Bangs HIt It Big

This season, foreheads are for fringing. With short, short bangs like Louise Brooks’ that evoke the 1920’s flapper style or long, long bangs like Marlo Thomas’ in the quintessentially mod ‘60s TV show “That Girl.”

“We get quite a lot of requests for shorty bangs, for baby bangs,” said Mitchell Field, owner of Antenna, a progressive hair salon in Reseda.

Antenna also gets a lot requests for longer bangs. “A lot of people are wearing them real blunt, long and heavy,” said Michelle Schreiber, another Antenna hair stylist.

Professionals say both looks are hot on high school campuses and among the art-and-intellect coffeehouse crowd.

Tamra Boltjes, 22, of Northridge prefers the short version. “It’s like the 1920’s; it brings back a romantic essence,” she said.

Heather Carey, 19, of Woodland Hills, who is opting for the straight-across-the-forehead look after trying to crow out a previous crop of bangs, called her look “classic.”

“If I don’t have bangs, I feel like a housewife, like I don’t have any style to my hair,” Carey said.

“Every cut either has baby bangs or right across the eyebrow. Some people wear slicked back hair with baby bangs around the forehead. We have a lot of clients with bangs,” said Cathy Mansoury of Cassandra 2000, a Tarzana salon.

Field says he lops the locks off female foreheads about six times each week. And certainly, the trend is spurred by looks reflected in today’s movies, fashions and pop music. Some said the craze for short bangs took off 2 years ago, when Jonathan Demme brought that off-the-wall heroine Lulu (Melanie Griffith) to the silver screen in his whimsical movie “Something Wild.”

As for the longer fringe look, it’s part and parcel of fashion’s fascination with the 1960’s. Long bangs have turned up on avant-garde fashion models and members of the Bangles, a pop band formerly called the Bangs because of theie mood look.