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“The understated things to me are the most luxurious because you [need] style to carry something more quiet,” says 27-year-old stylist Alexandra Carl, who’s lent her exacting eye to Zara, Adidas, and, most recently, Rejina Pyo—which is why when the London-based Scandinavian took her turn in front of the lens, on the day of her wedding to filmmaker Jacob John Harmer, she adhered to a less-is-more philosophy. “I actually didn’t even think I was going to wear a dress because I like things I can move in,” recalls Carl—that is until her collaborator and close friend, Han Chong of Self-Portrait, began dreaming up a silk sheath hand-embroidered with pearls.
To show off the dress’s backless design at her Copenhagen nuptials, which took place at a small church down the road from her childhood home, Carl asked Danish hairstylist Mette Thorsgaard to create “something really easy and relaxed, like a low bun,” that was inspired, in part, by Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s swept-back style. With only hours to spare before Carl was set to walk down the aisle, Thorsgaard began experimenting. (Carl’s job, which requires her “to be on a plane every other day,” afforded her no time to meet with Thorsgaard beforehand.) “All of the sudden Mette was like, ‘Give me a second,’ and began twisting it around,” says Carl. The result was an “undone updo” that took Thorsgaard mere minutes to master.
To begin, Thorsgaard lightly blow-dried Carl’s hair, raking through Less Is More’s texturizing Limesoufflé “to take down the frizz without making the hair too shiny or too done,” she recalls, detailing the process just weeks after the ceremony. From there, she tied Carl’s middle-parted lengths into a low ponytail, which she then divided into two sections that she knotted into a neck-grazing chignon and softly secured with a few bobby pins and a spritz of L’Oréal’s Satin Hair Spray. Later on, as the afternoon ceremony bled into a jazz-fueled dance party that lasted until the early hours of the morning, Carl’s bun gave way to her signature long and loose waves—no product-y trace of the singular style left behind. “Effortless and easy!” exclaims Thorsgaard—just what the bride ordered.
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