I love you guys and thank you all for watching, and I thought you guys would bounce well off of each other, even though I thought both of you, I had so much of a great career to just talk by yourself. Yeah