TikTok isn’t always the place for sage beauty advice, but I recently found myself nodding in agreement to a post from influencer Bella Dane. Her argument? If you want to look your best, look to your celebrity doppelgänger. Copy their hairstyle, makeup ideas, color choices, and styling choices—since we mortals don’t have access to a team of experts, this will ensure you get the gorgeous end result of all that professional aesthetic wisdom. Smart, right?
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Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve been doing this for years. I always look to my celebrity doubles—Dakota Johnson, Katy Perry, and Zooey Deschanel—for hair, makeup, and style inspiration. Johnson has mostly been my beauty North Star for the last 10 or so years, as I can see some similarities in our features. I can’t say the same about the others, but strangers constantly tell me that I look like Perry and Deschanel, a compliment I gladly accept. On days when I feel particularly self-loathing about my appearance, it’s nice to lean on a celebrity. I know I can’t mess up when I am copying a red-carpet look that a team of genius hairstylists, makeup artists, and stylists fussed over. I’ve found the most success in marrying my own personal style with whatever looks best on Johnson—so it’s not impersonation, but rather a safety net for experimentation.
Jenna Rosenstein
My latest hair color and cut, inspired by Dakota Johnson
Michael Loccisano//Getty Images
The inspo image I took to the salon
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In fact, I came armed with two photos of Johnson for a recent Davines salon appointment. After playing around with golden highlights for the last few years, to disguise my grays with minimal effort, I decided to say screw it and dye my whole head far darker. Johnson has thankfully experimented with her hair a ton over the years—with cuts both short and long, and dyes that range from golden blonde to nearly black. A quick Google search showed me her darkest hair colors, and those are the ones I sought to re-create this time. I went from a warm medium brown to a deep cool brown, and I couldn’t be happier with the result.
In my Zooey Deschanel hair and style era, in 2012
Trying on a Katy Perry–inspired wig from her hairstylist, Chris Appleton, in 2019
This copycat method has never let me down. When I’ve chatted with hairstylists over the years, they’ve often told me how hard it can be to re-create a celebrity inspo image on someone with a completely different hair type, coloring, or face shape—and that the results often garner mixed reviews. But this shouldn’t just stop at hair. Bazaar’s beauty editor, Katie Intner, recently told me she happens to visit the same spray tanner, Sophie Evans, as her own celebrity doppelgänger, Ashley Graham. Whenever Katie is due for a tan, Evans uses the same exact St. Tropez shade on her that she uses on Graham—because if it works, it works.
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All that’s to say: Before your next salon appointment, fancy event, or shopping excursion, take a peek at Google or Pinterest for style ideas from your celebrity look-alike. At minimum, it’s an exercise in getting out of your comfort zone and your own head—but it could also be what leads you to unlock your next big glow-up.
