FASHION / FALL IN THE CITY : HAIRSTYLE : Straighten Up and Curl Tight

How can a woman update her hairstyle this fall? When trendsetters get hold of that question they all say the same thing:

Check out Geena Davis’ hair, on the cover of the September Vanity Fair.

Davis wears a headful of just-off-the-roller sausage curls. Those chunky ringlets are definitely having a moment. Annette Bening wore them too, in a shorter variation, for the Academy Awards show last spring.

But then, the style soothsayers zip off in another direction. They look back to the mid-’60s, when cover girl Jean Shrimpton wore long, straight hair, parted in the middle, for a hippie-dippie effect that is showing up again for fall.

Conveniently, wearing one style today doesn’t rule out wearing the other tonight. The softly curled look works on layered or unlayered cuts. And, sausage curls as well as hippie-feather do’s adapt to most hair lengths.

Natural Curly Locks who want the Shrimpton effect might find themselves learning how to use a gadget last seen in her era. A few strokes with a straightening iron can stretch curly hair straight.

For a less than stick-straight effect, and for all the sausage curl looks, plenty of stylists have been showing women how to use rollers. Not the electric models, but the old-fashioned versions.

Umberto Savone, owner of the Beverly Hills salon, prefers big plastic rollers to the newer, popular Velcro type, for setting curls. “You can smooth the hair on them very tightly and get high sheen and silkiness when you remove them.”

On some hair textures, such as Asian or black hair, even the straightest styles require roller setting to get the straight look with a bit of softness. “Use a straightening iron first, then set on big rollers for just a few minutes--heated rollers are fine, but just leave them in for five to 10 minutes,” says Savone.

Shine is a coveted quality this fall. To get the maximum strength on both curly and straight styles, Cristophe (whose eponymous Beverly Hills salon now counts Hillary Clinton as a client) uses the hair care product, Emplace, by Henri Mastey. It’s a setting gel that adds sparkle.

For the Shrimpton look, says Cristophe, “use it on wet hair and then straighten the hair with a brush and blow dryer.”

For the Geena Davis effect, “set the hair dry, spray on the product, and dry using a hand-held dryer or a bonnet.”

Some of the new sleek styles are reminiscent of the geometric cuts Vidal Sassoon introduced in the ‘60s. “Rather than being cut absolutely blunt, the ends are slightly layered,” says Tim Hartley, the London-based creative director of Vidal Sassoon International salons.

The result is a slight bevel that makes the hair look thicker at the ends, like a paint brush.

At Pasadena’s Ravissant salons, stylist Fredy Arboleda swings with ease from Shrimpton to Davis dos. But he likes the soft curl look better, because it relates to one leading fashion trend for women.

“Especially with menswear, romantic curls are a lot less severe and not quite as threatening,” he says.

He also notes that curls are easier to maintain than straight hair. “For one thing, you don’t have to wash your hair every day, or wield a blow dryer,” he says.

For another, you don’t have to comb roller-set styles. In fact, blending the hair to eliminate the definition of the rollers ruins the look.

“You comb it completely with your fingers,” says Arboleda of Ravissant, where tumbling curls are a current favorite with clients.

Beverly Hills’ Savone recently sent a client home with rollers still in her hair.

“The important part is the smooth set. Then the client just removes the rollers and finger combs it the way she likes it,” he notes. “The curls stay in longer that way, too.”