under cover: emily vancamp

If you've spent a good chunk of time staring at our September issue cover and thinking to yourself, "I wish I had perfect beach-y waves like Emily VanCamp," then you are so not alone; that was admittedly our second thought (the first one being, wait does she tell us what's going to happen on the next season of Revenge?!).

So tracking down her hair stylist from our shoot was a no-brainer. As Laini Reeves tells it, "Emily always looks so well done, so we thought, She's in NYLON, and NYLON has a more of an un-done feel to it--but stylish! So that's what we did for her."

The rest of the process was easy; according to Reeves, "It's totally low-key." Here's how she did it:

1. Pack In Some Texture

"What I do is I try to get some texture in the hair itself--hand dry and scrunch the hair to get that texture in, as it goes from wet to dry."

2. Hold It

"Add mousse on wet hair. The best products I find to do that is Moroccanoil Curl Control Mousse ($23.20), and the reason is because it does have a little bit of oil so the hair has a nice texture to it."

3. Scrunch It

"Put the dryer on full, and scrunch your hair with your hands so that you get a nice, messy texture."

4. Give It Some (Random) Curl

"Once it's dry, take a curling wand--the ones without a bar on them are so easy to use. The one I have is about two-inches at the base and one-inch at the tip, so you get a different curl as you're doing it. I don't use the whole head, I just pick out different hairs to pull out." (Try the Conair You Curl curling wand.)

5. Finish With Shine

"To finish, I use a really cool product called Nohona. It's coconut oil for the hair and it's beautiful! I just put a little bit of that on my hands, rub them together, ad scrunch it into the ends of the hair, and that makes it nice and piece-y--and also has a really nice texture to it. Shake it out and you have that nice, loopy, different sized curls."

Her Hints:

Don't Be Afraid of Mousse: "In the '80s, people were just using mousses back then that weren't as advanced as the products now."

It Works With (Almost) Any Hair: "I would do it on any type of length, it's something I do with a lot of my clients. If your hair is curly, I'd go the opposite way--use a flat iron to straighten pieces of hair out a little bit."

Want To Take It To The Next Level? Get Wet: "I'm pushing that look and I'm putting more coconut oil into it to get more of a wet look. I'm bringing the wet look back!"