The rumors have been swirling for a few weeks: Did Emma Stone shave her head? Is Emma Stone wearing a wig? And now, with her jaw-dropping arrival on the Golden Globes red carpet, the award-winning actor and perennial hair inspiration has all but confirmed that she did buzz herself bald, and we’re seeing an early—and incredibly chic—stage of her growing-out process.
But as short as it is, a pixie cut doesn’t style itself. Stone’s long-time hairstylist, Mara Roszak, shared with Allure exactly what went into the prep for revealing the actor’s dramatically different look.
“It’s been growing out, and it’s looking so stunning—very nineties in that nostalgic way,” Roszak tells Allure, sharing that her mood board included Winona Ryder in 1996 and Liv Tyler in 1998.
With hair this short, Roszak always insists on a day-of trim. “There’s always a little bit of cleanup work you want to do,” she tells Allure. “The prep is really in the cut. The smallest tweak can make the biggest difference.” After that, while Stone’s hair was damp, she used a comb to make sure that the back was smooth and to create not so much a severe part but a subtle division, “just a little more like where the hairs kind of go their separate ways.”