The Rake: Where in Austria did you grow up?
Horst: Klagenfurt is on a big, scenic lake. It’s surrounded by mountains. It’s a pretty big town, about 65,000 people. It’s a tourist place, big huge scenic lake, hotels.
My father was a soldier in the German army, he was with the military police. So they imprisoned the military police after the war, they had to go to prison camp. It was a weird thing. We were listening to the radio every night, and they would announce the prisoners who had been released from the camp. They had to get everybody’s code and number and clearances, see if there were any records of war crimes, it was very thorough. There were American prison camps, British prison camps, and Russian camps. And the worst ones were the Russian camps, my father was in a Russian camp. I don’t think he wanted to talk about it. It drove him to drink. After the war, he would disappear for days.
My father was a shoemaker. He was a real craftsperson. He measured your foot, then he carved, out of wood, your foot, and then he made the shoe. Then, because of the war, he made a lot of orthopedic shoes—people would have one leg shorter, so he made shoes for them. I used to watch him working in his studio. H
e made ski boots, shoes for boxers, soccer players. He had a very rich clientele.
The Rake: Your mother was a naturalist and an herbalist, right?
Horst: And the head of the family. My mother worked in an apothecary, making remedies in the back room, tonics, extracts, tinctures, teas—apothecaries. But she also had a private kitchen practice. Everyday, there were ten or fifteen people just hanging out in our kitchen. I learned from my mother the strength of will power, because she was always there, and she was always giving. She always gave everything away, she never had anything. She was quite yogic, in fact.
The Rake: How did you get interested in hair styling?
Horst: We lived right in the center of town. We lived on the first floor, directly across the street was a hairdressing salon. At street level was a men’s shop, upstairs was a women’s shop. And I always looked into the shop. My grades in school were terrible. Math, English, German, Shorthand—all those things, I couldn’t think. I had some form of dyslexia, I think. The shop was doing competition hairdressing, and I looked in there, and they practiced evenings, and I was watching them. The street was very narrow—you know, European streets where you can look from window to window. So I was watching, and then in school, the teachers said, “You know, you are now 12 years old, you’re not good at school. Think about what you want to be apprenticed in.” So you take a trade. In Austria and Germany, you go to vocational school once a week, and the rest of the week you work in a shop as an apprentice. You learn your trade.
The Rake: Before long you were entering competitions. What was that like?
Horst: In those days, we started at six in the morning. Apprentices had to be at the shop first, because they had to start the fire, there was no central heating, it was all wood-burning ovens. By the time the clients came, it would be seven. The men came for a shave, the women came for comb-outs before they went to work. Everybody had to be to work at eight o’clock, so they were in the shops at seven. So they had to be warm, clean, and organized. And that’s the apprentice’s job. I was very lucky, because I worked in a small shop.
I didn’t want to be just average. Besides, I just loved it. I loved competing, I loved creating beautiful things. At 14, I was really into it, and I was winning. I was very competitive. I worked seven days a week then. I was different than most kids, because they went to the beach, I didn’t. Monday was my day off, I went to practice competition hair dressing. Thursday night, competition hair dressing. When I was in competition, I practiced almost every night before the competition.
My boss was very competition-minded. Competition was a big thing in those days. There were state championships, regional championships, national championships, and international championships. There was actually a world championship in hairdressing. There still is. I started my apprenticeship in 1956, I finished in 1958, in 1959 I went to Italy. I was already three years junior champion! I went to Italy, then to Germany, England, and France. Then, because I was such a winner, manufacturers started hiring me as a stylist, working on photo shoots for their advertising. Through that, I got into editorial styling, working in magazines. I worked all over Europe—we didn’t fly back then, we drove. But then I also worked in salons, because the magazine jobs were not there all the time. By the time I was 20 years old, I was a hot-dog hairdresser. I had all these trophies—I won the Grand Prix of France, of Austria; I won the Grand Prix-Golden Ring of Germany, I won the Grand Prix of Belgium, and Holland. I won the Golden Crown of the European Championship.
The Rake: How did you make the transition from hair styling to manufacturing your own styling products and cosmetics?
Horst: There is no better training to be a product tester for a company. When I was a competition hair stylist, I worked for the labs, and the chemists always gave me their products for testing. I told them what worked, what I didn’t like. I learned product development. I learned photo styling. Then I learned photography, because when I had to do it here, I couldn’t pay these guys. So I picked up my own camera and copied what they were doing. So to do Aveda for me was a piece of cake, I loved it, it was just the things I always did.
I made my first hairspray when I first came here in ’65, called simply “Horst” hairspray. Because everybody had shitty hairspray. The Europeans had a very special hairspray, so I went to Europe, to a chemist who I knew. And I said, “I’m in America, can you give me the formula?” And he said, “No.” And so we made a deal underneath the table! [Laughs uproariously.] I had a great formula, one of the best hairsprays in Europe. It was basically Loreal hairspray. It was fantastic. It worked the best, but it was not the healthiest. In fact, there was a lot of polyvinyl chloride shit in there, I’m surprised I’m still alive. A lot of my friends are dead, all died of lung cancer—1950s, 60s hairsprays killed a lot of people, customers and stylists. Nobody knew. Now we know, one molecule of polyvinyl chloride—PVC—can cause cancer.
The Rake: Why did you change the name to Aveda in 1978?
Horst: Hairdressers did not want to sell my stuff. My New York friends, they said, “This is a great idea, would you make it for me?” They didn’t want to sell Horst stuff. It was a pure ego thing—“A guy from Minneapolis? No way!”
The Rake: You started the Aveda Institute, to educate young stylists. Do you ever visit anymore?
Horst: I go there and teach, I talk to the kids, I give a whole morning demonstration, I do makeup. I love that. I get paid for it—I’m still being paid by Estee Lauder a good chunk of money, so it’s my job. I have a contract with them for many years, a non-compete. I am totally connected to the kids, I relate to the kids. I know how important it is to have a good attitude, how important not to take the client too personally, but to understand that the client is always right. I learned how to listen to the client. I learned behind the chair that every client knows exactly what they want when they get it. When they smell it, taste it, hear it, see it, and feel it. It’s a sensory experience. And I just made sure I pleased their senses.
The Rake: You’ve been critical of the marketing of words like “organic” and “natural.” Why?
Horst: The word “organic” is meaningless. It has no meaning in cosmetics. Petrochemicals are organic, they come from the earth. The word “natural” is meaningless. Chemists, when they get the their degrees, it’s organic chemistry.
The Rake: How did you get started with aromatherapy?
Horst: One of my mentors was Jean Valnet, a medical doctor in France. He was a surgeon in the First World War in Indochina, and the monks were using essential oils. He ran out of medicine, penicillin and things like that, so the monks gave him medicines to treat post-wound healing, after surgery, and he saw remarkable healing response. After the war he went to France, and he got together with a biochemist. They analyzed essential oils. They found that essential oils had a therapeutic effect. Aromatherapy is a medical term in France. At apothecaries in France, it says “Homeopathie, Aromatherapy, and Phytotherapie.” “Aroma” means essential oils, “phyto” means plant—usually dry or other extractions, and “homeopathie” is in dilution.
Jean Valnet taught me aromatherapy, essential oils used medicinally. But the stuff he did was all single essential oils. Some of the singles smelled very medicinal. I used to give it to people, and they’d say, “That smells like medicine!” I made combinations, because it smelled better. Then I went into Asian history, because Aryurvedic medicine has 175 essential oils in the pharmacoepia, very com
plex. Why do they work? It’s a satisfaction memory. They’re also very active. There are oils that numb—natural painkillers.
The Rake: How does your new art gallery fit into your life and your vision?
Horst: There is no mistake in art, but I want to see happiness in art. I don’t want to see anger, depression—there’s too much of that. Art needs to contribute to making people feel good, to healing. I call it the healing arts.