Five Minutes With Julianna Margulies’s Hairstylist Eugene Souleiman

Eugene Souleiman

Julianna Margulies is in a very small club of female celebrities: those who actually wear their naturally curly hair in public. The actress’s first cover of “W” celebrates the curl in all its glory; the natural part—not so much. Hairstylist Eugene Souleiman talks to us about creating Margulies’s “bubbly, full curls” (believe it or not, hair extensions were involved) and how a non-professional can achieve her soft-yet-voluminous look.

Tell us about the inspiration behind Julianna’s hair on the May cover.
I wanted to turn the volume up on what was originally there. It almost has that slight feeling of the early seventies, Guy Bourdin thing, but also very Mediterranean and sexy, like an amazingly beautiful Sicilian woman.

Did it take several industrial fans to get her hair flying around like that?
I was actually flagging her with a big piece of polyboard to lift her hair and make it fly! (See Julianna and Eugene in action in our video HERE).

Walk us through how you achieved the look.
To create volume, I sprayed Wella’s Crystal Styler [Editor's note: this product is only available in Europe] in her hair when it was wet, then blew it out so I could control the texture of her hair so it didn’t look too frizzy. Then, we used a curling iron. We also curling ironed two packs of weft [strips of faux hair]. We put the wefts in and just brushed it and brushed it, so it just kind of looked very, very light and soft. It was also a little more raw, not too polished, or controlled.

That does not sound like a wash-and-go style.
It may look like it, but that’s the thing when you look at stuff like this. It’s been worked in the right way so it doesn’t look worked, you know what I mean?

Sure. But is there any hope for the rest of us?
Once your hair is curly, put your head upside down, go through it with a brush, and then throw the hair dryer onto it to loosen everything up and get a little air in it.

— “W” magazine