Love Is In The Hair

Hairstylist Chuck Amos

Like so many lovers of style and beauty, hairstylist Chuck Amos’s story starts with a Barbie. “I would play with my cousins’ Barbies and comb their hair until the synthetic fibers got so frizzy that I wasn’t allowed to play with them anymore,” Amos, who also goes by Chuckie Love, says. “Then, my mom bought me my own Barbie.”

That was decades ago, in a small town in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. Now Love counts women like Solange Knowles and Tracee Ellis Ross as clients. He’s also on a campaign of spreading radical self-love. “There’s nothing that I’m going to do that is going to change the world in hair,” he says. “But you can change the way the world thinks, one thought at a time.”

Amos styled Beyoncé’s hair for the cover of her solo debut, Dangerously In Love.

Love was officially hooked after taking a summer hairstyling course as a teen. When his aunt got extensions in 1984, Amos says, it was life-changing. “It was the most fascinating thing,” he says. “I grew up loving magic tricks, and extensions were like a magic trick.” With the support of his mother, he began to give his neighbors extensions, and he was a hit.

"Hair was one of the only things that people praised about me when I was a child, so I learned to live in the magic and happiness of that world," he says. "When I thought about my weight or who I was in school, I was the outcast and the lonely one. But when it came to hair, I was Superman. It was always a symbol of glory and happiness."

Amos’s high-fashion interpretation of the mohawk.

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In 1989, Amos moved to New York (“to toughen me up,” he says) and enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology. To earn money to hit clubs like Palladium and Limelight, he charged $10 to style hair. His “clients,” often interns at fashion magazines, spotted his skills and encouraged him to study under a master hairstylist. “I thought Orlando Pita was the absolute cat’s meow,” he says. “I loved the ease of his hairstyles, yet he could do everything from cornrows to Afros — white-girl hair, black-girl hair.”

Just one snag: Amos wrote Pita for two years, he says, without a response. A friend of a friend finally made the introduction, and Amos eventually assisted Pita for seven years. “He was the man who took a chance on this little black kid from Massachusetts and let me express myself next to him, which was the biggest opportunity in the world,” Amos recalls. From there, he worked with other greats — Odile Gilbert, Garren, Serge Normant, Guido Palau — before going on to style singers such as Brandy, Destiny’s Child, Beyoncé, and Diana Ross. Just as he did as a child, he developed a reputation as a master of extensions and wigs. “My main thing is making hair big and fantastical,” he says. “You’re in awe and also humbled by how extravagant the hair can be.”

Iman, as coiffed by Amos in S Moda.

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As he approached 40, Amos was enjoying a successful career, but something was missing. “I didn’t have a boyfriend or love in my life,” he recalls. “I was trying to figure out how I could be so great at hair but still drunk, and high on weed, and looking for love in all the wrong places. I wasn’t able to love myself or come to terms with anything beyond money and career.” With the support of a close friend, he began to read self-help books, particularly those by Louise Hay. “I realized there’s an energy that you’re connected to, and it’s bigger than what your own journey is,” he recalls. “I realized that I didn’t need to try to get rid of the world; I needed to rethink how I looked at it, and by rethinking that, my world would change.”

Erykah Badu in the May issue of Essence.

Working with Amos now, it’s hard to believe that he ever didn’t like himself: He’s professional, prompt, chatty, and positive. And that, he says, isn’t an accident. “The way I do hair and the way I feel on set is now not based on fear and anger,” he says. “It’s to find people who are of love. I want to spread light.” At a recent Yahoo Beauty shoot, he did just that, bringing humor to the set and talking about the power of visualization — and the hair was something else, too.

What’s next for Amos? He mentions wanting a show (“Love Is In The Hair,” he says, “on OWN.”) and wider recognition for hair and makeup professionals. Otherwise, though, he’s following his own path. “I can see a trail coming for me, and I’m so grateful,” he says. “I have no expectations. I have no idea what will become of life — and that’s what is so exciting about it.”

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