let’s be perfectly blunt

AMONG the few notable things about the recent Golden Globes was that so many women dispensed with long curling-ironed hair or chignons or whatever other frippery and just chopped it.

Saoirse Ronan had a lob, or “long bob”, styled by Ben Skervin. Claire Foy: mini-bob. Maya Rudolph: sharp medium-long bob. Lobs, too, for Lucy Boynton

(Bohemian Rhapsody) and Irina Shayk, a model.

This major bob moment comes exactly 100 years after an avalanche of women – 20 000 a week, according to the Women’s Improvement League – scandalised the world by cutting off their waist-long, painstakingly coiffed Gibson girl dos.

They chose instead an ear-grazing crop cut that until then had been worn only by wilful, freethinking renegades.

As if on cue at the start of 2019, this cheeky haircut has resumed its role as a take-no-prisoners rebuke to those long tresses, cascading below the shoulders, that have dominated the opening decades of the 21st century.

The style is defined by its blunt edge, often angled longer in front, reaching somewhere between the earlobe and the collarbone. A versatile cut, it runs the gamut from the rigidly geometric Vidal Sassoon-esque structured ‘60s bob to the contemporary textured bob, the asymmetrical bob and what is called “the dishevelled, undone, unkempt, whimsical French bob”.

And then there’s the “hedgelike topiary bob, much of which is cut freehand”, as engineered by Skervin for Tessa Thompson’s November 2018 Essencecover. Not to overlook the Isabella-Rossellini-in-the-’90s bob, “blunt, but worn messy”, said George Norwood, a stylist in London.

And definitely not to overlook “the most inspiring bob of all”, according to Durif: “the quintessential sleek, cheek-grazing bob” belonging to screen actress Louise Brooks, who “wore the look to perfection” in her 1929 film, Prix de Beauté.

“There’s a bob for everyone,” Durif said. And it suits all ages. “You see an older woman walk into a room wearing a short, chopped, graphic bob – already she’s won your confidence,” Iles said.

The Middle Ground

For those attracted to the bob’s bluntness but lacking the nerve to go jaw-length short, as well as for the multitudes who insist on keeping at least a rudimentary ponytail (even a stump), there’s a shoulder-length variant, popular for several seasons now.

Emma Stone, Jennifer Lawrence, Mila Kunis, Megan Fox, Kim Kardashian and models Alexa Chung and Emily Ratajkowski have all been seen with lobs.

Roche, the industry educator, isn’t having any of it. A purist, she called the lob “a cop-out. A lob falls to the collarbone, which is definitely below the shoulders! A bob, any bob, has to hit above the shoulders. It’s the space between the shoulders and the jaw that lets the bob look sharp and cool”.

Making a course correction, the latest bob permutation is the mini-bob, so ultra short that Tran called it “the ear bob”. Already it has been spotted on the aptly named Emily Blunt (just call her Mary Loppins), models Hailey Bieber and Taylor LaShae.

What about colour

“Colour plays a major role in how a bob looks,” said Ben Skervin.

He is one of many stylists who welcome bold special effects on this hairdo: graduated colour, for instance, and a technique known as slicing, which involves lightening full slices of hair rather than using the standard weaving technique in highlighting.

“With multiple colours sliced in, you get more dimension, more contouring,” said Marie Sigismondi of Pierre Michel Salon.

“The use of colour can make a bob look fabulous and fierce,” Sigismondi added. Her preference is for a darker top section and lighter colour underneath. “That, rather than highlighting, gives dimension and variation.” And for a subtle but edgy detail, she darkens a crescent of hair at the nape of the neck, where the bob is shortest.