The Essential List 20. Mara Roszak’s Haircare Kit

The celebrity hairstylist and founder of RŌZ shares her go-to blow dryer and round brush, a red carpet favorite, versatile hair pins, and how she created her own line of hair essentials.

Today, I’m so excited to feature celebrity hairstylist Mara Roszak. Mara is the mastermind behind countless red carpet looks, including Emma Stone’s awards season run last year for Poor Things and Zoe Saldana’s press tour for Emilia Pérez. After 20 years working in salons and with celebrity clientele, Mara drew on her experience and expertise to create RŌZ, a line of clean, easy-to-use hair essentials. RŌZ is everything I love to see in a product line, and after seeing the brand mentioned as a favorite again and again, I reached out to Mara to learn more about the products and find out her personal haircare essentials.

First, Mara shares the essentials she keeps in her haircare kit. Then, I share our Q&A about her early days of styling her friends’ hair for bar and bat mitzvahs, surprises she encountered during product development, and tips for giving yourself a better blowout at home (because—sadly!—we can’t all have Mara with us daily).

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Sheila Stotts Untangle Wood Brush The Sheila Stotts brush has been my favorite detangling brush for several years. I particularly like how the bristles don't all have the little ball on the end, which can lead to snapping or breakage.

RŌZ Foundation Shampoo and Conditioner/Mask These shower essentials are the foundation to any effortless hair look. Hydration is key to achieving beautiful results! Our Foundation Shampoo makes for a perfectly thorough, salon-grade cleanse (and is completely sulfate free!) Meanwhile, our Foundation Conditioner thoroughly hydrates using pea peptides and ceramides. For an extra dose of hydration and repair, I swap out conditioner for the Foundation Mask — which reduces breakage by 31% after just one use.

Ibiza B3 Round Brush These are my favorite round brushes with any blowout look. Their bristles have the best grip to create that perfect amount of tension you need to style a classic, beautiful blowout.

Ever Mate Long Single Pins These Japanese hair pins are super versatile and always in my kit (or clipped up in my hair during long days on set).

RŌZ Root Lift Spray This is a red carpet kit essential for achieving voluminous lift and hold. I’ve tried every volume product on the market, and I wanted to create something that gave me buildable volume without being sticky or weighing down hair. Our “PRŌZ” community, made up of incredible hairstylists, absolutely loves this product.

Parlux 3500 Super Compact Hair Dryer I have been using this blow dryer for years. Again, this brand is a pro-favorite and a staple in the salon/pro hairstylist world. This compact version is always in my kit! [Ed. note: While linking, I noticed Parlux is having a Black Friday sale through 11/30, use code blackfriday25 at checkout for 25% off]

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At the young age of 15, Mara began her hairstyling education, and within two years she was working with some of the most celebrated talents in the entertainment industry. Today, Mara is behind red carpet looks for Emma Stone, Zoe Saldana, Olivia Wilde, Natalie Portman, Nicole Kidman, Kristen Wiig, and more.

Tell me about your background, how did you become a hairstylist?

I was born in New York City, but I grew up in Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles. My mother was a sculptor, and my parents were both very creative in very different ways. My dad was an engineer for music—he did some production work. My mom, for the most part, was home once I was born, but later, after becoming a single mom when I was about 12, she managed a kids' clothing store. She was incredibly artistic, though, and I’d say my mom is such an artist that sometimes, even communicating with her, you’re like, “Are you on this planet Earth?”

That artistic spirit was very much built into me. It wasn’t until I was really deep into my 20s, having done hair for over a decade, that I realized the correlation between sculpture and hairstyling. There’s so much overlap. I’ve taken a couple of sculpting classes, and there’s so much flow and freeform in the way I work. What really inspires me is nature—how it takes its own form and shape. You look at flowers and how uniquely individual they are. I’d say I gain a lot of inspiration from the natural texture of hair—what’s naturally beautiful about my clients and their hair—and really working with it rather than against it.

I started my hair career after struggling with my own hair. When I was 13, I went through puberty and inherited what was clearly meant to be my hair all along—this very frizzy, curly, mop-like hair. It was the mid-90s, and I was just a decade short of being on trend. Everybody was wearing their hair blown out straight, and all my friends had naturally straight hair. I was determined to get my hair to look like theirs—what was cool at the time. That meant blow-drying and flat-ironing it. I used my mom’s old tools, probably from the 80s, and the only product available at the time was Frizz-Ease. It was very heavy, but it did the trick for me.

From 13, we were going to lots of bar and bat mitzvahs, and all my friends would come over, and I’d get them ready. I got really good at doing my own hair, which was very challenging, and I ended up doing everyone’s hair for proms, bar mitzvahs—everything. It was incredible for me because it was the first time I felt more confident as a teen. I found something I was good at.

I ended up going to beauty school by the time I was 16. I didn’t have a senior year of high school and instead went straight to beauty school. I started working right after that. I got a call to do Sarah Michelle Gellar’s hair, and from there, I started working with Halle Berry, Zoe Saldana, Mila Kunis, and Emma Stone not long after. That all happened when I was 17 or 18 years old.

Simultaneously, I got a job as an assistant at a hair salon, where I’d do all the blow-dries for one of the stylists. So, I was really building both the freelance side of my career and the salon side, which was unique but very important to me.

How did you decide you wanted to create your own products?

RŌZ came about because, honestly, I think every hairdresser is their own product expert. We know hair—it’s what we live and breathe. We feel it; we understand it; we know what it needs. You can look at hair and instinctively know what shape to create. Over time, I was sent every product under the sun to try on my clients, but I realized that only a few really worked. That’s when I recognized there was a gap—nothing in the space was necessarily sustainable or clean.

I took a step back and looked at my own kit, asking myself, “What can be improved upon here?” My perspective has always been about enhancing what is naturally beautiful about someone’s hair. That’s where our tagline comes from: Beautiful hair is in your nature. It’s true. It’s just about using the right products and the right ingredients to enhance what’s naturally beautiful about your hair, repair it, and create the essentials for styling.

For me, it’s really about curation. It comes from my 22 years of trying everything and working with every hair type. One thing I’ve noticed, especially as a woman working in beauty, is how much negativity there is surrounding the category. We’ve been told so many things—whether it’s about aging or what we need to buy for our hair. The messaging has often been rooted in the idea that we’re not enough as we are.

Thankfully, I think that’s starting to change. With more female perspectives, especially from female founders and makeup artists, there’s this growing recognition that you don’t need to do all of that. RŌZ is really about embracing this shift. It’s about the essentials. It’s about curating the best of the best and reminding people that what you’re starting with is already beautiful. We’re here to help enhance it in a way that works for you.

That’s been my favorite part of my job—guiding people, helping them feel incredible in my chair, and ideally, empowering them to feel just as good when they go home and do their own hair. That’s exactly what I’ve wanted to achieve with RŌZ.

So many haircare brands have product lines for every different hair type, but you've kept your line so tight and curated. How are you able to create products that really work for everybody?

There’s a lot of versatility in hair products. Obviously, we all have different hair types, but when a product is really good, it should work for you, for me, for her, for him—for everyone. That’s been a key focus for me. I’ve broken it down into categories like styling, hydration, and volume. These are the core pillars that tell the holistic story of our products and encompass everyone’s needs.

For example, people with textured or curly hair often deal with frizz and need hydration. So, we’re creating a line that really addresses those needs. On the other hand, people with finer hair tend to need volume, but that can encompass a lot, too. It’s about going back to the essentials—curating products that are versatile enough to work across a wide range of hair types and textures while delivering the same great results.

I'm curious about product development — were there any ingredients that surprised you, either positively or negatively?

It surprised me how hard it was to come up with a product that was smoothing without silicone. You’d think, “How hard could it be to formulate a shampoo and conditioner?” But I hadn’t found a clean shampoo that actually lathered.

And not only that—it needed to lather and not feel stripping on the hair. So, we use coconut-based surfactants instead. They’re incredibly gentle but still thoroughly cleansing, removing all buildup without silicones or sulfates.

The conditioner was just as challenging. I had to switch labs and ended up working with an incredible female chemist who’s leading the way in clean ingredients. But clean formulations—especially at a professional level—haven’t been widely explored in haircare. It took two and a half years of working with them to create a conditioner without silicone that still made hair feel soft and smooth. It was so much harder than I ever expected.

What is the biggest mistake that you see people making with their hair?

Honestly, I think it’s using the wrong products. It’s really hard to know what’s going to work because there are so many incredible marketers out there, right? In the world of haircare, it can be overwhelming. That’s why I think it’s so important to trust your stylist—they’re the ones who can really tell you what works.

That’s one of the reasons we sell RŌZ through salons. We’re in about 150 salons currently and growing. To me, if the pros—who I make these products for, along with everyone else—love it enough to stock RŌZ in their kits or at their salons, that’s the ultimate compliment. I know they’re only going to recommend it to their clients if they genuinely believe in it. That kind of endorsement means so much to me, and I think it shows the strength of having a stylist’s perspective when choosing products.

Do you have one tip for giving yourself a better blowout at home?

Yes! I do. I think it goes back to the products you’re using. I’m all about keeping it simple—just one or two products for a blowout. Less is more. First, make sure what happens in the shower is dialed in. Use a hydrating shampoo and conditioner that won’t weigh your hair down.

After that, I recommend our San Lucia Styling Oil. I’m a huge fan of oils, and I wanted to create one that’s very lightweight and won’t weigh the hair down. It’s the only product I use in my hair before a blowout. I have very frizzy hair, and it’s also what I use when styling clients like Zoe Saldana or Emma Stone. It’s incredibly versatile, lightweight, and provides heat protection. It even cuts down on dry time by creating a smoothing barrier.

Recently, I was given a T3 airbrush to try. Honestly, I didn’t think it would work on my hair because I have very kinky curls around my face, super frizzy, thick hair. But I was blown away. The heat level was incredible, which is key if you’re trying to smooth out frizz with the right amount of tension.

I’m old-school, so I typically use a round brush and a blow dryer. But this blow-dry brush is amazing—it really works. If you’re doing it yourself at home, I’d say it’s worth investing in one of those airbrush-style dryers because it takes care of so much of the work for you.

What is the last thing that you bought that you feel really good about and how did you find out about it?

I’ve actually been on a bit of a shopping kick. It’s that time of year, right? I have a group chat with a couple of girlfriends where we send each other recommendations, and I bought these pants from The Row that I now live in. They’re wide-leg pants with an elastic waistband—super chic, sleek, and casual. The material isn’t silk, but it’s loose, flowy, and so comfortable. You can dress them up with heels and a cute button-down, or wear them with sneakers. They’re just the best—I’m such a sucker for The Row. I don’t indulge often, but for pieces I’ll wear every single day, they’re completely worth it.

Gifts from the RŌZ Garden

It’s the most wonderful time of the year and RŌZ just launched Limited Edition Holiday Kits — I can’t get over this beautiful packaging.

Thank you, Mara! What you’ve accomplished and built is so impressive, and I love seeing your beautiful work out in the world.

Follow @rozhair and @mararoszak for more from Mara (she posts great AMAs and tutorials). Her interview with Hillary Kerr on Second Life is also a great listen.

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