As a visionary entrepreneur who has been reshaping the sweetness trade since 2010, Alli Webb could not have invented the blowout, but it surely’s protected to say she turned it right into a not-so-small cultural phenomenon with the launch of Drybar. Now, together with her latest enterprise—Messy by Alli Webb, accessible at Sephora, Sephora.com and direct-to-consumer right now—she’s as soon as once more redefining our relationship with hair, and inspiring us to seek out confidence in the fantastic thing about imperfections within the course of.
What’s the “why” behind Messy?
“Since selling Drybar five years ago, I’ve kind of been figuring out what’s next. Drybar was such a massive thing, and selling it was certainly an interesting thing as well…but it was also wrapped up with a lot of questions like: ‘Who am I now? What do I do with myself now?’ All of that. I spent the last five years really trying to figure that out. I wrote my second book, The Messy Truth, which was really a business book–meets-memoir kind of situation where I was talking about the lessons I learned from the Drybar era, which was a massive learning experience over 10 years.
Then, everything that happened in my life. And it was a lot—two divorces, my mom dying, my son going into rehab, and it all happened within the span of a few years. It was a crazy time. I thought it was important to talk about the very, very vulnerable things that had happened to me, as well as the tremendous success. My life was pretty much falling apart, so there was a juxtaposition. The more I shared about it, the more I wanted to share about it because it resonated with women so much.
A lot of women have been through divorce or they have kids struggling or they lose a parent—it’s just a long list of the things that’ll happen. I felt really compelled to tell that story. Then, like I said, it really did resonate. I think with COVID, everyone’s behavior patterns changed so much. For me, as a girl who literally all of her life, fought against her natural hair, there was a shift. During COVID, like many of us, I was just like: ‘Well, screw it. I’m not going to blow-dry my hair anymore.’”
The tip of the blowout.
“Well, when I let my hair go…it started growing and it was all-around better, so that was interesting. Slowly but surely I started to embrace my waves. It was like I was going through a spiritual personal journey, and my hair was along for the ride. I started to embrace it and I spent time figuring out how to make it look good, because my life and even as a hairstylist for as long as I’ve been, it’s either a blowout or air-drying. But the air-drying is such a crapshoot. Sometimes, it looks good, but most of the time, it doesn’t, which really doesn’t work.
As someone who, weirdly, thinks about hair all the time, I was like, ‘There’s got to go be a better way,” and so I began tinkering with my very own waves and began to consider creating product round that. I assume I used to be antsy to do one thing else within the hair house; I had joined some boards and I used to be performing some mentoring and all of that, which I loved, however I felt that pull to get again into hair.
Lengthy story quick, I actually found what we coined the ‘rough-dry method,’ which is mainly this technique of taking a number of the moisture out of my hair, particularly within the root space, the place my hair is so curly, then twisting the hair whereas it’s damp, simply preserve twisting items.”
And the Messy line was born.
“That’s kind of how the whole inspiration started. I called my friends at Sephora, because that’s where we launched Drybar, and I was like, ‘Hey, I have this idea. I want to create products that are like women embracing their hair, whatever they have, and learning how to do it.’ It organically kind of grew on its own as I started to build a team, but the goal was to feel good from the inside out. If you take a look at the product, they all have a mantra. The Rough Dry Cream ($32) is called “I Am Enough.” Then there’s a Silk Revival Spray ($32)—it’s like a silky spray that you just spray in your ends—and its mantra is “I Am Transformed.” Each product has a mantra. It’s all meant to make you, once more, embrace the hair that you’ve and be taught to work with the hair that you’ve. I don’t know, I simply felt actually compelled to share it as I began determining my hair, which now I like It’s so bizarre. I really feel prefer it’s possibly even a bit unbelievable how way more I like my hair now.”
It appears to be like nice.
“There is a whole method, and there is a video, and we’re going to do tons of education on this of how to do it. Anyone can do it! Because I think, first of all, most women don’t even know what the term ‘rough-dry’ means. Simply put, it’s just kind of taking 30-to-40 percent of the moisture out of your hair just using your fingers. Then, explaining to people that hair stays the way it dries. If you’re getting a blowout, they’re blowing and twisting your hair, so your hair is going to stay that way because it went from wet to dry and the science of that. It’s the same kind of philosophy. Obviously, I got very excited about this whole process, and I was telling my friends to try—everybody should try it!”
Do you assume the remainder of the world is able to transfer away from the blowout?
“Well, when I started, I was initially just testing on my hair. But there’s really something for everyone here, and we’re working on categorizing it into straight, wavy and really curly hair. It really does work for everybody. You just have to give it five minutes, which is a far cry from what I used to tell people, ‘Set aside 45 minutes to give yourself a blowout!’
It’s not super scientific. I’m not trying to be like the next K18 or Olaplex. I just want to create products. It’s all about keeping your hair healthy, keeping what you have. That’s kind of what I’m trying to get women to lean into the hair that they have. If you go get a blowout, great, but what are you doing the other five days a week, and then how are you embracing that? Giving women kind of an in-between of the blowout and air-dry like this is an alternative, and then creating products that really support it. Again, it’s very authentic to me because of what I’ve been through in my life. And who doesn’t love to read a mantra that says, ‘I Am Enough.’”
However the pendulum in magnificence and style swings forwards and backwards, proper? I believe that Drybar was so completely timed, and it was a motion in itself and superb on the time. Over the course of these 10 years, we noticed a lot perfectionism and wonder from just like the very sq. brows and the superb make-up.
I do know some ladies love that, however I believe that the pendulum swung to date on this perfectionism. I believe COVID definitely contributed to love, ‘Okay, we’re all sort of taking a step again.’ We’ve been by means of rather a lot, and we’re nonetheless going by means of rather a lot, so let’s drop the perfectionism and lean into the realism.”
