Sexy Short Cuts

Short hair gets a bum rap: “Mom cut” and “helmet head” come to mind. But the truth is, above-the-shoulder- ’dos can be sultry (think Demi Moore in Ghost, Meg Ryan in the 1990s or Katie Holmes right now). Not sure you can pull it off ? Check out what happened when colorist Rita Hazan and stylist Juan Carlos Maciques helped three MORE readers go cool and cropped.

Lisa Baquero’s hair was thick, straight—and overgrown. Her shoulder-length layers were also lightly peppered with gray. “Lisa is a beautiful woman, but her bone structure was camouflaged by all that heavy hair,” says Juan Carlos Maciques, a stylist at the Rita Hazan Salon, in New York City.

Maciques cut nearly four inches from Baquero’s strands and shaped them into a clean, swingy bob that shows off her cheekbones and jawline. Then Hazan covered the gray with an allover rich brown and wove in subtle caramel highlights.

Nancy Lee Russell had let her grays grow in to mixed results: Her hair was saltier along her part and much darker underneath. Plus, her too-shaggy cut was doing little to play up her lovely face or the pretty silver of her grays.

“To help the silver stand out, I got rid of the dark- hair around Nancy’s neck,” Maciques says. He also left the hair on top fairly long (the shorter your hair, the darker it looks). Hazan heightened the gray by applying a clear gloss, then washing with Clairol Shimmer Lights ($7; beauty supply stores).

Trena Banks wore a pony-tail nearly every day and had never touched the gray at her temples. Her hair was long enough to wear down, but that required hot rollers, a time investment Banks wasn’t willing to make daily.

“I trimmed Trena’s ends so that the longest layer met the second-longest, just past her jawline. This created an easy to manage, virtually one- length style,” Maciques says. “Most days, Trena can just run a flatiron over it.” Hazan covered the gray with a warm, allover brown, then added subtle highlights.