HAIR MATTERS With Andrew Mulvenna

Hair Matters...

with Andrew Mulvenna

Andrew Mulvenna has been a hairdresser for over 30 years and his career has spanned the full spectrum of product development, global campaign shoots and shows, international education, session-styling and creating runway collections. His true passion is working at his three storey salon (a converted Victorian bank) in Belfast City centre, developing his 30+ team and making clients very happy.

FRINGE BENEFITS

This February I thought I might delve into the delicious and yet at times deadly world of fringes and seeing as we are still in our lockdown I assume some of us might be taking a tentative grip of the nail-scissors and having a go. Super-straight, waved, parted, curly, full, feathery, choppy, micro or maxi fringes have been making a real come back from the beginning of last year and are still a big contender in 2021. Wearing a beautifully cut fringe can really frame a face and also be super versatile when hair is worn up or down. In a way it’s like your favourite belt, bag or pair of shoes in the sense of no-matter what you wear with it, it will always upgrade your look. In contrast if executed badly (and I’ve rectifi ed many hundreds over the years) it can be, well there’s no other word for it, disastrous. The fringe can be the secret weapon in the hairdressers bag of tricks and it has the ability to transform a face lending to it a frame that can lift, enhance or diminish bone structure to the desired effect. Over the last 30 years I’ve literally cut tens of thousands of fringes and I have learned two key things; you can’t force it and always follow the natural fall of your hair. Sounds simple enough I hear some of you say and it can be so if any budding hairdressers professional or ‘otherwise’ are reading this take a little note as it will really help. With most people (ethnicities will of course cause some variations) the natural fall or growth-pattern sweeps across the top of your head from left to right and when dropped on the forehead should the hair lie fl at, a full-fringe can be achieved. This is a fundamental principle I teach to both my clients and hairdressers. Vidal Sassoon (back in the 60’s) was the creator of most of today’s theories / templates on cutting and like the Rosetta Stone he unlocked geometry, personalised shape and balance.

SO WHAT FRINGE WOULD I SUIT?

Before I start I do need to say that out of one hundred women (and plenty of men) perhaps sixty percent think they have a round face. This is mostly wrong and with correct analysis and sensitive communication always shows this to be so. What we see of ourselves can sometimes be very different from what is reality especially when we study ourselves in the mirror or a photograph. I am equally as vulnerable to this despicable illusion as I too (although professionally trained) am still human. We all have a variety and mix of around nine different face shapes. We hairdressers use this as a template to analyse and rebalance. Aesthetic practitioners use the same templates combined with templates from Roman and Renaissance polymaths such as Vitruvius and Da Vinci to rebalance the face. Some people do have just one type of face-shape but many of us have an amalgamation of two and alas our face also changes with age so like many things in life we sometimes do not suit what we did in our twenties as much as we do in our fi fties. It is really no different to how we wear our clothes in the sense whereby we use clothes to create shape and form around our bodies, enhancing and focusing the gaze to the best bits and throwing some shade on the less favoured areas. The rules are pretty mathematical really; square-shaped faces need curved or parted fringes. Roundshaped faces need straighter lines and more angles. Longer oblong-shaped faces need longer curved fringes. Heartshaped faces need to avoid wider cut fringes. If you are blessed with the oval-shaped face then you more or less suit everything. Now within these rules there are ways they can be broken but only if you wish to really make the face more stronger or dare I say ‘aggressive’ - youth is the demographic where this mode lives best I’ve found. With women the direction is usually in cutting and framing to achieve an oval-face outcome and women (with their bone structure) generally suit the ‘curve’ or the ‘round’ as Vidal Sassoon would say. With men it’s mostly the opposite in that the ’square’ or the ‘straight-line’ is the most fl attering to the jawline and bone structure. Simplistic yes, but it’s the beginning of the professional conversation. Cutting hair is quite like making a suit or a dress (for the head and shoulders), if it’s too short or too long or it’s the wrong shape for the chosen fabric for the wearer then no matter how expensive it is, it will still be unfl attering on you. Unlike fabric thankfully, hair will grow.