Hairstylist Adrian Carew in his home studio in Toronto.Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
When Louis Vuitton’s creative director Pharrell Williams debuted the brand’s spring-summer 2025 men’s-wear collection at UNESCO’s Parisian headquarters last year, it was a landmark moment in fashion. Held on the eve of Juneteenth, the show opened with an all-Black cast of models, and offstage, an equally powerful moment unfolded when he delivered a speech to the international grooming team behind the scenes.
Among them was Adrian Carew – the only Canadian hairstylist selected by the French luxury fashion house. Williams’s words cut through the fatigue of Fashion Week, offering a rare moment of reflection for those working off-runway. Carew had just completed a total of 13 shows in Milan and in Paris.
“Pharrell told us we were the best of the best and we are at the top of our game,” Carew says. “Then when he told us to stay focused to materialize our dreams but to look around and acknowledge that our work was part of a conversation that was changing the industry … soon, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, including my own.”
Carew’s own transformation – from struggling stylist to a contributor for Vogue Italia, Vanity Fair, L’OFFICIEL Australia and Elle magazines – has been more than three decades in the making. In 1989, he left his hometown in Barbados with plans to study aviation in Toronto. As a boy, he’d watched his mother run her own salon in the late 1970s. While fascinated by the way she pressed curls and set rollers, Carew was convinced he was destined to be a pilot.
Vogue Italia cover, with styling by Carew.Supplied
At the age of 20, after immigrating to Toronto, Carew landed a job assisting stylist Jason Kearns at his salon on Church Street. “It finally clicked,” Carew says of his early days with Kearns. “I saw how hair could be this powerful tool for self-expression and identity. That became more stimulating to me than flying any plane.”
In 1990s Toronto, he says, clients wanted it all: blond highlights, electric hues, tight perms, spikes, bobs and the grunge layers of the decade. This era of experimentation allowed Carew to become a master of versatility. In 2003, he opened his own salon in Yorkville – the only establishment in the area at the time catering to clients with BIPOC, Black or textured hair. Today, he works independently in Toronto, booking private clients via his website hair91.com. This allows him the flexibility to continue to work internationally while maintaining a strong presence at top designer fashion shows, having just wrapped up 16 during the fall/winter 2025 collections.
Carew at Isabel Marant fall/winter 2025, in Paris.Supplied
“His range is what has made him the most bookable talent in my roster,” says Lance Eng, a Toronto-based producer who frequently collaborates with Carew on photo shoots. “So many people have tried to pigeonhole him as a niche stylist who only does Black hair but he’s like the Oribe or Vidal Sassoon of Canada – he’s proven to go well beyond anyone’s preconceptions outside of this country even though he is still not as recognized for his talent at home.”
That tension is reflected in his accolades. Carew has won the Revlon Style Master Award twice – an international nod to his talent – but he has yet to receive the title of Hair Artist of the Year at the Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards.
Still, the lack of local acclaim hasn’t deterred him in the least. For Carew, staying ahead means staying rooted in where style begins: “Continuing to forge my own path means knowing where trends are born.”
A style by Carew for Sagaboi fall/winter 2025, in Milan.Supplied
His inspiration comes from far more than runways and red carpets – it’s rooted in the rhythm of real life. “You could see diversity in the clubs before they hit the streets,” he says. “A lot of my research is under a disco ball where I can see people moving around and living their best lives.” A fixture at clubs, voguing balls and gallery openings in Toronto, New York, Milan and Paris, his personal life fuels his creativity.
Among his celebrity clients – aside from Stevie Wonder, Drake, Laverne Cox and models such as Coco Rocha, Imaan Hammam and Debra Shaw – is Juno-winning singer-songwriter Deborah Cox. After more than a decade of collaboration, Cox has come to trust Carew’s instinctive approach. “Adrian is so innovative and always thinking of new ways to enhance my personality through hairstyles,” Cox says via phone from California. “Adrian keeps pushing the envelope and makes suggestions and allows for my own personality to come out.”
Carew’s deep understanding of textured hair is one reason he’s become indispensable in Milan and Paris. “Adrian knows all the techniques, tips and tricks for BIPOC models and beyond, but he also has a vision that adapts from high-fashion concepts on the runway and in editorials to consumer projects,” says Celia Sears, owner of Milan-based beauty agency Show Division, which curates creative teams for luxury brands.
Sears has worked with Carew for more than five years and says his proficiency with textured hair is still lacking in fashion’s backstage spaces. “He’s successful because everything he does comes out of respect and a sense of responsibility. He has a love for every person who is in his chair.”
In 2021, Sears launched a mission to tackle the lack of training in textured hair backstage at European fashion weeks. “For years, you could ask any model of colour doing runways and each one would tell you a horror hair story – there were no Adrian Carews to be found.”
She pitched a series of Afro-textured hair and BIPOC-focused makeup lectures to Italy’s national fashion counsel, Camera Moda Italiana. Her first call was to Carew. He became the lead educator for Show Division’s Inclusive Backstage Master Class, a program training stylists to care for textured hair properly.
“Of course, working with the big brands means the world to me – there’s that sense of ‘I’ve made it,’” Carew says of his work with houses such as Fendi, Chanel, Issey Miyake, Victoria Beckham and Vivienne Westwood. Yet one of his prized moments was being the lead hair creator for LVMH Prize finalist and designer Tokyo James during Milan Fashion Week last fall.
“Being a part of Celia’s orbit and sharing my expertise with established and new hair artists made me think about how vital it is to give back to those who are working beside you or just starting out in this business,” says Carew. The next step in his trajectory aligns with Sears, who plans to expand her master class initiative. He also aims to become a lead hair stylist on the global fashion week circuit.
“Every time I’m backstage at a fashion week in any city, I have stylists coming up to me to let me know how important Adrian’s education was to their own development,” Sears says. “He sees every sculpted curl, every gravity-defying style as something that isn’t just hair – it’s art, it’s attitude and a statement.”
