Like so many things in life, it boils down to a commitment issue. Are you ready to go under the knife—or should we say scissors—daring your hairdresser to chop a fringe high above your eyebrows, quelling the words strangling your throat, the voice that says, It’ll take years to grow these things out! Or do you grit your teeth, shut your eyes, and dream that when you open them you will swing around in the barber’s chair looking like Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina?
Fraught and terrifying as the prospect of cutting shorties might be, the micro-mini bang is undeniably having a moment. Sometimes they skew edgy and subversive, like Bella Hadid’s spiky and gelled wisps for Marc Jacobs’s latest eyewear campaign, or more classic, like Emily Ratajkowski’s and Olivia Rodrigo’s trompe l’oeil fringe for the Met Gala, a choppy, extra-abbreviated hack that made a radical statement—if only for one night.
I am, I say modestly, exactly the right person to tell you about all this. It took me years—decades—for my bangs to creep up to the lofty heights they now occupy. (Before I took the plunge, I used to stand in front of a mirror and pin my hair up in an attempt to mimic the bangs of the incredibly glamorous Loulou de la Falaise. This method does not give any indication of how you will actually look with bangs.)
I may have clung to my current hairdo—a cross between, say, a wannabe Louise Brooks and a frankly dowdy 1950s matron (paging Mamie Eisenhower!)—but I am not unaware of how controversial the style can be. When the iconic model-singer Karen Elson recently posted a pic on her Instagram sporting her signature russet bob with mini bangs—she was resplendent on the Gucci runway in Seoul—her caption read: “To get bangs or not to get bangs, that is the question?” It engendered a slew of responses from fans wrestling with the same dilemma.
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The guy who is responsible for my own bangs, trimmed rain or shine every five weeks, is Joey Silvestera, the proprietor of The Blackstones Collective, a salon in the East Village. When I ask him why he thinks so many people are lately embracing this challenging coiffure, he posits that it might be part of a larger ’90s revival, the same movement that is causing very young adults to wax rhapsodic about the halcyon days of DKNY and swoon with envy over Uma Thurman’s raven bob in Pulp Fiction, and may well be responsible for the Broadway show Once Upon a One More Time, with a score by Britney Spears.
Silvestera believes that after a long reign, curtain bangs—those fluttery Brigitte Bardot affairs—may finally be exhausted. “All you can do is just go shorter, opening up the face.” But he admits that weeny bangs are “a hundred percent not for everyone.… If someone never had a bang, I’ve talked them into taking baby steps.”
But even baby steps are never easy. Do you want a blunt, heavy geometric line, or something homemade and delightfully chewed-up? Do you want to emulate the iconic midcentury pinup Bettie Page, or channel the feathery elegance of The White Lotus’s Simona Tabasco? Or maybe you would prefer the rounded Moon Pie fringe popularized by the late Vidal Sassoon? (A deeply interesting person, Sassoon, in addition to masterminding his namesake haircut, was a fearless political activist—a British newspaper once referred to him as an “anti-fascist warrior-hairdresser.”)
Sometimes the muse alights from strange places. Travis Speck, a senior stylist at Suite Caroline in Manhattan’s SoHo, cites a print of Gainsborough’s famous Blue Boy that hung in his grandma’s house, as an early influence in his professional education. (And indeed, that subject does sport a Mick Jagger–worthy fringe.)
Blue Boy and Bettie Page notwithstanding, it has happened that a hapless victim realizes all too late that he or she was perhaps not the best candidate for this extreme makeover. Blackstone’s Silvestera admits that until these strands hit the eyebrows, there isn’t much he can do, but once they cross that Rubicon, he can employ a passel of trade secrets to ameliorate the situation. So go ahead, let those clippers glide across your forehead. And remember, in the worst-case scenario there is the humble barrette, the plebeian headband. After all, bangs may be short, but life is long.
Fashion Editor: Tabitha Simmons. Hair, Panos Papandrianos; Makeup, Romy Soleimani.
Produced by Lola Production. Set Design: Cooper Vasquez. Photographed at Colette. Details, see In This Issue.