Seasonal Crops : Four Trend-Setters Design Hair Styles Suited to Spring’s Short Fashions

FOR SPRING, experts say, the word to remember for hair styles is controlled. No crazy curls, no crazy cuts. Why? Skirts may be the answer. Yes, skirts.

Although long skirts may be back in the fall, short skirts are featured in almost every designer’s spring line. “It took short skirts about a year to catch on with women who can wear them,” says Beverly Hills hair stylist Allen Edwards. “Now all these women are coming in to cut their long hair.” They realize that long hair looks out of proportion with over-the-knee skirts, he says. “The balance is off if there’s too much hair on top.”

Donna Karan, who is showing both long and short styles, says that a soft, controlled bob suits either skirt length. And L.A.’s Leon Max, who has shown abbreviated skirts for several seasons, controls the hair by keeping it close to the scalp with tiny, gelled tails.

Michael Gordon, owner of New York’s Bumble + Bumble salon, adds: “Today’s clothes call for the kind of hair Katharine Hepburn wears: close to the head, controlled, but casual.”

Edwards says control is achieved with short, geometric haircuts. The new do’s may be angled and straight, but they are not the blunt bobs that Vidal Sassoon showed in 1963.

“We are using razor scissors to create fractured ends that are softer, wispier and more feminine than we saw 25 years ago,” he says.

Beverly Hills stylist Angelo di Biase of the Umberto salon says that a blunt cut won’t achieve the controlled look for long hair. “To have long hair that is one length means nothing. Today it’s important to have shape around the face, no matter what the length.”

In London, stylists at Trevor Sorbie’s Covent Garden salon are exerting control in unpredictable ways. Perhaps the most unusual is with flat curls. Once the hair is set with a curling iron or rollers, the curls are flattened to the head with a hair net and sprayed. “The result is a style that’s close to the scalp on top. It can be a very aggressive look, or very soft,” Sorbie explains. He says that young girls in London are copying ‘70s styles that he describes as “controlled bouffants and hard-line pageboys.”

Sorbie, who tends to the locks of rocker Annie Lennox, says hairdressing is definitely taking its cues from fashion. “The short skirts made a difference. Fad fashion always does.”