hair

SUPER SHORT STYLING

photos/tutorial/graphic design: Kristin Ess

If you’ve never chopped your hair off, you’ve probably dreamed about it. (Probably a frequent dream for anyone with high-maintanence hair!) Some of you lovely ladies have actually taken that leap, leaving braids and buns in the past– and this tutorial was for made YOU! You may recognize this look from our Vidal Sassoon voting post a while back. It didn’t win, but we just couldn’t help but share it with our pixie girls anyway! This is a basic every day look at how to take control short hair. A few of you with cropped cuts may already use this trick, if you’re new to short hair or haven’t mastered yours yet, this is what you’ll need to do it. Here we go!

The whole point of this tutorial is to get to step 9 and push your hair the opposite direction you styled it, so make sure you’re styling it the “other way” and then pushing it to your normal part when you’re done.

1. Towel dry your hair right when you get out of the shower.
2. Apply a heat protecting leave-in conditioner. Of course you don’t want the hair to be too soft, but you do want to protect it from blowdrying.
3. It’s important to work product through evenly, especially when dealing with short hair. Rub each product in to the root, sides, back and then…
4. comb through to ensure even distribution.
5. Using a nozzle on your blow dryer, rough dry a little with just your fingers. The nozzle will help direct the hair and get it to lay down much more than you could without one.
6. Smooth over the top using a soft bristle brush.
7. If you have a “bang” or “fringe” on your short hair, smooth it out a little with your soft bristled flat brush.
8. Spray a little heat protectant spray before the next step.
9. Flat iron any pieces that are long enough. Best to flat iron them with a little bend so they lay down and cooperate.
10. Take a little styling paste or styling cream in the palm of your hand. Rub it between your palms to emulsify and warm it up.
11. Now push the hair in the opposite direction and style as you normally would.

Styling the hair in the opposite direction first will help you conquer cowlicks and any issues you have with your short hair laying “too flat”. Do you have a secret trick you love for a pixie cut? If so, we’d love to hear it in the comments below. Also, what are your favorite short hair products? This tutorial was originally done for our Vidal Sassoon Pro Series partnership post, so those were all the products we used in these photos.