As a visionary entrepreneur who has been reshaping the beauty industry since 2010, Alli Webb may not have invented the blowout, but it’s safe to say she turned it into a not-so-small cultural phenomenon with the launch of Drybar. Now, with her newest venture—Messy by Alli Webb, available at Sephora, Sephora.com and direct-to-consumer today—she’s once again redefining our relationship with hair, and encouraging us to find confidence in the beauty of imperfections in the process.
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 end 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 started tinkering with my own waves and started to think about creating product around that. I guess I was antsy to do something else in the hair space; I had joined some boards and I was doing some mentoring and all of that, which I enjoyed, but I felt that pull to get back into hair.
Long story short, I really discovered what we coined the ‘rough-dry method,’ which is basically this method of taking some of the moisture out of my hair, especially in the root area, where my hair is so curly, then twisting the hair while it is damp, just keep twisting pieces.”
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 spray on your ends—and its mantra is “I Am Transformed.” Every product has a mantra. It’s all meant to make you, again, embrace the hair that you have and learn to work with the hair that you have. I don’t know, I just felt really compelled to share it as I started figuring out my hair, which now I love It’s so weird. I feel like it’s maybe even a little unbelievable how much more I love my hair now.”
It looks great.
“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 think the rest of the world is ready to move 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.'”
But the pendulum in beauty and fashion swings back and forth, right? I think that Drybar was so perfectly timed, and it was a movement in itself and amazing at the time. Over the course of those 10 years, we saw so much perfectionism and beauty from like the very square brows and the amazing makeup.
I know some girls love that, but I think that the pendulum swung so far in this perfectionism. I think COVID certainly contributed to like, ‘Okay, we’re all kind of taking a step back.’ We’ve been through a lot, and we’re still going through a lot, so let’s drop the perfectionism and lean into the realism.”
