My pandemic hair is out of control. Should I get a bob?
Everybody’s doing it, why don’t you?
Q: “I’m loving the look of people coming out of lockdown (you know, elsewhere, where they are starting up life again) with their freshly cut bobs. I’m even thinking about bangs to go with. Are bob haircuts going to be big?”
Scrolling brainlessly through my phone like a chicken pawing at the dirt, I was startled out of my daze by a haircut reveal last weekend. I find the Canadian-in-Hollywood actress Malin Akerman appealing at any time, and had a great time interviewing her for the Kit last year about the feisty indie movie she produced. But it was her crisp new bob that caught my breath that day: so refreshing!
Hair is clearly an emotional trigger: I had an actual tear well up in my eyes stopping by my own hair salon for some product I probably don’t need but ordered (also mindlessly) in a fit of hair despair.
The barely repressible urge to lob off the messy bun piled on top of my head at all times this past year hits, oh, three times a day. One of the mundane but enduring images for me through this pandemic will be sweeping the bathroom floor after shearing my husband’s head, because lawyers don’t tend to want to look like mad scientists on Zoom.
So it was uplifting to get to speak with Nicole Pidherny on the subject of the bob haircut on your behalf. Pidherny is the founder of Pomme Salon, which has two outposts in the Okanagan Valley in B.C., and a thriving online product and consultation business, a fortuitous pivot that took shape over the past year. She does the locks of West Coast celebs such as broadcaster and lifestyle guru Jillian Harris and her team, as well as actorsongwriter Taylor Hickson.
Hair has trended long for a long time now, Pidherny says, even before COVID turned us all into Rapunzels. So therefore long hair feels like yesterday’s news. Shags started infiltrating hair mood boards.
But now people want even more change. Clients, she says, “need to feel something fresh, something different, this year much more than a normal spring,” she says. “Because so much is out of our control, we can at least change our look with a new haircut.”
Pidherny says she and her team and her clients all find inspiration on Instagram (good feeds to keep an eye on for emerging trend waves include @maneaddicts and @hairbrained_official). “Everything is reminiscent of late ’90s, early 2000s,” she says.
“That was when everybody had a bob.” It sure was: I remember shooting fashion spreads in that era, watching supermodels shearing off their long locks like a mass haircutting event. Vogue even ran a cover line that said, like a news announcement: “Another model cuts her hair!”
Yes, nostalgia for that period (Britney! Paris!) is hot. So too are the colour trends from that era.
“People today think they invented chunky highlights,” says Pidherny. But what the bob brings to mind most, to me anyway, is the Roaring Twenties. There is a deep yearning for a societal release valve like what occurred in the 1920s for the 2020s as we emerge from this lockdown blur. Imagine the gin-soaked, sweaty crush of bodies in a speakeasy: What haircut could be more evocative of that fantasy?
Pidherny points out the difference between the modern bob and the bobs of Louise Brooks, Josephine Baker, Coco Chanel and the characters in “The Great Gatsby.”
“That was what I call a bulky bob,” says Pidherny, where it was literally chopped straight, in a barber shop, “and fell in one spot.” Today’s bob is much more flattering, tweaked and customized to the individual’s face and hair texture. It works for any age — the most famous modern bob is on Anna Wintour, who has carried the style with hauteur over many decades — and any hair type. “The bob is always ‘in’ fashion,” says Pidherny. “You are never going to regret it.”
That Vidal Sassoon straight 1960s bob with sharp edges has been updated with a more layered, softer feel. “The look now is air-dried, textured,” she says. “It might have curtain bangs, some layering at the sides; definitely it has more movement and is designed to work with your natural wave or curl.”
You do need to be aware of the maintenance it will take, though, she says. “If you are used to five minutes of hair care, this may be 30 minutes.” Product, she says is key. Pidherny sports her own bob, but relies on professional-grade product to help her get the look she wants. “I’ve always had really crappy hair,” she says. “But you’d never know it, because I use the best product.”
She says a salon’s job is to educate the customer about what styles might work best on them and how to achieve the look at home.
“If you bring in a picture of a celebrity on your Pinterest board, you need to realize often that look is really short. When it has been styled and photographed, you don’t realize it falls just below the ears.
That’s very short, in real life.” Bobs can fall anywhere from the ears to the collarbone, so there is a right length out there for you.
When our salons finally reopen in this part of the country, I have a hopeful image of the cutting room floor, all that extra emotional baggage being swept away, like so much extra hair.