James Edward Talks Life, Hair, Ambition and Building MONTE
Words: Georgie Lunn
Photography: Jess Segal
Lighting: Luke Weller
MUA: Natalie Gay using TOM FORD
Shot at The Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park - The Penthouse / Aubrey
Some men move through life as if rehearsing for something greater. James Edward has the composure of someone already mid-performance, though it isn’t vanity that defines him - it’s curiosity.
The kind of curiosity that drags a man across continents, into ultramarathons, and, on occasion, into the delicate alchemy of men’s hair products. He speaks not like an influencer, but like a philosopher who accidentally stumbled onto a camera and found it a suitable confessional.
To look at him - the blonde hair, blue eyes, the quietly amused expression, the air of the self-possessed British gentleman who still keeps a passport in his back pocket - you might imagine a life of smooth precision.
But Edward’s is not neat; he is deliberate.
The kind of deliberate that comes from hours of running on broken ground, or from the measured run of his hands through his hair, the same precision that once belonged to the young boy who ran cross-country routes a week early because his father insisted that grit was best served raw.
Brunello Cucinelli - Double Breasted Striped Suit, £6,300, brunellocucinelli.com; Brunello Cucinelli - Shirt, £1,800, brunellocucinelli.com; E.B. Meyrowitz - Spectacles, £1,250, ebmeyrowitz.com; Giorgio Armani - Tie, Stylist's Own, armani.com
There’s a film that lingers in Edward’s mind like a recurring dream - The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. For him, it was never about escapism or fantasy.
It was a set of instructions, a reminder that the extraordinary doesn’t arrive; it’s made.
“Everyone’s had an interesting life,” he says, eyes slightly defiant, “they just don’t really know how to tell it.” MONTE - the brand he co-founded with his oldest friend, Matt - is his attempt to bottle that philosophy.
James Edward: The Man Behind MONTE
Dunhill - Double Breasted Jacket, £2,595, dunhill.com; Dunhill - Roll Neck Jumper, £975, dunhill.com; Dunhill - Trousers, £895, dunhill.com; Omega - Watch, £4,300, omegawatches.com; Crockett & Jones - Shoes, £555, crockett&jones.com
But before the brand, before the viral videos and the expanding cult of hair-savvy men, there was a boy who almost became a professional tennis player - he “traded serves with the likes of Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu” - before realising that precision on court didn’t guarantee comfort in the mirror. He was a boy who hated his own reflection.
He grew up in the polite disarray of British schooling - a place where friendship was forged not through shared hobbies but through shared absurdity.
James met Matt when both were still too homesick to sleep. They stayed up until three in the morning talking about everything and nothing. Years later, they would still describe that as the “beginning of the long conversation that became Monte.”
Back then, Edward’s relationship with his hair was uneasy. He shaved it three times during school, “more out of irritation than rebellion.”
“What began as idle curiosity became a radical idea - that hair wasn’t vanity, it was identity...”
The hair clays on offer were the kind that turned heads into sandpaper sculptures, and when Matt attempted to cut his hair, the result was something between an agricultural experiment and an act of friendship. “Trauma bonding,” he calls it now, with the sort of grin that makes you believe him.
Lockdown changed that. Boredom, that great modern muse, forced him to look at himself - literally. Modelling followed. Then came the obsession: the sense that if he could change his hair, he could change everything else.
It is a reminder that the most compelling ideas in personal care often begin with something deeply individual: the relationship between appearance, identity and the confidence to feel comfortable in one's own skin.
What began as idle curiosity became a radical idea - that hair wasn’t vanity, it was identity.
His videos, half playful, half introspective, began to attract a following - not the glossy influencer crowd, but men who recognised in him the same unease, the same yearning to shape themselves into something else.
Literature, Philosophy and Personal Ambition
Huntsman - Single Breasted Suit, £2,850, huntsmansavilerow.com; Brunello Cucinelli - Shirt, £460, brunellocucinelli.com; Huntsman - Tie, £175, huntsmansavilerow.com; Omega - Watch, £4,800, omegawatches.com; Crockett & Jones - Shoes, £575, crockett&jones.com
If there’s a literary ghost haunting his worldview, it’s Marcus Aurelius: “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.” It landed not as posturing but as provocation.
For Edward’s, literature isn’t decoration; it’s instruction, for his shelves are a map of his interior life: Meditations, The Power of One, Birdsong, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
Books about conflict, transformation, and courage in ordinary forms. He calls The Power of One “the most important thing he’s ever read” - a tale of a boy who boxed his way from obscurity to Oxford, not for glory but for purpose. It’s easy to see the parallel.
“There’s reverence in his tone when he talks about people who care deeply - scientists, athletes, fragrance artisans - people who are fluent in obsession...”
Purpose, though, isn’t always clean. His first year of university was dark - isolation in a foreign cohort, silence thick enough to suffocate.
He’ll tell you, without theatrics, that a single phone call from Matt made the difference between staying lost and finding his footing again. He stayed because someone called.
Sometimes the difference between despair and momentum truly is that small.
From Imperial College to Entrepreneurship
The MONTE Texturising Tool, £25.99, themonteclub.com
He studied medical biosciences at Imperial College - because he “wanted to understand how the human body worked”, perhaps as a way of fixing what he couldn’t articulate.
He completed his studies with a research placement in oncology, spending nine months alongside Dr. David Ma, whom he describes as “the purest man alive.” There’s reverence in his tone when he talks about people who care deeply - scientists, athletes, fragrance artisans - people who are fluent in obsession.
How James Edward Founded MONTE
MONTE was born in of one of those lectures, somewhere between drug formulation and lunch. “An epiphany,” he calls it.
A texturising tool that actually worked (and lasted) - something that solved the problem of flat, lifeless hair and the identity crisis that came with it.
He rang Matt immediately. Edward’s has ideas like other people have snacks - constantly. Matt, ever the measured half, heard this one out, and within twenty-five minutes, they had found a supplier.
His approach reflects a broader shift within the beauty and grooming industry, where a new generation of independent brands is challenging established names through considered product development, distinctive identities and a more personal relationship with their customers.
The Philosophy Behind MONTE
Brunello Cucinelli - Double Breasted Striped Suit, £6,300, brunellocucinelli.com; Brunello Cucinelli - Shirt, £1,180, brunellocucinelli.com; Vacheron Constantin - Watch, £25,100, vacheron-constantin.com; E.B. Meyrowitz - Spectacles, £1,250, ebmeyrowitz.com; Giorgio Armani - Tie, Stylist’s Own, armani.com
From the beginning, Monte wasn’t conceived as another grooming brand.
Beyond the product itself, the ambition is to cultivate something more enduring: a sense of belonging built around shared values, personal connection and the relationships that turn customers into a community.
It was a statement - a philosophy disguised as a product, a rebellion against the dull rituals of self-maintenance.
MONTE, named for the climb, the summit, the idea that the ordinary can be reimagined. “It’s all part of the MONTE experience,” Edward’s likes to say - whether it’s running a fan-dance challenge or spilling coffee on his shirt. It’s his shorthand for leaning into life’s absurd theatre.
MONTE’s world isn’t glossy minimalism but something stranger: the surreal narrative of “The MONTE Man”, an alter ego named Walter, a wink to Mitty. Walter is a man who travels light and lives fully.
A man with an obsession for progress - the idea that every step, every attempt, should raise the bar a little higher. It’s not competition that drives him, but the satisfaction of bettering the last version of himself.
Endurance, Adventure and the Pursuit of Progress
Dunhill - Single Breasted Top Coat, £5,400, dunhill.com; Brunello Cucinelli - Shirt, £580, brunellocucinelli.com; Paul Smith - Tie, Stylist's Own, paulsmith.com
Edward’s doesn’t romanticise struggle, though he has known plenty of it. Instead, he treats hardship the way a craftsman treats friction - as the necessary resistance that makes polish possible.
When he talks about the SAS fan-dance challenge or the Yorkshire Three Peaks, it isn’t machismo that colours his tone; it’s gratitude. The miles are a kind of meditation - the pain a form of punctuation.
There’s also a particular Britishness to his manner - an understated humour that makes earnestness palatable. He’s quick to deflect praise with a smirk or a literary reference.
“The product itself - the result of three years of testing, failed formulations, and obsessive tweaking - feels less like a formula and more like a chronicle of patience...”
Ask him about success, and he’ll probably quote David Goggins rather than a business manual.
He carries that blend of self-awareness and adventure - half philosopher, half mischief-maker - that makes him difficult to categorise and impossible to forget.
He’s the sort to open an umbrella indoors without hesitation - not in defiance of superstition, but in ownership of it. Luck, after all, favours the ones who make their own weather.
Developing MONTE's Hair Products
Huntsman - Single Breasted Suit, £2,850, huntsmansavilerow.com; Brunello Cucinelli - Shirt, £460, brunellocucinelli.com; Huntsman - Tie, £175, huntsmansavilerow.com; Vacheron Constantin - Watch, £33,400, vacheron-constantin.com
MONTE’s has already drawn a huge loyal following. The product itself - the result of three years of testing, failed formulations, and obsessive tweaking - feels less like a formula and more like a chronicle of patience.
James often says that “time only rewards those who respect it.” MONTE, in that sense, is proof he doesn’t waste a second.
There’s a reason people trust him. He doesn’t market; he confides - less salesman than storyteller, inviting his followers not to buy into him but to walk alongside him.
It’s why MONTE doesn’t feel like a brand - it feels like a secret club, a brotherhood of men who’ve decided to give a damn about the details. Edward’s talks about men’s hair the way chefs talk about salt - as a medium for confidence, a subtle declaration of presence.
“Because what once felt unimaginable, as Edward’s would say, suddenly felt inevitable...”
And so Edward’s moves through life with the gentle absurdity of someone who knows that the line between chaos and art is mostly styling products.
He’s the sort of man who can quote Aurelius and Goggins in the same breath and make both sound like gospel.
The sort who turns flat hair into philosophy. The sort who wakes up one day and decides to summit - literally, metaphorically, follicularly.
MONTE may just be a brand, but like its founder, it gestures toward something bigger: the courage to become the man you’ve been daydreaming about. Because what once felt unimaginable, as Edward’s would say, suddenly felt inevitable.
