THE SHORT-CUT REVOLUTION: DI’S FLICK IS BACK

CuTTING my hair, says Michael Van Clarke, reminds him of the 1980s. Those were the days when he was last inundated with customers wanting a proper short cut, like Sheena Easton or even Princess Di.

In the decades since, long hair has reigned supreme, and those who did go short, generally went for a bob.

But I am in the vanguard of a new short-cut revolution, Van Clarke believes. As the world opens up after a year stuck at home, I’m not the only woman who wants a seismic change in style, he says.

Like many of the former flowerpower women who beat a path to his door in the 1980s, I’m going from long hair to short for the first time in years. My hair has been long for the past two decades, and I only had occasional periods with a short cut before that. Every time I’ve been to the hairdresser this century, I’ve come out with the same hairstyle. Not this time.

Van Clarke, who followed his brother Nicky Clarke into hairdressing, adding the ‘Van’ from his middle name ‘Evangelus’, cuts dry, which, he maintains, is the only way to achieve a ‘sculpted’ look.

‘It’s how to see the hair in 3D, which is what you need to do,’ he explains.

I’m very taken with the look modelled by Gillian Anderson in the Netflix hit Sex Education, but Michael says I should be wary of going too severe. Instead he’ll give me a softer take on the Anderson trim — more Emma Corrin from The Crown. Princess Diana circa 2021, in fact.

To be honest, I hadn’t realised how much I needed this haircut until Michael got busy with his scissors. The shorn hair that slithered onto my shoulders and began to pile up on the floor, made me feel like a caterpillar shedding its skin.

We’ve all been hidden away in our cocoons for so long, and like everyone else, I’m bursting to emerge into the sunlight and start living again. My newly short hair is my emblem, my promise to myself that I’m going to make this new beginning count.

Like everyone else, I’m not the person I was that 12-month lifetime ago; like everyone else, I want to go forward with lessons learnt, griefs acknowledged, gratitude endorsed. I want to be humbler, and I also feel braver — and in a small way, having a radical haircut is a symbol of that.

Most of all, though, I wanted the feeling I got when I walked out of the salon and into the sunshine.

The weather might be sharp and cold, but it was the brightness of the light that gave me a visceral feeling of spring after the lonely, dark, sad days of winter — and the novelty of the chill on my newly-bare neck only heightened the thrill of the moment.

As I headed hopefully along the sunny pavement towards the post-Covid world we’ve all been looking forward to, I felt two stone lighter and ten years younger.