I’ve discovered the secret to a low-maintenance, flattering hairstyle
In 2007, just as we were emerging from a period of iron-flat, straight hair, Alexa Chung burst onto our screens with a beguilingly different, tousled-looking do – a modern throwback to the wash-and-go-styles of the mid-70s. It seemed almost revolutionary.
“Like most hairdressers back then, I was trained to cut hair from wet, in a very technical way,” says George Northwood, the man responsible for the Chung Bob and countless other controlled but undone hairdos (Rachel Weisz, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Princess Maria-Olympia of Greece and countless fashion and beauty editors). “It may have been accomplished, but often it required a lot of styling to make it look good.”
Northwood and Chung were back together at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, collaborating on her red carpet looks and coming up with remarkably similar styles, if longer, to those early, natural-looking ones. The timelessness of them – and the tenth anniversary of his first salon on Wells Street, near Oxford Circus (he has another in Shoreditch, with plans afoot for a third in west London) ? gave him the impetus to come up with another ten hairstyles for different face shapes and hair textures. Surely, these will stand the test of time as effortlessly as the original Alexa bob.
Like the rings on a tree, hairstyles can date us. The Rachel, one of the most popular cuts of the 90s, looks almost quaintly period now. Yet when it was launched, in 1995, it looked so fresh and unaffected it seemed a contender for a timeless style. Who knew it would age so badly?
All of us – had we read the signs properly. All that puffiness on top and exaggerated “blown-out” effect (we’d just discovered the salon blow dry in the mid-‘90s and root lift products were taking off big time) were bound to grow stale.
A few years after the Rachel, a more dramatic, side-parted, androgynous style beckoned, courtesy of one of the breakout hit films of 1998, Sliding Doors. The Gwyneth was a late 90s take on 1988’s Linda (Evangelista) which looked remarkably similar to an early 1980s short but floppy full fringed crop sported by Rupert Everett in Another Country which was released in 1984.
Everett, Paltrow and Evangelista wore soft yet sculpted variations on the Eton Crop, a cut first seen in the 1920s on schoolboys and rapidly taken up by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s beautiful people. You could still wear The Gwyneth/Rupert/Linda /Eton Crop today. In fact, I’ve spotted a number of them on the catwalks recently.
So how to pick a Sliding Doors from a Rachel? The first imperative of any new cut is that it should suit you. Sounds obvious but it’s all too easy to get seduced by the wrong style. Second, it must fit into your lifestyle and be compatible with your hair type. There’s no point choosing mid-length, beachy Sienna Miller waves if your hair is dead straight/curly/wispy and you’re not prepared to put the time in with extensions and tongs.
Even if you’re happy to spend hours tending your hair, a glance back on the past three decades of styles that stand the test of time shows they all have one thing in common. Alexa Chung’s and Katie Holmes’s choppy bobs (now being championed by Ayo Edebiri from The Bear, Hailey Bieber and countless acolytes), Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michelle Williams’ pixie cuts; Jennifer Garner’s blunt shoulder length sweep or Meryl Streep’s ponytails all proved one point. “The less you fuss and primp a cut, the better it ages,” says Northwood.
Among his ten new signature cuts are the Perriand, a chin length, classic wave for finer hair, that he cut on Olympia of Greece, inspired by the famously fuss-free mid-century French architect Charlotte Perriand. Then, there’s the Chob, (for thicker hair), a play on that first Alexa bob, which was designed to be dried and hand-scrunched. He has the Wild, a fringed do he conceived for curly hair; The Jane, a riff on Jane Birkin’s bed-head locks and The Midi, a precise shoulder-skimming bob which, he says he came up with to help women who are edging their way from long hair to shorter.
All share an overall softness and lots of shorter, face-framing, choppy layers that belie their overall simplicity. It’s those flattering layers at the front that accentuate cheekbones, trim jawlines and exemplify Northwood’s approach to future-proofing. The fact that all of them can be maintained, away from the salon, with minimal to zero blow drying, is another major leap forward.
The low maintenance dividend means there’s less temptation to fiddle around with these cuts. “Over-styled hair, like over-accessorised outfits, is very aging,” says Northwood. They’re also healthier for your follicles. Straightening irons are at least twice as hot as dryers, but even the latter can parch hair. “Clients who don’t blow dry their hair for a few months usually see a big improvement in its condition,” he notes.
Northwood isn’t saying we should go cold turkey on products. One of the biggest advances in hair since The Rachel is the number of lightweight, volumising and shaping formulations that minimalise the need for heat appliances. Some of the best include Sam McKnight’s barely-there, but highly efficient textured Sam McKnight’s Cool Girl hairspray (￡27), Northwood’s own deeply cleansing and moisturising shampoos (his entire range is called Undone), Redken’s Matifying Powder Grip (￡17.14) and Hershesons’ excellent Almost Everything Cream (from ￡14).
As someone who’s never fully mastered the art of the self-administered blow dry, I’m particularly taken by this low-interventionist approach. Inspired by Northwood, I decided to let my hair air dry during a subsequent fortnight in Greece, just using his moisturising cream for smoothing, shaping and volumising (￡15). Upshot: I’ve realised all that blow drying I’ve been doing for years isn’t necessary. The frizz has gone, and the shine is back. Honestly, it feels like a surprisingly big win.
I like the way he’s thought about different bone structures, hair textures and ages with these ten cuts. They’re uncontrived, but they also pack some attitude. The Jane, with its unexpectedly precise-looking fringe and contrasting cheekbone-lifting layers is, he says, “the way to wear long hair when you’re older” .
But I also wonder whether all that flattering framing around the face won’t, in the end, mean some of these styles date – although maybe not as much as The Rachel.
“Every style will need tweaking over the years,” Northwood says. “A million TikTok trends will come and go, but I do think this is the overarching direction hair is heading – easy going, face contouring and untortured.”
Amen to that.
