You’d quite often see it at school, girls sitting around braiding each other’s hair. We thought maybe that was something they’d do to each other. THE BRAIDS “The braids on the girls were something we played with. Toward the end, we were mixing salt into water and spraying it, we were going through so much of it.”

Then we’d use salt spray on top to create texture and scrunch it up. The only dry shampoo we could get in South Africa was Klorane, so we used a lot of that, along with OSiS+ Dust It mattifying powder to volumize. The dust we used in the makeup was put through the hair. We used dust, different dry shampoos, and fillers as a starting point. At the end of the day, it would practically be standing on end: You’d find a pile of red sand in the shower, and all of your hair was three times the thickness than when you went off in the morning. THE THIRD-DAY HAIR “The hair was very dirty. We gave the girls little makeup bags to hide in the truck to reapply sweat and dirt as it rubbed off.” Sometimes we used glycerin and rosewater spray. Sometimes we’d take a matte gloss in a tube and stipple it on with an orange stipple sponge, which gives you little beads of sweat. THE DEWY SWEAT “There are different products we used to keep the girls shiny and sweaty. We used BECCA body shimmers in a few different tones, from golden or coppery colors to paler pinker shades, and would rub those on first before anything else.” THE SUPERNATURAL SKIN “We wanted the girls to glow in this dusty, dirty, filthy world-luminous, almost like a mirage, like people couldn’t believe their eyes. Here, ahead of tomorrow’s awards show, Vanderwalt breaks down the secrets behind Mad Max’s post-apocalyptic beauty, starting with that unearthly glow. And though it’s true that George Miller’s post-apocalyptic vision is not conventionally beautiful, there is an undeniable romanticism in the sand-strewn beauty of its unbreakable women-shot against the arid backdrops of South Africa, Namibia, and across Australia-which earned an Oscar nomination for makeup and hairstyling and made perhaps the greatest impact on the year’s statement trends. “I can’t say it was one of my most beautiful films,” laughs Lesley Vanderwalt, the Australian hair and makeup designer charged with bringing Mad Max: Fury Road’s desert wasteland to life.

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