Hear me out: I have a bone to pick with slicked-back buns. It doesn’t matter if I follow every single prep step, secure one of the best boar bristle brushes, and use a flyaway toothbrush; the baby hairs around my ears never stay down. Within 30 minutes, even my extra-hold hairspray fails to do its job, leaving me with product-coated little hairs standing out at a 90-degree angle. Cut to: Mikey Madison arriving on the 2025 Oscars red carpet.
With the help of hairstylist Rena Calhoun, the Anora actress debuted my new gold standard for sleek buns. The center part and finger-touself texture were just the jumping off point—it was the free-floating baby hairs that solidified it as one of the best beauty looks of the night. “The baby hairs were very intentional,” Calhoun exclusively tells me over the phone, just as Madison walks the carpet. “A brush almost creates too much smoothness, so I just use my hands and a little bit of hairspray to blow dry them [in the right position].”
As for the blow dryer in question? The Shark Beauty FlexFusion Styler, which was responsible for the rough dry, and the Shark Beauty Wet or Dry Fusion Brush. “Use the concentrated nozzle with a little bit of texture spray and you’ll get just the right amount of grit,” Calhoun explains. Once the hair was in a solid state, Calhoun pulled Madison’s hair back into a ponytail, secured it into a bun, and used some Bumble and Bumble Spray de Mode throughout. “I spray it as I'm pulling pieces out and really refine the placement of every hair in the look,” she says.
Such a sophisticated hair look, naturally, had a very rich inspiration. “Mikey loves to reference vintage styles—starlets from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Her Dior dres was a recreation from the ‘50s, but we still wanted the hair to have a level of modernity,” says Calhoun.
To get Madison’s “smooth, but not too smooth” slicked-back bun, scroll ahead to shop for everything you need.
