To fringe, or not to fringe? It’s a decision that we women will agonise over for weeks, months and possibly years, and one which no amount of celebrity moodboards or AI virtual haircuts can hasten. Dangling your own hair over your forehead will offer no reassurance; quite the opposite, in fact, as the effect will inevitably resemble David Bowie in Labyrinth.
Truth is, we’ve all been there, and been burned. Sold the dream of ‘French girl chic’, and found ourselves wrestling a demon hair entity living rent-free on our forehead. Whether it’s errant cowlicks, a wonkily-angled cut, or an insatiable thirst for grease, a fringe is hard work. And yet, still we long for one, because we know that when it’s done well, a fringe is stylish, anti-ageing (goodbye forehead wrinkles) and gives structure to the whole face.
‘I feel like everyone’s had a traumatic fringe,’ says celebrity hairstylist Hadley Yates and co-founder of Hadley Yates Hair salon. 'And that’s a problem we wanted to solve.' Not by professional hand-holding or even a foolproof cut, but with a genius new innovation from the Hadley Yates team which lets you get the look without a sniff of scissors.
Curated is a new line of faux hair styles that allow you to wear different looks, with no risk of regret, and then take them out once you’re done. There's no salon visit involved either. Although Hadley is talking me through the range at the salon, the clip-ins are all available online now, in a range of colours to match with your own base shade, and ready to use straight out of the box.
The whole range has been created with grown-up women in mind, offering style switch-ups that align with midlife needs: speedy, easy and flattering to wear.
There are the Clip-in Fillers, from £65, worn as two single pieces tucked away discreetly around the front of the face to immediately plump out the hair. These replicate the effect of professional taped-in hair filler extensions, used by celebrities like Zoe Ball to add thickness without length.
And then there are the Curated fringes, which come in two versions. There’s a smaller Full Fringe piece, £35, and then the one I’m particularly drawn to, the £40 Curtain Bangs wig-fringe. (Or ‘winge’ as I’m calling it.)
It’s attached to your head via two clips, one which you position close to your natural hairline and a second which clips further back on your crown. The fringe is constructed around a central parting, which helps to give a convincing effect. ‘We didn’t want this to look like a novelty wig; the idea is you can wear it and it looks like you’ve had a haircut,’ Hadley tells me, as he takes my new fringe out of the box.
It does look a bit like an escapee from the pet shop at first glance, and I’m still not 100% sure once Hadley’s clipped it in place. The fringe falls a little awkwardly on one side, where it’s been curled up like a gerbil in its box. However, it’s made from 100% human hair, which means it can very easily be whipped into shape. A few seconds wrapped around a round brush and a quick blast with a hairdryer, and my bangs are… banging!
The fringes come in six shades, and mine is pretty close to my own (dyed) colour. To make it even more seamless, Hadley adds a squirt of instant root cover-up which is a product I use constantly anyway in my quest to keep grey roots at bay.
Even close-up, it blends perfectly with my centre parted hair. More importantly, I absolutely love how it looks. Just as Hadley had promised, I look like I’ve been for a cut. My new curtain fringe drapes nicely across the edges of my forehead and grazes my cheekbones in a way that adds softness to my face. Plus it's made my hair look so much thicker.
‘I think a fringe like this is a really flattering, anti-ageing look,’ says Hadley. ‘It adds structure to the face, and accentuates the eyes and the cheekbones..’ It’s a million miles away from the ghastly mid-90s wispy number that I still have PTSD (Post-Traumatic Scissors Disorder) over.
This faux-fringe is also a style you can play around with, he notes. ‘It’s brilliant if you wear your hair up because it immediately turns it into a cool style.’ To demonstrate, he twists my hair up into a messy bun, and within 10 seconds I’ve got what he calls ‘that real Brigitte Bardot look. When you’ve got those soft pieces falling around your face, it creates a lovely silhouette’.
I have to say I’m hugely impressed by it, and crucially I don’t feel remotely silly or self-conscious wearing it, which is often the case when I’m testing out something a bit unusual in the line of beauty. It's also incredibly easy to clip in and out myself.
When I step back into the GH office with a ‘fresh from the salon’ swagger, my fringe is nearly blown back with all the compliments. Among them, I get a ‘wow!’, a ‘your hair looks amazing’, and a ‘that fringe really suits you’ but at absolutely no point do I get a ‘hold on, is that real?’ Nobody suspects for a second that this is anything but an actual, bonafide fringe.
Even when I cough to the truth, people can’t really spot where my hair ends and the faux-fringe begins. The only thing they can agree on is that I should really, really get curtain bangs cut in for real.
So will I? Hmm. Maybe one day. But probably not. Why subject myself to the fear of a fringe regret or the faff of regular trims when I can just clip without commitment? I’ll stick with these fringe benefits, thanks.
