'I spend quite a lot of time on my hair to make it look like I haven’t spent any time on my hair. I do it really nicely first—I blow dry it, comb it all through—and then I just mess it up at the end with a salt spray and scrunch it up. That’s kind of my hair philosophy at the moment, which I go over in my book [_ The Craft: DIY Hair and Beauty_]—even if I do a really nice braid, I’ll spend a lot of time over it, just to mess it up. I’ve been thinking about this 'anti-prom' thing—going to the salon and getting a really nice plait done or a beehive and then getting home and just messing it up a bit, putting some cool product in it so it makes it more rock 'n roll. Even with guys, I do their hair really nicely all the way through and then mess it up and make it look like they just woke up. They always seem to look good.

My hair is bleached as white as possible. I love having silver hair; I’ve had it forever. We used to call it ‘blondorexia.’ It was just never blond enough! I would keep getting it whiter and whiter and I used to put purple in my conditioner so it would turn a crazy purple color—this was before you could get silver shampoos as easily as now. We’d put it in the conditioner and it would just knock out the yellow, which is what you learn in beauty school; you put blue on top of yellow to get rid of brassy tones. Now, everyone’s got grey hair. Having such white hair used to be a bit crazy but now if you wear it with nice clothes, even if you’re a bit older, you can totally pull it off. You don’t need loads of makeup with it. I just wash it with a silver shampoo and condition it every time. I do think there is something sophisticated about a good silver shampoo finish.

I touch up my roots probably every four weeks. My twin sister has a salon in London called Bleach, so they bleach it for me—it’s a nice healthy sisterly thing. [Laughs] Actually, if you have bleached hair you are better off getting a [bleach] job more often. People who grow out their roots really long think then that it’s going to be healthier when actually the bleach needs to be a lot stronger to work when it’s that long. If you do it every four weeks, you can really lightly bleach it and your hair will be generally healthier. On top of that, I use an elasticity masque. There are a few brands that do them but I use one by Philip Kingsley. Every two weeks you put it in and you can feel it putting the elasticity back in your hair. It’s amazing. You just put it in for 10 minutes, rather than shampooing it, every two weeks. It’s really good.

With makeup, at the moment, I’m kind of doing 'less is more.' I like really nice, tan skin and maybe a neon lip. I think it’s cute and summery for girls to wear as little makeup as possible and then have a flash of color somewhere. I love pink and orange, and I really like them together. There is a brand I love for lipstick called Barry M. Urban Decay is also doing some really cool neon lipsticks at the moment. Then there is Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics, who have good matte lip tars and some really great colors. That’s what I do on me—oh, and spider lashes. I’ve been doing clumpy lashes for so long that it sort of became my 'thing,' and now they’re doing it at Prada so I’m just building off of it. [Laughs]'

—as told to ITG

Lou Teasdale photographed by Elizabeth Brockway in New York on April 2, 2014.