2021 may have been the year that Meghan Markle landed a spot on Time Magazine's list of "100 Most Influential People," but her beauty routine has been influencing us for nearly half a decade. In 2017, her Charlotte Tilbury wedding lipstick caused nude lipstick sales to soar. According to an analytical report by the beauty experts at RY, to date, there have been 88.5 million articles written about her hair, makeup, and skin-care secrets (which, it's worth noting, is 10 million more than Kim Kardashian), making hers the most widely covered regimen in the world. So it's no surprise that I took one look at the elegant waves she's wearing on the Time cover and just had to know: How did she get her hair to look like that.

How to recreate Markle's hairstyle

To find out, I asked L'Oréal Paris celebrity hairstylist Jonathan Colombini, who told me that copying her tousled, textured look is easier than you might expect. "This style requires some texture and grit," he says, which means you may not want to try it on the day that you wash your hair.

1. Start with a boar bristle round brush, and use it to blow dry your hair out without any volumizing products, which Colombini says will help "recreate movement."

2. Next section your hair in quadrants—two in the back from the center of your hairline down to the nape of your neck, and two in the front from your crown toward each ear—then break those quadrants down into smaller sections.

3. Wrap these individual sections around a 2-inch curling barrel, allowing the ends to stick out, and continue rotating the iron in the same direction that the hair is wrapped.

4. To finish things off, use a strong-hold, shine-inducing hairspray, like L’Oreal Paris Elnett Hairspray ($13), to lock in the look.

5. Et voila—with a few twists of an iron and a $13 spritz, your hair can be cover-ready, too.