‘Nothing fell in my lap’: how Law Roach redefined celebrity styling

He is the man behind some of the most memorable moments in fashion – but you have probably never heard of him.

Law Roach is the 46-year-old stylist who put Céline Dion in a pink frothy millefeuille-esque coat on the cover of Vogue France, dressed the actor Hunter Schafer in little more than a feather at a 2023 Oscars party, and convinced the model Bella Hadid to wear solely vintage on the Cannes red carpet.

But it’s his work with Zendaya, whom he first met when she was 14, that helped turn the actor into a household name and led to Roach transcending the world of styling. Most recently he masterminded her Challengers and Dune press tour looks, cementing tenniscore as the biggest trend of the summer and making a suit of metal armour front page news.

While a celebrity’s stylist usually remains behind the scenes, Roach has broken all norms and catapulted himself into the spotlight as an “image architect”.

J’Nae Phillips, a senior trend analyst and creator of the Fashion Tingz newsletter, says Roach has redefined the role of a stylist by “shaping not just the look of his celebrity clients but crafting moments and momentum through fashion”. She says: “He has brought styling from behind the scenes out into the open, which has shifted how fashion is consumed, admired and understood by the public.”

When she was a Disney starlet, brands would not lend their clothes to Zendaya, so instead Roach dressed her in vintage pieces from a secondhand store he was running in Chicago.

He has since embraced “method dressing”, putting Zendaya in a webbed embroidered gown for a Spider-Man premiere and a wet sand-inspired dress for the Venice premiere of Dune. Zendaya describes him as her “fashion soulmate, historian and constant inspiration”.

Roach, who now also walks the red carpet, is invited to sit in the front row at fashion week shows and has garnered his own legion of fans – more than 1 million followers on Instagram – who chase him down the street for selfies.

Next month, he is releasing a book titled How to Build a Fashion Icon. It acts as a sort of DIY guide to becoming confident, peppered with personal anecdotes and inspirational quotes from women including Oprah Winfrey.

Reflecting on his success in the book, he writes: “Nothing fell in my lap, and certainly nothing came easy. Even though I didn’t see anyone who looked like me that had achieved what I wanted, I kept my eyes on the prize with determination and belief in myself that I could do it.”

But you will not find the term stylist inside. Instead, Roach has described himself as “the world’s only image architect”, a job title he has trademarked. “I could never be just a ‘stylist’,” he writes. “I’m always doing things my own way, with my own spin … To me, an ‘image architect’ delivers a moment – the boldness and drama of a look complemented by a woman (or anyone, to be honest) who knows their worth.”

He’s also “the world’s only image architect” that is technically retired. Last March in a now deleted Instagram post he announced he was quitting the industry. “The politics, the lies, and false narratives finally got me!” he wrote. “You win … I’m out.” Eighteen months later and Roach is busier than ever. “I’m the most unretired retired person,” he told the New York Times in May.

At times this type of behaviour has earned him a reputation as being a diva. But as a gay, black man who grew up in one of the poorest areas of Chicago, one of four siblings raised by a single mother, Roach has managed to break into an industry where it is notoriously difficult to succeed – a world in which a people-pleaser is unlikely to triumph. Roach describes himself as “the example of an unlikely Cinderella story, of someone who grew up with the cards stacked against them but did it anyway”.

“He knows his worth,” says Daniel Rogers, a fashion writer at British Vogue. “He has fought hard to maintain that position: refusing to speak to journalists unless they use his name within a headline, and refusing to be a background figure to someone else’s success. He brings real fashion capital – and entertainment – to an often staid celebrity landscape.”