Beauty Diary

D'Angelo and Rainbow Dye Jobs: A Week with Celebrity Colorist Lena Ott

Welcome to Beauty Diary: Seven days of getting glam with an industry insider. From publicists to professional makeup artists, this is a week in the life of someone who lives and breathes beauty.

By Rebecca Jennings Mar 24, 2015, 4:14pm EDT

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

More than a few celebrities have Lena Ott to thank for their signature hair colors—after turning from art to hair styling in the mid-'90s, she picked up balayage at Bumble & Bumble, then moved on to Ion Studio, and currently owns Soho salon Suite Caroline. Ott's the one responsible for Florence Welch's earthy red hair, Rachel Weisz's chocolate brown waves, Lady Gaga's platinum blonde bob in the "Alejandro" video (it was a wig!), and Bjork's towering red mane on the cover of Biophilia.

For this week's Beauty Diary, we followed Lena while she undergoes the worst part of living in NYC (moving, of course), ogles home goods at ABC Carpet, attends a D'Angelo concert, and attends a Hood By Air show.

Monday

Morning read: goodies I found after organizing to move! Here's W Magazine from August 2002. #Inspo

One of my favorite parts of getting ready for work: choosing what scent I'm going to wear! On the left is a vintage straight razor from my great grandfather.