“Being able to express myself creatively and also realizing how much you touch people with what you do was something that was really special to me.”
Celebrity hairstylist Orlando Pita goes on to say, “because I mean, when you hate your haircut, my god, you hate it until it grows into something else. It’s really important to get it right and to make someone feel good with what they’re walking away with. The same on a photo shoot.”
Born in Cuba, Pita immigrated to the United States at the age of four with his family, which included two other brothers. Finding the haircuts given by the local barbers disappointing and unappealing, the brothers then made a pact: that they would then cut each other’s hair. Everything about Pita’s start in hairstyling and his approach is self-taught: “I went first and did a really bad job [cutting my brother’s hair], so I didn’t let my brother cut [mine], but I figured out why I got those horizontal lines and [when talking to my grandmother] she gave me a second chance. Then I was just on a mission to cut as many people’s hair as I could. So that’s really how I kind of learned how to cut hair.” His big break came at the age of 21 when his brother, who worked for a fashion photographer, called Pita in as an emergency replacement to the original hairdresser slated to work on set. A week later, the photographer’s agent reached out to ask if Pita would move to Paris so she could represent him. Taking the leap, he moved a few months later, and soon after quickly made a name for himself.
From then, Pita has had a hand in some of fashion’s most memorable moments. He’s worked with names such as John Galliano to Ann Demeulemeester to Tom Ford to Jean Paul Gaultier, and has created iconic looks both in editorials and on the runway, most notably the incredible SS09 Dior runway where Pita, using a cage and crimped extensions (made with real hair), molded sculptural art inspired by a Nefertiti-shaped bag from the collection on the models. His work is both avant-garde and luxe, sculptural yet romantic, and there’s a certain playful dexterity that is consistently present no matter what or who he is styling.
“I think because I wasn’t trained, I come up with ways to do things that aren’t conventional. Then there’s no limits to what I think I can do.”
“I think because I wasn’t trained, I come up with ways to do things that aren’t conventional. Then there’s no limits to what I think I can do,” he says of his creations. “I never really stopped getting ideas. I’ve been creative my whole life and at one point I realized I don’t have to worry about not having ideas later on because I’m always having them. They might not be good, all of them, but for the ones that aren’t, that’s for me to edit.” He talks about the flexibility and challenge of creating art out of hair, and cites everything as inspiration: “A lot of the times the hairstyles I’ve created throughout my career, even though they were inspired by something in my head, wasn’t a duplicate of what I was thinking of. So I’ve come up with very original ways to do hair and hairstyles. That was something that appealed to me, to be inspired by the past but not copy it. It was done great the first time. If you’re not going to make it great or turn it into something else, then don’t bother, you know?” But Pita is resistant to becoming a one-trick pony. “I want to do beautiful, lush, gorgeous hair as well. I didn’t want to be known for just the avant garde or the really creative, so I tried to really dabble in a lot of different styles so I wouldn’t be pigeonholed.” And so far, he hasn’t, and instead has continuously evolved just as his clientele and his talents have expanded.
The biggest challenge for Pita, then, was never his creativity or talent but the lingering feeling of having to prove himself, time and time again. “I [always] felt like less than my peers because I wasn’t educated right. So I always performed harder. I worked harder. Maybe that’s what got me to where I am, because I always thought I had to try harder.” While Pita’s start may have been self-taught, and has been built upon creativity, persistence, and dedication to his craft, he’s found a deeper meaning to his work and his relationship with the creative industry. “What drew me [initially to hair] was trying to do a good haircut because I always had such bad haircuts, right? But then I realized when I started to get into this field that I could get really creative with it and be really expressive and connect with people that I never thought I’d be working with. All of what I do actually is collaborative.”
“What drew me [initially to hair] was trying to do a good haircut because I always had such bad haircuts, right? But then I realized when I started to get into this field that I could get really creative with it and be really expressive and connect with people that I never thought I’d be working with.”
And it’s through this collaborative, creative connection with people of all different backgrounds that Pita has been able to achieve some truly amazing work and the most memorable moments of his career. Not only has he had the honor of working with his favorite designer, Yves Saint Laurent, on his last show (which he cites as one of many highlights in his career) as well as the extraordinary Madame Butterfly show that Galliano put on at Dior in 2007, but also has had the opportunity to act as himself on an episode of Sex and the City (season four, episode two). “It’s all these things that become, like, so out of the way of hairdressing. I mean, hairdressing takes you there, but I never thought I would reach where I’ve reached,” he says.
The possibilities are limitless for Pita. In addition to a line of hair products called Orlando Pita Play, where he plans to release an entirely new capsule of products infused with a new (and secret) ingredient designed to promote and grow healthy hair at the end of the year, Pita has set his sights on new creative frontiers, Lately, he’s been more thoughtfully pursuing another passion of his, which is sewing. Using his expertise and his creativity, he enjoys creating clothing out of hair, such as sewing a 1966 Yves Saint Laurent dress entirely out of hair. And despite working in the creative industry for over three decades, Pita remains optimistic and hopeful for whatever comes next: “I never let my fears overpower my enthusiasm and gratitude for being [in the industry] and performing as well as I could because I’ve got this amazing opportunity.”
Home page image: Jean Paul Gaultier 1999 for Quicksilver (Vogue 1994) pHOTOGRAPH by Irving Penn. Top photograph by Craig McDean for Document Journal, styled by Grace Coddington, make up by Francelle Daly. Model Mia Goth.
