How Mira Chai Hyde Became Hollywood’s “Godmother of Grooming”

In Los Angeles, the most consequential heads of hair go to Mira Chai Hyde, the 67-year-old self-proclaimed “Godmother of Grooming.” Nicolas Cage’s publicist recommended her to Simu Liu, who hired Hyde to travel with him while he promoted Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in 2021. Kaia Gerber’s hairdresser suggested Hyde to Austin Butler, who then passed her name to Baz Luhrmann; Hyde cut both men’s hair during the 2022 Elvis promotion tour. When comedian Matt Rife was in town with a bad cut, her name came up as the hairdresser who could fix it.

A haircut with Hyde lands a client, be it an Oscar winner or just a banker in the know, in the detached garage of her West Hollywood home. Inside, there’s a barber chair and a mirror flanked by inspiration images, including one of Johnny Depp that she likes for his mustache; Polaroids of her client Anwar Hadid; and a picture of David Bowie (Hyde masterminded his hair and makeup for the cover of his 1999 album, Hours...). “Her life is spilled all over her garage,” says the actor Pedro Pascal, who’s been going to Hyde for years. “It’s full of the coolest shit: photos of her legacy or just something she likes, decorating every inch. It feels special to know that maybe by sitting in her chair, you, too, will be included in her legacy.”

Hyde has worked in men’s grooming since before the genre was taken seriously. “Hair has always been important to men,” she says, “but it’s become just as important as women’s hair.” Her path to the field’s highest level seems implausible: She grew up in Manila, with a single mother who had schizophrenia. At 13, when Hyde was living on the streets and addicted to drugs, she reached out to a family friend, who helped her move from the Philippines to California, where she went into foster care and attended school. At 18, she followed a boyfriend to New Haven, Connecticut, and took a job as a secretary. There, she started cutting and bleaching hair for the punks she hung out with. In 1987, she moved to London for the prestigious Vidal Sassoon Academy.

“Back then, Vidal Sassoon was it for hair,” explains Hyde. She enrolled as a barber because she thought she’d have a better chance at getting a job at Sassoon’s salon if she specialized in men’s hair. “Everything they were doing was so exciting,” says Hyde. “The hairstyles were so different from anything in America, and that was my thing—a little edgy.”

Hyde had to find her own subjects to practice on, so she started recruiting men from modeling agencies—relationships that led to editorials with magazines like i-D, Dazed & Confused, and The Face. She worked backstage at shows for Cerruti and Paul Smith, and on shoots for John Galliano, whose own hair she eventually cut.

Around that time, Lee Alexander McQueen, a promising young designer who had just shown his provocative “Highland Rape” collection, moved into the unit below her loft in Hoxton Square. The two became friends over tea and, shortly thereafter, roommates. “We’d talk a lot and dream,” recalls Hyde. She would watch McQueen start a garment at midnight, then wake up in the morning to an exquisite jacket in the living room. They’d throw parties with his muse, Isabella Blow, and the jeweler Shaun Leane. She introduced McQueen to the Catherine Deneuve film The Hunger, which inspired his 1996 spring runway show of the same name.

They also collaborated. Hyde did male models’ hair for McQueen’s London shows—including 1997’s “La Poupée,” where she created “the Elvis Samurai,” a quiff with a ponytail. Above the mirror in her Los Angeles garage is a framed photo of a model in a shimmery horsehair coat from McQueen’s fall 1997 couture collection for Givenchy. “Lee grabbed my hand one day, took me down to the area where the seamstresses were, and showed me a square coat,” recalls Hyde. “He said, ‘I want a teardrop shape on that—and don’t fuck it up, it’s worth a fortune.’ It took me three eight-hour days to cut it.”

Often paid in clothing, Hyde amassed a 150-plus-item McQueen trove that includes sketches, photographs, jewelry, and garments—including his infamous bumster pants. (When Hyde wore them, they revealed her Balinese-style vine-like lower back tattoo.) Nearly the entire collection is currently for sale with Luke Carter, the luxury dealer at the concierge service Three Over Six.

Hyde and McQueen’s work relationship stopped when he moved his McQueen shows to Paris, but their friendship endured until his death, in 2010. One of the last times Hyde saw the designer was when he was opening a store in Los Angeles. “I’m heartbroken that it’s now a Casper mattress shop,” she says. “Lee would flip.” At that point, she was already living in L.A. again—she had moved back in 2005 to help care for her biological mother, who had immigrated from the Philippines—and was building a new network of clients. By the time she started cutting Pascal’s hair, she was Hollywood’s go-to hairdresser.

“I give a really good haircut,” says Hyde, matter-of-factly. “I was trained by some of the best people, and I can see shape. I have a way to make it look like it wasn’t just cut—it has to be loose, and not feel too structured. Suitability is everything, that it looks textured and flowy and easy.” That might be true, but it’s also her demeanor—calm, confident, funny—that has endeared her to Patrick Schwarzenegger, Kieran Culkin, Steven Yeun, Harrison Ford, Hugh Grant, and Brad Pitt, who’s a fan of her hair-care line, House of Skuff.

“Mira is the one person I trust to cut my hair, but it’s more,” says Pascal. “She understands what’s on my head like she understands what’s inside it.”

Hair by Abraham Esparza FOR R+Co; Makeup by Hinako at A-Frame Agency for Sisley Paris.