Zosia Mamet on How to Rehab Bleached Hair—And the Tattoo She Got From Her Girls Castmate

The only thing Zosia Mamet has in common with her most famous character, Shoshanna Shapiro on HBO’s Girls, is an upturned vocal inflection, which she delivers with a startling measured pace. Sitting cross-legged at Soho’s Y7 yoga studio a few days before New York Fashion Week, the Vermont–born Manhattanite is the picture of chill—her twin French braids ready for the hot stretching session, her porcelain freckled complexion entirely makeup free. “[Shoshanna] really has not had much of an influence on me,” admits Mamet—though her character has become an Internet sensation for her rapid-fire emphatic statements and lawless exploration of hairstyles and shades of lipstick. “All of her beauty stuff is basically the equivalent of medical jargon to me,” Mamet says with a laugh. “It’s kind of like, if you ever had an audition for Shakespeare, you basically realize what you’re saying is not in your language—you have to figure out how to endow meaning to it while speaking essentially Italian, you know?”

Mamet, for her part, doesn’t wear makeup at all, a habit she breaks only for work and the occasional event. This week those breaches have included a smoky eye and nude lip for the front row at Monse, and a dramatic cat-eye with silken waves for Jill Stuart. The look she dreams up with longtime beauty collaborator Joshua Ristaino for the Marc Jacobs show this afternoon will rest entirely on what she’s wearing. “We have it down to a science. That dude knows my face better than I do,” she says. Here, Mamet shares her favorite beauty muses, her hair dye words of wisdom, and the one thing you should always apply after yoga class to not “smell like a demon.”

When you’re getting ready for an event, like Marc Jacobs, where do you look for beauty inspiration?
They’re normally people who don’t wear makeup. Diane Keaton or Jane Birkin—I know she had sort of an eye. But there’s something about an effortlessness or je ne sais quoi that to me is the sexiest thing [you] could put on.

I’d imagine it’s confusing to your skin to go in and out of wearing makeup for work.
Yes. Because I don’t wear makeup in my life, [my skin] gets kind of cranky during periods of work. [But my dermatologist and I] finally figured a daily plan that keeps it from getting too crazy. I use Aczone in the morning with a vitamin-C serum that is my favorite thing in the whole world. It’s supposed to tighten [your skin], it’s a great moisturizer, and it keeps your pores nice and clear. I’m allergic to titanium, which is in everything, except it’s not in Tizo sunscreen. I use that every morning. I use Cetaphil as my face wash, and at night I use Acanya, which is just another gentle acne preventative, and always OSEA moisturizer. It’s my favorite brand because all of its products are incredibly streamlined. There’s no junk in them. And I use a bamboo serum that I get from my facialist, Joanna Vargas, that smells so good.

You’re something of an expert in hair dye. You’ve been gray, pink, brunette, and nearly every shade of blonde.
I was asked to go blonde for a part in this play, but hair wasn’t something I knew about—I literally didn’t own a brush—so I was scared to dye it. But I had such a fun time being blonde. I did every color [after that]. Then Girls was like, “We want you to be a bleach blonde for the next season,” and my hair was just like, “Nope. Fuck you.” It started falling out—it would come out in the shower, like when cotton candy gets wet. It was scarring.”

But it looks so healthy now. How did you revive it?
It was the work of many magicians. I spent a year putting it through very intense rehab. A hair person on Weiner-Dog recommended Davines to me, and it totally changed my hair. Now when I work out, I just rinse and condition it. I started using this sun protector cream called Su when I go on vacation that is literally the best-smelling thing you’ve ever experienced. I got a very shaggy Spinal Tap haircut that helped all the breakage [by taking out] weight, so it could just grow out healthy. BioSil definitely made my hair grow out faster. Now I see Caroline [Buckler] at Serge Normant. We had a fun time creating this [blonde]. I have some red in my hair, so we had the idea to do a little strawberry. [But] I like having a dark brow—a bold feature like that is sort of helpful if you don’t want to wear makeup.

Have you always been a yogi?
I’ve been doing it for three years. I was immediately hooked. I use a workout as moving meditation. It’s my time to turn off, go inside, and flush my brain and my body and my soul. And I feel like this does that, but heightened because it’s loud and hot and in the dark. It has all the components of yoga, there’s an element of dharma in there, and no matter what, it’s going to have an element of stretching, but it’s also so hard. So to me that’s the perfect workout.

Do you do anything other than yoga?
I’m a runner, too. So I do that as well as this. And I’m a horseback rider—since I was a child. I ride at a place near the city. It’s the best thing in the whole world. I have a tattoo of my horse, Lucy, on my butt. She was a thoroughbred–quarter horse cross.

When did you get that?
Jemima Kirke gives stick and pokes. She [also] gave me a circle on her couch, with Lena [Dunham] sitting nearby after we wrapped our first season. That was my first tattoo—six years ago. I have a heart in my hand and one for my dude. And this one [on my foot that] says “I know where I’m going,” which was one of the first ones I got. [It’s] a play on this old film I saw when I was super-young, and to this day it’s one of my favorite movies ever. It’s also an old Scottish folk song. Half of my family’s Scottish, and I thought it was a funny [phrase] to put on my foot.

What about fragrance? That seems to be something you pay attention to.
D.S. & Durga are my fragrance angels. I will wear nothing but their scents for the rest of their life. I’ve always worn Mississippi Medicine, and they have this new trio that they just introduced—Rose Atlantic, White Peacock Lily, and Radio Bombay. And all of them are so good. I’m not a floral girl normally, but I’m obsessed with Rose Atlantic. It’s so good—rich and doesn’t smell powdery. I always carry rose essential oil with me [to] put on after [yoga] class, just not to smell like a demon.

 

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