Style: The ‘good look’ hairstyle

2009/11/20

Move over “Rachel”, Blake Lively’s extra-long, ultra-shiny, low-layered cut is the new hairstyle that has women young and old sauntering to the salon, writes SARAH MASLIN NIR
ON an average day at his Robert G. Salon in the West Village in Manhattan, New York, the United States, Robert Gioria fields a variety of requests.

One woman wants her brown hair blonde, another wants her straight hair shaggy.

As different as these requests may seem, Gioria finds they are often generated by the same goal: to have Blake Lively’s hair.

In the 1990s, there was the “Rachel”, named after Jennifer Aniston’s character on the TV show Friends.

Before the Rachel, it was the “Farrah” — the flipped out, flouncy hairstyle worn by Farrah Fawcett.

In the 1990s, there was the “Rachel”, named after Jennifer Aniston’s character on the TV show Friends.

Now, it’s Lively, the 22-year-old actress who plays Serena van der Woodsen on Gossip Girl, whose tresses are coveted: extra long, ultra-shiny blonde with a mussed-up tussle frolicking through the ends.

“It’s aspirational hair,” said John Barrett, whose salon sits atop Bergdorf Goodman in Midtown Manhattan.

Clients, Barrett said, “don’t just want the hair, they want the life.”

In the last six months, Lively’s cut — an exercise in studied dishevelment — has been his most requested.

“I didn’t really realise the extent of it,” Lively said of her hair’s popularity, though she had an inkling: fashion forerunners like Vogue staffers routinely approach her at events and fixate on her hair, she said.

“That’s always kind of odd, but unbelievably flattering,” she said.

In fact, a Google search of “Blake Lively Hair” produces 713,000 results, many of them “how to’s.”

Nuri Yurt, of Toka Salon on Madison Avenue, whose clients include several former first ladies, said that almost every one of his customers with long hair now asks for a style similar to Lively’s low-layered cut.

“Her hair right now is a big trend,” Yurt said, but “if anybody can handle it — that’s a question mark.”

The look, he said, only works for tall, slim women.

Though Lively plays a teenager in Gossip Girl, her hairstyle appeals across demographics, said Laura Kennedy, 44, a client of Barrett’s who got the cut.

While it fits Lively’s age, it also “kind of transcends,” Kennedy said.

“It’s a good look,” she added.

At the Bumble and bumble in Bloomingdale’s, Michael Wilson, a stylist, said that more than half his customers ask for the “Textured and Tousled, or Curled and Swirled” styling (US$35 or RM123), a departure from the pancake-flat ironed look prominent in recent seasons.

It is a request he attributes to Lively’s hairstyle.

At SuperCuts on St. Marks Place, Cathy Lynn, a hairstylist, said that while few customers ask for it by name, Blake’s long-layered look dominates.

Recently, Lynn said, it was Victoria Beckham’s bob or pin-straight hair.

“I was born with a head full of hair,” said Lively, who maintains her look is mostly natural.

Aside from frequently applying a conditioning masque, her stylist on the set of Gossip Girl, Jennifer Johnson, creates the unraveling curls by letting her hair dry in a simple chignon.

Lively, who said she doesn’t have extensions, says she has her blonde hair touched up by her colourist, Rona O’Connor, every six months.

“Trouble is, some girls are born with amazing hair,” said Wilson of Bumble and bumble, adding that hair like Lively’s “sets an unrealistic expectation”.

“It looks accidental, but actually it takes work,” Barrett said.

For those who haven’t won the genetic lottery, Barrett adds removable extensions of human hair similar to a fall (US$1,200 to US$1,500 per piece) and recommends a litany of treatments to maintain Lively’s look.

Not including the extensions, just the cut, which costs around US$500 at his salon, conditioning treatments and heat styling tally up to around US$1,200 a month.

A small price to pay, some would say, to look like a star. — NYT