There are moments in business that make very little sense when you look back at where you started.
Hairbond began in Lancashire.
A professional hair product brand.
A few jars.
A belief that if we made genuinely good products, hairdressers and barbers would eventually find them.
Then one day Hairbond found its way into Hollywood.
And sitting in the chair was Henry Cavill.
Superman.
Later Geralt of Rivia.
This wasn’t a paid ambassador deal.
There wasn’t a celebrity endorsement contract.
Nobody from Hairbond had sat in an advertising agency and decided Superman would look good holding one of our jars.
A professional hairdresser had products to choose from.
Hairbond was in the kit.
That’s why, years later, I still like the story.
Hairbond In Hollywood
There is still a digital trail.
Deep inside Hairbond’s old archive is a piece called:
“Henry Cavill Haircut | Hairbond in Hollywood.”
The archive describes it as an Instagram post involving Henry Cavill’s hair being styled with Hairbond products.
Then there is another surviving piece of the trail.
An indexed Hairbond social post carries a much more specific message:
“Styling Henry Cavill hair on ‘The Witcher 2’ Netflix series.”
That’s when this stops being another celebrity-hairstyle article.
Because the person working with Cavill wasn’t some stylist passing through for the day.
It was Jacqui Rathore.
And Jacqui has had a long professional relationship with Henry Cavill.
Meet Jacqui Rathore
Jacqueline “Jacqui” Rathore is a British film and television hair and makeup professional.
Her career includes Mission: Impossible – Fallout, The Death of Stalin, The Witcher, Enola Holmes 2, Argylle, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and In the Grey.
But look closer at those credits and something becomes apparent.
Cavill keeps appearing.
On The Witcher, Rathore is credited as Hair Designer – Henry Cavill.
On Enola Holmes 2, Personal Hair Stylist – Henry Cavill.
On Argylle, again, Personal Hair Stylist – Henry Cavill.
On Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Hair Designer – Henry Cavill.
Her CV also includes In the Grey, another Guy Ritchie production featuring Cavill.
This is not somebody who styled Henry Cavill once.
This is a professional relationship that has followed one of the world’s most recognisable actors through multiple productions and completely different characters.
Clark Kent.
August Walker.
Sherlock Holmes.
Geralt.
Argylle.
Gus March-Phillipps.
Different films.
Different periods.
Different hair.
Same basic problem.
Someone has to make it work in front of a camera.
“The Wonderful Jacqui Rathore”
And Cavill clearly knew exactly who was doing the work.
Before The Witcher had even become the Hairbond story we’re talking about today, Cavill publicly shared a photograph of Rathore working on his hair for a BOSS eyewear shoot.
His description was wonderfully simple.
“The Wonderful Jacqui Rathore taming the mane.”
Thanks Jac.
That was 2018.
And I think that photograph matters.
Because celebrity styling sometimes gets presented as this anonymous machine.
Hair department.
Makeup department.
Wardrobe.
Next.
But it isn’t.
There are craftspeople behind these looks.
Relationships form.
Trust develops.
Actors work with the same people again.
And again.
And again.
When the cameras cost millions and the finished image is going around the world, you don’t particularly want somebody experimenting on your head because they’ve got a good TikTok following.
You want somebody you trust.
Jacqui became one of those people around Cavill.
Then Came Geralt
And Geralt was a completely different problem.
Henry Cavill has naturally dark hair.
Geralt of Rivia is the White Wolf.
Long silver-white hair is part of the character’s identity.
Take away the swords and armour and you still recognise him from the hair.
Which meant getting it wrong wasn’t really an option.
Initially, though, it wasn’t right.
The early wig was extremely white.
Under production lighting, Cavill later explained, it became far too bright.
It didn’t look like Geralt.
It looked artificial.
So the hair evolved.
Grey.
Silver.
Lowlights.
Dirt.
Texture.
The aim wasn’t to make beautiful fantasy hair.
The aim was to make believable Geralt hair.
And Jacqui Rathore became obsessed with getting it right.
The Wig Came Home With Her
This is the bit I love.
Jacqui apparently didn’t originally build the wig.
She inherited the problem.
And then made it hers.
Cavill later explained at WitcherCon that Rathore effectively adopted the wig.
She worked on it.
Then worked on it again.
And took it home at night to keep working.
There were actually multiple wigs.
She altered individual hairs.
Worked on the lace.
Sent pieces away to improve the front lace so it became less visible.
Then brought everything back and continued working.
Cavill said Rathore became so consumed with improving the wigs that she was having nightmares about them.
That’s hairdressing at a slightly different level from a quick short back and sides before Saturday night.
But the principle isn’t actually that different.
Something doesn’t look right.
You keep working until it does.
The Best Hair Work Doesn’t Look Like Hair Work
That is probably the biggest misconception about television hair.
Geralt isn’t supposed to look styled.
He’s not walking into a bar in Manchester.
He’s killing monsters.
Sleeping outside.
Riding horses.
Fighting.
Sweating.
Bleeding.
Getting covered in mud.
His hair needs to look as though it belongs to somebody living that life.
Which creates the great contradiction of professional film hair:
You can spend hours making hair look like nobody has touched it.
That was Geralt.
The wig needed movement.
It needed separation.
It needed texture.
It needed enough control to survive production.
But it couldn’t scream:
PRODUCT.
Nobody should be watching The Witcher thinking about hairspray.
If they are, something has gone badly wrong.
The viewer should see one thing.
Geralt.
And Hairbond Was In That World
This is where Hairbond comes back into the story.
Hairbond did not begin as a celebrity brand.
It came from professional hairdressing.
That’s important.
Because professionals don’t use products in quite the same way consumers buy them.
A customer can be persuaded by packaging.
A celebrity.
An advert.
A bloke on Instagram shouting about “extreme hold”.
A professional has somebody sitting in the chair.
The hair either works or it doesn’t.
And on a film set the conditions get harder.
Hot lights.
Repeated takes.
Movement.
Costume.
Sweat.
Weather.
Continuity.
Somebody has to get that exact hair looking right again tomorrow.
And the next day.
And the next.
That’s why discovering Hairbond products around this world meant something to me.
Jacqui Put The Products Out There
There was another difference.
This wasn’t Hairbond taking a photograph of some products and writing:
LOOK WHO USES US.
The trail came through the people actually doing the work.
Jacqui shared products and behind-the-scenes work through Instagram, and Hairbond’s surviving archive records the Cavill material specifically as an Instagram post involving Hairbond products. Hairbond’s subsequent indexed social material connected the styling directly with The Witcher Season 2.
That’s an important distinction.
We weren’t buying our way into the conversation.
The products had travelled there.
A professional had them.
And suddenly this small British brand was appearing in a world populated by Netflix, Superman and one of the biggest fantasy characters on television.
I wish we’d understood at the time just how good that story was.
Jacqui Wasn’t Just There For The Witcher
What makes the connection even more interesting looking back is what happened afterwards.
Rathore continued working around Cavill.
Her professional credits put her with him on Enola Holmes 2, where Cavill played Sherlock Holmes.
Then Argylle.
Then The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
And her credits extend into In the Grey.
For the London premiere of Argylle, she was still part of Cavill’s grooming team.
That longevity tells you far more about her than any celebrity name-dropping ever could.
Actors at that level have choices.
Productions have enormous departments.
Yet personal relationships between actor and hair or makeup artist can carry across projects.
There is trust involved.
Cavill’s own BOSS post from years earlier now looks almost prophetic.
The wonderful Jacqui Rathore taming the mane.
She carried on taming it for years.
The Witcher Season Two
Season Two deserves its own mention because production itself became extraordinary.
Filming began in early 2020.
Then Covid arrived.
Production stopped and restarted through an incredibly difficult period.
By the time filming finally finished, contemporary reporting recorded 159 filming days.
And who announced the wrap first?
Jacqui Rathore.
Through her Instagram Stories.
She was identified at the time as Henry Cavill’s personal hairdresser/personal hair designer.
Think about that.
Months of filming.
Covid restrictions.
Delays.
A character whose hair required multiple heavily worked wigs.
And this was the environment in which Hairbond’s surviving social record says its products were involved in styling Henry Cavill for The Witcher 2.
That’s not a bad place for a British styling product to turn up.
We Need To Be Precise
There is a temptation with celebrity stories to keep stretching them until they become bullshit.
I’m not interested in doing that.
Henry Cavill was not employed as a Hairbond ambassador.
Netflix did not endorse Hairbond.
I’m not claiming Cavill went down to Boots every Saturday morning because he’d run out of his favourite Hairbond.
That would be ridiculous.
The actual story is good enough.
Hairbond has archived material showing Henry Cavill’s hair being styled with Hairbond products.
Surviving Hairbond social material connects that styling specifically to The Witcher 2.
And the professional responsible for Cavill’s hair on The Witcher was not an anonymous stylist.
It was Jacqui Rathore, a hair designer Cavill worked with repeatedly across major productions.
That’s the claim.
And I actually prefer it.
Hairbond didn’t buy Henry Cavill. It found its way into the professional world around him.
That’s what Hairbond was supposed to do.
Hollywood Has Always Been About The Hands Behind The Chair
Hairbond has had some strange journeys over the years.
Football dressing rooms.
Photoshoots.
Barbershops around the world.
Professional kits.
Hollywood.
And that’s the part of the brand story I think we’ve sometimes forgotten.
It isn’t really about celebrity.
It’s about the professional on the other side of the chair.
The person with the comb.
The dryer.
The brush.
The product.
The responsibility.
The celebrity gets photographed.
The hairdresser normally doesn’t.
Yet Jacqui Rathore’s story around The Witcher is a perfect example of just how much work can sit behind something the audience takes for granted.
Individual hairs.
Different lace.
Multiple wigs.
Hours in hair and makeup.
Taking the bloody wig home.
Nightmares about getting it right.
Then the camera rolls.
And nobody notices any of it.
Perfect.
Because that’s the point.
From Lancashire To The Continent
Hairbond started in Britain in 2008.
We weren’t L’Oréal.
We weren’t Unilever.
There wasn’t an enormous multinational machine putting Hairbond into every celebrity dressing room.
We made hair products.
We put them into professional hands.
And sometimes those hands took them somewhere we never expected.
In this case, somewhere between Lancashire and the Continent, Hairbond ended up around a bloke carrying two swords with long silver hair.
Except the bloke was Henry Cavill.
And the hairdresser standing behind him was Jacqui Rathore.
A professional who had already worked with him.
Would work with him again.
And who cared so much about Geralt’s hair that she took his wigs home at night.
That’s the Hairbond Hollywood story I like.
Not a sponsorship.
Not an endorsement deal.
Not celebrity marketing.
A professional product finding its way into professional hands.
And occasionally those hands happen to be turning Superman into Geralt of Rivia.
From Lancashire to Hollywood.
Not bad for a little jar of Hairbond.