When Summer Rolls Around, Short Hair Just Won’t Cut It
In case you haven’t noticed, “crinkled, crunched, Hollywood hair is dead.” A hair stylist named Laurence Roberts says so.
And he’s not the only one. Some big names in the beauty business are telling their customers to cancel all haircuts, cool it with the curlers and count on a few months of growing pains. By the summer of ‘86, those who didn’t will wish they had.
Sleek styles that stretch to the shoulders, or even an inch or so below, are setting the new standard. “The look is away from short, high, big-volume hair to something flatter, with fringy bangs that accent the eyes,” Roberts, of the Tovar salon in Beverly Hills, reports.
Hallmark of Many Women
It’s a silhouette inspired by Jean Shrimpton, the British fashion model from the ‘60s, whose wispy and winsome way with shoulder-length hair became a hallmark of many women. As often as stylists today mention Shrimpton as their muse, however, they breathe the name of Brigitte Bardot.
To recap the coiffure contrasts: “One look was narrow, slender and flat. But the other was wilder and very sexy,” says Joseph Kendall of the Joseph Martin salon in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. Either is OK, but he likes Bardot’s way.
The main difference between long hair then and now, Kendall says, is that modern styles are softer.
“Sixties hair looked flat and solid,” he recalls. “Now, hair is layered across the front and worn forward, toward the face, not back.”
In the same revivalist spirit, longer hair for men is coming back into fashion. Cristophe, the Belgium-born owner of the Cristophe Salon in Beverly Hills, points out that the style swept Paris and Milan more than a year ago. For California customers, he refers to it as the surfer look, and he wears it himself.
Men in the entertainment industry and the arts make the best candidates for long hair, he finds, explaining: “Whether a man can wear longer hair depends on what he does in business. It’s still taboo for conservative office situations.”
For women, as with hair styles past, vintage fashion is influencing the trend toward longer tresses. In recent seasons, New York designer Stephen Sprouse and Paris designer Thierry Mugler have excavated every ‘60s silhouette from micro-miniskirts to hip-hugging bell bottoms and given them an ‘80s twist.
Runway models wearing the lean silhouettes topped them with shoulder-length hair styles and brow-grazing bangs. When their own hair was not enough, they added hairpieces for a longer, flatter look. All because body-clinging outfits look off balance with big, bouffant hairdos. The opposite is true as well and may strike a serious blow to the billowy, multilayered clothes that were popular last summer.
“It’s very important to relate hair to fashion,” notes Yuki of the Yuki salon in Los Angeles. “Women who want to wear longer, fuller hair should remember: You can’t wear it with full, oversize clothes. The effect is no shape at all, no contrasts. Just a big ball.”
Growing accustomed to the care of long hair is an aspect of the trend women may not welcome. Recently, “two clients came into the salon for 45-minute lessons on how to blow-dry long hair,” says Roberts, of the Tovar salon.
Once they master it, he says, women will need about 25 minutes to style long hair. He tells them to start by brushing all the hair forward over the head and blowing it dry from the back to the front. Then, he says, style the shorter layers around the face.
Aside from women without the patience for this sort of thing, there are others who should ride out the trend. Stylists agree that very curly and very fine hair textures aren’t enhanced by length. Curly hair turns big and bushy; fine hair looks stringy and limp. For these textures, a mid-length is the maximum.
Round faces and short, thick necks present other problems. To accommodate them, long hair worn in upswept styles works best.
Age limits, however, do not apply. “In general whether a woman can wear long hair depends on her personality, not her age,” Cristophe says. “Bardot still looks pretty with hers, and she is in her fifties.”
He says there is a knack to maintaining long hair. To help prevent dryness and split ends, he recommends brushing it twice a day for five minutes with a natural-bristle brush. In summer months, he says, work a natural oil into the ends of long hair as a sunscreen. (He suggests coconut oil or a lightweight vegetable oil and tells women to leave it on their hair overnight once or twice a month to condition it.)
Long hair should be trimmed once a month, he says. While growing it, wait two to three months between trims. During in-between stages, he recommends a light body permanent, on the roots of hair only to give it definition.
“There is quite a difference between long and short hair,” Christophe says. “Long hair enhances a woman’s femininity.”
