Hairstyles

HOT COMB While combinations of metal and heat have been used since ancient times to manipulate the structure of hair, it wasn’t until the 19th century that commercial hot combs became widely available. Crafted from metal and heated over a stove, a hot comb or pressing...

FEATHERED HAIR Wispy, layered and ultra-light, feather cuts have their roots in the 1950s when the technique was used to bring movement and texture into naturally straight, short hair. Feathered styles enjoyed a renaissance in the seventies when Farrah Fawcett became...

CURLY BANGS One of the biggest trends to emerge post-Pandemic has been cuts that work with natural texture, with curly bangs enjoying a long overdue renaissance along with other 70s and 80s styles that work for curls, like the mullet and shag. Popular for men and...

Named for the trend-setting Marquise de Pompadour - mistress of King Louis XV in eighteenth century France - the pompadour was originally a style that involved frizzing the hair all over and wrapping it around padding to create a swept-up, voluminous style. The look...

Hair cuts are heavy with symbolism about fresh starts and life changes and there’s perhaps no better example than the big chop; a term used by those with Black hair to describe cutting off their chemically-treated lengths to transition from relaxed or permed hair to...

Popularised by Lucille Ball in the 1950s, the poodle cut sees its wearer brush their curls (natural or faux) into a giant pouff on top of their head – with the goal of very much resembling a best in show prize-winning poodle. As with most hair trends, the style is...

Forget balayage for sun-kissed colour, the 90s way to achieve natural-looking highlights was a colourful plastic bottle full of peroxide. Sun-In gave a generation of teenagers their first experience with going blonde – or attempting to. The science behind Sun-In is...

Nothing says Sloane ranger like a thick, velvet headband – and when it comes to Sloane style, there’s only one authority; The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook. Co-author Peter York told the Guardian that headbands appealed to Sloanes because "they looked like they were...

No heat, no problem. People have been creating texture without the use of hot tools for centuries; from ancient African cultures using sulfurous mud to shape and set the hair in curls like an early permanent wave to rag curling and its lockdown reinvention; TikTok’s...

The classic vision of a full, rounded Afro is intrinsically linked to the Black Power movement and a rejection of Western standards of beauty amongst the Black community in 1960s America. When the Afro became popular amongst predominantly younger men and women, there...