Ali Pirzadeh on being an Iranian hair stylist amid hair-ignited revolution in Iran
The entire existence of Pirzadeh is haram to the Iranian regime. Over a coffee, he spills about celebrating his Iranian identity, participating in a resistance, and how these motivate him to bring craftsmanship back to hair.
This article is also published in the inaugural issue of Glue Magazine (Issue 001), available in the Central Saint Martins art shop.
Ali Pirzadeh in a cafe in Dalston, London. (Photo: Anderson Hung)
Pirzadeh is already on his fourth coffee that morning, excluding the nine from the day before, when he sits down with me in a cafe between his early morning work call and national pancake day celebration. Work messages keep appearing on Pirzadeh’s screen but he puts his phone aside to enjoy his oat flat white, mocha shake, and a well-deserved break. To say Pirzadeh is busy is an understatement. Pirzadeh’s ability to ingeniously intertwine a narrative with carefully crafted hair has made him one of the most in-demand hairstylists in the industry, frequenting both prestigious and cutting-edge fashion houses and magazines. We’re halfway into fashion month, he has just returned from a Vogue Italia shoot with Gisele in New York in time for the Harris Reed show in London. The next thing you know the hairstylist is already Paris-bound for the Nina Ricci runway.
Pirzadeh’s demeanour, however, in no way reflects exhaustion; greeting everyone cheerfully with his signature grin and enthusiastically breaking down the details of his imaginative projects, the Dalston local perfectly embodies the neighbourhood's youthful, creative, and rebellious energies. Throughout his career in London, he has always lived in the east, from Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Hackney to his current Dalston flat that he rents with his photographer partner. Pirzadeh shows photos of a well-gardened terrace, dedicated to outdoor breakfasts and private yoga sessions, separating a wooden studio from the living space he painted, tiled, and furnished himself.
Before Pirzadeh became a Londoner he spent the majority of his childhood in Sweden, but he is in no way detached from his Iranian heritage. He scrolls through his phone, revisiting chats to give recommendations of Iranian films. “I literally sent all of them to my friend and said ‘you have to watch this!’” Among them are director Majid Majidi’s The Colour of Paradise, Children of Heaven, and Hit the Road, which he watched just a few nights ago. You’ll also see Pirzadeh online, wearing a tree-shaped wig with Iranian artist Mohammad Pourrezaei playing in the background. Pirzadeh was only four when he left Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, so his diasporic nostalgia stemmed from his mother’s. “My mom was 25 when we moved from Iran, and her Iran became my Iran.”
Besides cultural appreciation, his Persian roots have been a motivating force behind his creative practice. “I get messages every other day from people in Iran because they get so excited seeing [an Iranian] working in the field,” Pirzadeh says with an impassioned tone. He covers half of his face while proudly admitting to being constantly emotional, one of many Persian traits he still carries around. “I try to show on all platforms that I am an extremely proud Persian.”
What might come off as celebrations of his identity are also part of a resistance. 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in Iranian police custody after her arrest for improperly wearing her hijab, ignited a worldwide revolution subverting the abuse of human rights in Iran. Iranian law mandates all women to wear a hijab in public since the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Before the Revolution, singer Googoosh was the epitome of all young Iranian women like Pirzadeh’s mother, for her liberating miniskirts, iconic short hairstyle, and revolutionarily pop approach to Persian music, until all the above were strictly outlawed. Although the singer was silenced for being a female artist, she became a symbol of resistance after Iranian youth discovered bootleg recordings of her work. Pirzadeh compares the messages he receives to Googoosh’s overseas comeback, “seeing her generation, but also the younger generation, all sing to her songs, I think that is what it is.” And Pirzadeh is slowly becoming a Googoosh figure in his own right, exploring the artistic beauty of what is so taboo in Iran.
“I'm gay, I'm Iranian, I work with hair, I am doing all the things that they're so currently against,” Pirzadeh says with a mix of pride and indignation as he referred to a video he posted to celebrate the resilience of Iranian protestors, in which a topless Pirzadeh had his wig “flow queer and free in the wind”. Pirzadeh recalls, “one of the memories I have from Iran is when my mom's hijab was too far back, and I remember being so scared.”
Women have been showing solidarity with the seismic rebellion by tearing up their hijab and cutting their hair but Pirzadeh thinks many people often overlook the history of repression when “showing their hair and taking off their hijab is backed up by as much mistreatment and corruption as possible.” The hairstylist compares hair to a weapon, “if somebody's trying to put you in a box, take [the hijab] off!”
“I have a lawyer I speak to that works only towards social media,” Pirzadeh also adds in disbelief. Instagram has decided to restrict the exposure of Pirzadeh’s profile for sharing too much content regarding the human rights abuse in Iran, a matter no amount of information should be “too much” of. This motivated Pirzadeh to further amplify his voice because the censorship just shows what impact a post online can have. Witnessing the resoluteness of fellow Iranians, Pirzadeh is determinedly hopeful that a change will come, “It’s such a big step in the right direction.”
Not a day goes by that Pirzadeh doesn’t reflect on how privileged he is to be raised in a country where his creativity and self-expression could blossom. However, “idyllic Sweden,”in Pirzadeh’s words, proved to have its problem as well. As an immigrant, besides being teased for his dark, curly hair, Pirzadeh was exempted from the Swedish universal conscription following an experience which he calls horrendous. “The lady at the service said ‘you’re a child of war, so it’s quite traumatic for you, and being gay, you are a sick child,’” Pirzadeh, with a frown, remembers how shocked he was when he got referred to a psychiatrist.
The hairstylist’s first experience with London is quite the opposite of idyllic, and at that time conservative, Stockholm. Besides the “mayhem,” “neon lights,” and “smokey clubs,” Pirzadeh describes it as “a city of liberation,” where he started his creative rebellion. “I was more easily shaped into whatever agents wanted me to be, and in the end, you just don’t enjoy it anymore,” Pirzadeh reminisces about his earlier career in Sweden, “I’m gonna do my own projects, shoot them myself.”
Consequently, he relocated to London and built a dream team of similarly rebellious creatives with whom he collaborates regularly with. Stylist Ib Kamara, photographer Rafael Pavarotti, designer Harris Reed, the list goes on, “it’s more about what [we] want to present to the world, not what has a commercial value necessarily.” The sense of community is essentially what fueled the success of Pirzadeh’s creative career, “it's a family, you create the best when you're in a safe environment with people that you love and trust.”
With the support of his “family,” he has a project work in progress, which he has unveiled to me before he goes off for pancakes – a book. “I want to push hair as an art form, so the book entirely will be about sculptural beauties.” Anyone could have mistaken Pirzadeh for a surrealist sculptor or an art deco architect when he speaks about his creative practice. Pirzadeh sculpts hair with layer after layer of products and embellishments, which often takes several days to complete.
The hairstylist expresses mixed feelings about social media and the generation of hair-inspired content creators it breeds – think fifteen-second-long tutorials on how to do a ponytail. He appreciates the diversity, but he wants to distance himself from the fast-paced internet culture and preserve the artistic background of hair. Pirzadeh undoubtedly knows how to make art out of hair, but hair is, to him, beyond a medium for fashion statements: it is an expression of politics, of freedom, of liberation, of sexuality, of power.
Pirzadeh is already on a call the moment he sets foot outside of the cafe. It might seem like he is just another busy hairstylist, but he is one that carries missions. The artistic vanguard is to lead the renaissance by bringing craftsmanship back to hair, and also as an Iranian revolutionary icon, inspire his compatriots to resist by exploring the expressive side of their identity. That is, after pancakes of course.
