When Prime Video set out to make its “Legally Blonde” prequel series “Elle,” finding an actress who embodied Reese Witherspoon's iconic Elle Woods was only half the battle. The rest fell to hair department head Florencia Cepeda and makeup department head Jennifer Powell, who together were tasked with turning rising star Lexi Minetree into a believable teenage version of one of the most iconic characters in film.

According to Cepeda, while Minetree is a natural brunette, she arrived on set with dyed blonde hair, having gone above and beyond to make her case to producers Hello Sunshine in her audition self-tape recreating the original film’s Harvard application video. The color needed refining, so Witherspoon flew in her own colorist, Lorri Goddard, known as Hollywood’s queen of bleach, to help. "The whole process took probably seven, eight hours," Cepeda says. “It was a lot.” Following that first color-correcting session, the team continued fine-tuning the formula while shooting in Los Angeles with local colorist Yukari Yokomizo, before ultimately settling into a maintenance routine with colorist Brittany Otash when production moved to Vancouver (doubling for Seattle).

The result is a shade Cepeda and her team called "buttery blonde"—a golden hue distinct from the icier, ashier blondes that have dominated more recent trends. “In the ‘90s people didn’t tone their hair as much, and if they did it was more of a warmer blonde,” she explains. “So with that we didn’t really have to tone much to get that perfect buttery shade.”

Tackling the rest of Minetree’s transformation, Powell relied on a weekly spray tan to help replicate Witherspoon's Elle’s signature glow, and made one small but key call to really sell the two actresses' resemblance to one another. “I covered a beauty mark on Lexi that Reese doesn’t have,” she says. Aside from that, “Lexi has very similar features,” she explains, so not much was needed. “I echoed the soft pink looks in the makeup to reflect Reese’s looks as Elle, but I kept in mind that Lexi is Elle in high school,” she says, adding that “a little soft blush in the apples of her cheeks” helped give the character a youthful appearance (Minetree is actually 25 years old). Lastly, Powell made sure that Elle’s look was finished off with a manicure with a French square tip polish, “purposely a little thicker than you see in the films with Reese.”

Both department heads went back to their own personal archives to prep for the show. Powell dug out her own vintage issues of Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Glamour from the '80s and '90s rather than using online tools. "It was nostalgic and inspiring," she says. "I liked going through actual pages and not scrolling images." Cepeda, a fan of the original “Legally Blonde,” says she recognized shades of the character in her own family growing up, recalling a fashionable and independent aunt who reminded her of Elle. That personal connection shaped their shared philosophy for the show: proving a young woman can care deeply about her hair and makeup while also being a sharp and capable someone whose mindset is "I can do my hair, but I can still go to law school," as Cepeda puts it.

Because Minetree's Elle is still in high school, both Cepeda and Powell were careful to keep her look a notch younger and less polished than Witherspoon's college-era glamorous look. Powell kept Elle's makeup consistent throughout the season rather than letting it evolve as she settles into her new environment. "Part of what makes Elle, Elle is she isn't changing her looks for anyone," Powell says, "and she's not trying to change anyone else's style."

Still, both departments built in direct visual callbacks to the original movie. In the Season one finale, when teenage Elle finds herself speaking in a courtroom, Cepeda gave her bouncy curls intentionally meant to mirror adult Elle's courtroom "power look" from the film. For Elle’s blowout, Cepeda admits she used a rather “modern” invention: the Dyson Airwrap Styler with the round brush attachment. “I mean, in the ‘90s to get a blowout you’d use a round brush and your blow dryer,” she explains. “I still do that all the time, but I’ll alternate.” 

Given the amount of heat and color processing Minetree's hair underwent, Cepeda made sure Minetree slept on a silk pillowcase or in a bonnet. People think bonnets are only for people with textured hair, but it’s important as if you’re sleeping on a cotton pillowcase and you’re constantly tossing and turning at night, you’re going to cause breakage through all that friction and rubbing,” she explains. “So that was a huge thing. Everyone was checking in, asking, ‘Lexi, are you using your bonnet? Are you using your silk pillowcase?’” Cepeda also made sure the actress was well-equipped to look after her color-treated hair off-set too, sending her home with Redken's Acidic Bonding Concentrate line and Orbe's Signature Moisture Mask.

To prep the hair before styling, she used Color Wow’s Dream Coat Supernatural Spray when still wet, which she says is “fantastic for any kind of hair that's overprocessed or has some damage.” After that, she would grab either Oribe’s Gold Lust Dry Heat Protection Spray or the CHI 44 Iron Guard Thermal Protection Hair Spray to help prevent any further damage from the heat styling. Depending on the look, she might spray a little of Oribe Dry Texturizing Spray before setting everything with a good lashing of hairspray to complete “a nice bouncy, bouncy blowout.” 

On the makeup side, Powell balanced the show's L'Oréal Paris partnership—including products like the Voluminous Mascara and True Match Foundation, which technically postdate 1995—against what a teenager might realistically have owned that year. Powell says using these products didn’t feel like a stretch as “in the 90’s I was in my 20’s and I personally had L'Oréal in my own makeup bag.” The brand's waterproof mascara, she notes, proved essential for the many rainy Seattle scenes, including Elle’s first kiss with the sensitive school athlete Miles (Jacob Moskovitz). Powell also brought in her own subtle homage to “Legally Blonde”. In a scene where Elle sulks at home eating chocolates in bed, she stripped back the makeup as a nod to Witherspoon's similarly makeup-free, heartbroken chocolate binge in the original film. 

Ultimately, Cepeda and Powell's process depended heavily on collaboration with each other, and with costume designers Sarah Byblow and Sophie de Rakoff, sharing moodboards and ideas to make sure, as Powell says, everyone stayed "on the same creative path to achieve the perfect 1995 Elle." For Cepeda, a hair look wouldn’t be finalised until she knew exactly what Minetree would be dressed in for the scene. Both women point to the sweet sixteen scene in the pilot as a particular highlight. For the opening sequence, Cepeda styled Minetree's hair in bouncy curls topped with a bow, a look Powell complemented with an extra wash of pink eyeshadow and a mauve accent in the crease. "Just a little extra for the birthday girl," Powell says.

Looking back at the era they've spent months studying, both have opinions on what deserves a comeback. Powell is rooting for more shaped, natural brows. “I would not tweeze to a thin line; just a little shape, a soft arch, I think it’s pretty.” Cepeda, meanwhile, is campaigning for the return of the side part: "I want to see more of those," she says, laughing. "so that the side part wearers can feel confident."