NEED TO KNOW
- Lindsay Lohan, Schwarzkopf’s newest brand ambassador, stars in the brand’s latest campaign
- Her longtime hair colorist Tracey Cunningham designed a custom blonde shade for her for the campaign called soft gloss blonde
- Lohan tells PEOPLE that the warm shade makes her feel “fresh” and “ethereal”
Lindsay Lohan is finally giving up her top beauty secret.
It’s all about going “blonder,” she dishes in her campaign for Schwarzkopf, where she’s officially the newest brand ambassador for the legacy hair brand. Officially rocking a “soft gloss blonde” hue created by Tracey Cunningham — the brand’s U.S. creative director of color and technique as well as the actress’ colorist of more than two decades — Lohan stars in the campaign with an enviable shade that she can confidently say she loves.
“Once you start to go blonde, you want to keep going a little lighter and it just gives such a fresh, ethereal feeling that I love, and that’s how I’m feeling these days,” Lohan, 39, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “Fresh and ethereal and bright and happy. Having a hair color that mimics how you feel inside is always a plus.”
Tracey Cunningham and Lindsay Lohan for Schwarzkopf.
Schwarzkopf
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While she was recently filming Freakier Friday, the sequel to 2003’s Freaky Friday, Lohan changed her hair to a “strawberry” shade closer to her natural hue, she says. Once she wrapped, she says she wanted to “get out of that” and be blonde, which is where she’s content to stay now for a while.
Cunningham created the soft gloss blonde shade over a period of time, rather than sitting Lohan in a chair for “eight hours” and doing it all in one go.
“It just snuck up on everyone,” Cunningham admits of how Lohan ended up with such a beautifully pale shade. “When we did this blonde, every time I would see her, I would just go through and take out more of her natural red hair. Eventually, she was blonde. It’s not white. It’s not ashy. At first it was more strawberry, but then we got here.”
It’s easy for Lohan to put full trust in Cunningham when she sits down in her chair for a new color. The two have been working together since the first Freaky Friday movie and have collaborated on Lohan going nearly every color under the sun. Cunningham tells PEOPLE that it’s a dream working with Lohan because she’s such a “color chameleon,” while the Mean Girls star similarly gushes over Cunningham’s work.
“It’s so personal when we color our hair and who we color it with,” Lohan says of working with Cunningham and Schwarzkopf on this campaign. “It’s such a specific thing in life, and it makes you feel such a different way when it’s done. [It was also] the big draw for me getting to work with someone who I consider family.”
For the hair pro behind Lohan’s most iconic colors, she loves the actress in just about any hue (except platinum, she admits). She’s especially fond of her in most shades of red, her natural color, which they’ve done many different ways over the years.
“We’ve been every color red because when you’re a redhead, you go from light red to dark red, different roles, different magazine covers, different campaigns want you a different red, and it’s easy to vacillate between different reds with her because she is a natural redhead,” Cunningham explains, adding that the beauty of Schwarzkopf is that the brand has a “little something of everything for everyone” so she always has what she needs to take Lohan to any color.
But for Lohan, who says her natural color has darkened a bit as she’s grown older, it took a long time to really embrace being a redhead. While her signature hair color is part of what she’s always been known for, it made her feel “different” when she was growing up. It wasn’t until she was in her late 20s that she started to actually appreciate it.
Lindsay Lohan for Schwarzkopf.
Schwarzkopf
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“When you start to come into your own and you’re growing up and you want to go back to your roots, I feel like that’s when it happened for me,” Lohan says. “And now I know my red’s there, but as you get older, your red changes. Like when mine grows in, it’s not as bright. It would take a long time for it to grow into that bright red that I had in The Parent Trap again. I will go back to red eventually, but it’s summer now so I’m like let’s just leave it light.”
Lohan has zero regrets about any of the colors she’s tried over the years — she’s a big fan of “self-expression.”
“I think this could be a statement that you always should listen to your mother when they’re like, ‘Don’t touch your natural hair,'” Lohan says with a laugh while thinking about all the hair colors she’s tried. “‘What would’ve happened if I never highlighted my red hair? What would it be like today?’ I always wonder that.”
She’s perfectly happy to never actually know — and for now just be a soft gloss blonde, courtesy of Cunningham and Schwarzkopf.