25 years ago, Bumble and bumble released their iconic Surf Spray, and the world of hair has never been the same. While wind-styled hair was once difficult to achieve except on beach days, the matte finish sea salt spray brought the ocean breeze home, ushering in an era where anyone could style effortless volume and waves, for any occasion. “In 2001, texture was still a little transgressive; it sat outside the mainstream idea of ‘done’,” says Matt Benns, the New Zealand-raised, New York-based hairstylist. “Now it’s the dominant aesthetic.”

The idea for Surf Spray came from a shoot in 1998, when hairstylist Laurent Philippon noticed how the natural waters of the Yucatán Peninsula enhanced a model’s hair texture. The global artistic director of Bumble and bumble at the time, he brought back samples of both cenote and seawater to the office. From there, an entirely new haircare category was born, designed to replicate that tousled, beachy texture while keeping the hair clean.

Today, the textured, “undone” look is still a favourite of the celebrities that Benns morphs and transforms into elevated, alternate versions of themselves, like Charli XCX, Lorde, Hailey Bieber and Madonna. We celebrated Surf Spray’s 25th anniversary with the stylist, who is renowned for his ability to create rebellious, “lived-in” looks, and one of the key artists tousling and tossing Bumble and bumble’s beachy waves into the next decade.

Ahead, Benns talks about texture as honesty, hair as a tool for documentary, collaborating with nature and how to achieve the perfect “undone” look. 

Have you always known that you wanted to be a hairstylist?

Matt Benns: Not at all, and I think that’s actually what makes my relationship with it so charged. I came to hair by chance, but what powered me through it was fashion and music, and through that, I eventually became obsessed with how people present themselves. It felt less like a career choice and more like the thing that made sense of everything else I was already paying attention to.

What was your relationship with hair and beauty when you were younger?

Matt Benns: I was always watching. How people wore their hair told you everything: who they were aligned with, what they were rejecting, what they wanted you to think. I grew up pulling references from films, from music videos, from the kids at school who looked like they’d figured something out. It was never just vanity to me. It felt like language.

How do you think growing up in New Zealand shaped your approach to hair?

Matt Benns: Aotearoa gives you this very particular relationship with the natural world, light, wind, texture, rawness. There’s no artifice in that environment. You grow up understanding that the most beautiful things aren’t laboured over; they just exist. I think that’s embedded in how I work. I’m not trying to fight nature. I’m trying to collaborate with it.

You’ve called your style “intentional, obsessive, textured” – why are you drawn to more textured, undone looks?

Matt Benns: Because “undone” is actually the hardest thing to do well. Anyone can execute polished. Polished is a formula. But to make something look effortless, to make it look like the hair just happened that way, requires a level of technical obsession that I find genuinely thrilling. There’s also something more honest about texture. It has movement, it has personality. It doesn’t erase the person wearing it.

Surf Spray basically invented the “undone” beach hair look when it launched 25 years ago. How do you think this one product changed the trajectory of modern hairstyling?

Matt Benns: It gave permission. Before that, the cultural benchmark for beautiful hair was control, smooth, set, held in place. Surf Spray essentially said, ‘what if the thing that happens when you’ve been in the ocean all day is actually the goal?’ That’s a reframe. And it opened the door to an entire aesthetic philosophy that still runs through fashion weeks, editorial, red carpets. What you love about it is its versatility in culture. The texture can be applied anywhere for a beachy lowkey wave, the roots for volume and a base to create a sculptured glam hairdo or something completely punk.

As we celebrate the anniversary of Surf Spray, how do you think our relationship with texture has evolved since 2001?

Matt Benns: I think we’ve moved from texture as trend to texture as identity. People aren’t reaching for it because it’s fashionable; they’re reaching for it because it’s honest. It reflects how we actually live, less performative, more present. That’s a genuine cultural maturation.

“I think we’ve moved from texture as trend to texture as identity. People aren’t reaching for it because it’s fashionable; they’re reaching for it because it’s honest. It reflects how we actually live, less performative, more present. That’s a genuine cultural maturation”

If you had to summarise the essence of Surf Spray in just three words, what would they be?

Matt Benns: Memory. Freedom. Endless possibilities.

You’ve previously said that hair is “storytelling”. What stories are you looking to tell?

Matt Benns: The ones that feel true to who someone actually is, not who they’re performing. I’m most interested in the tension between where someone comes from and where they’re going. Hair can hold both of those things simultaneously. The best work I do is when someone sits down, and by the time they leave, they look more like themselves than when they arrived.

You’ve also spoken about pop culture as an ecosystem. How does hair fit into that ecosystem, both as a tool for storytelling and as a reflection of broader cultural shifts?

Matt Benns: Hair is one of the most immediate signals we have. It moves faster than fashion in some ways; it’s on the body, it’s personal, it’s political. Think about how much cultural information is encoded in a loc, a shaved head, a particular parting. When you look at any major cultural moment, a movement, a subculture emerging, a generation defining itself, hair is always part of how that story gets told. It’s not decorative, it’s documentary.

If you could style anyone’s hair (living or dead), who would it be and what look would you create for them?

Matt Benns: Grace Jones. And I wouldn’t change a thing, that’s the honest answer. What she created with her hair was so architecturally precise and so completely her own that it stands as one of the great creative statements of the twentieth century. But if I had the privilege of being in the room for that conversation, I’d want to be the one who helped her push it even further. To be in that creative dialogue would be everything.

What’s your go-to tip for using Surf Spray to achieve the perfect wind-styled texture at home?

Matt Benns: Apply it to damp hair, scrunch it through, and then the important part, leave it alone. The instinct is to keep touching it, keep adjusting. Resist that. Texture needs time and air to settle into itself. If you want more volume, flip your head upside down while it dries. Less is always more, and your second-day hair with Surf Spray is almost always better than your first.

What type of textured hairstyle do you hope to see more of this summer?

Matt Benns: I want to see texture that belongs to the person wearing it, not texture as a trend being applied uniformly. Whether that’s a loose salt-dried wave, a naturally curled shape that’s been celebrated, I just want to see people wearing their hair like they mean it. That’s the summer I’m dressing for.