3 Styles of Bangs That Can Totally Change Your Look

By Allure Staff

A small snip here, a smaller one there — dramatic new bangs don’t necessarily involve dramatic cuts. For our August 2017 issue, which we officially dubbed our our annual "hair issue," dedicated to everything and anything hair related, we asked hairstylist DJ Quintero of the Serge Normant at John Frieda Salon in New York City to prove the theory.
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A SHARP FOCUS

To take model Arselajda Buraku’s bangs (above) from simple and straightforward to a look, Quintero trimmed away all the soft edges and created blunt lines out of her tousled layers. The effect is precise and smooth (especially after getting a flatiron involved). Quintero left very little hair on the floor, but the impact is substantial.

A SOFT TOUCH

You have curly hair, so you won’t cut bangs? What are you, 1986? Those days are over. Models like Mica Argañaraz and Alanna Arrington — and, now, Ines Lopez — have demonstrated that curly bangs can be cool, sexy, even easy. The key is to keep it simple. Quintero pulled just a few curls from Lopez’s hairline and snipped each individually. “After I wet her hair, I pulled those pieces down to the tip of her nose and cut there,” he says. “Curly hair will become shorter when dried.” (If you’re still skittish, cut pieces at mouth or chin length.) Quintero then dried the whole head with a diffuser, and “once I saw Ines’s curls in their natural state, I shaped them more so they blended with the rest of her layers.” The effect is sultry, without the commitment of a thick, heavy fringe.
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A SIDE PROJECT

They’re the bangs for the noncommittal...and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The long swoop will blend in or grow out without much effort or time — although you probably won’t want it to because, well, look at how flattering and seductive this is. Quintero gave model Joyce Swenson bangs in the shape of an inverted V, with the shortest piece right above the nose, and kept the edges wispy. “Joyce flips her hair back and forth a lot, so cutting it down the middle allows her to wear the bangs on either side,” he says. That symmetry also allows for option number three: Softly divide them down the middle for a sexy-messy Brigitte Bardot situation.

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