Love Curtain Bangs? Try Her Relaxed Sister, Trompe L’Oeil Bangs

At 43, I still find myself squaring off with the girl inside me when it comes to cutting the ends of my hair. I procrastinate, even when I know I really need it. I promise my hairdresser that, at the next appointment, for sure, I’ll let them take the scissors to my lengths. When the moment comes, I’m making them promise to make the chop minuscule, just enough to clean up my mane.

By then, I’ve left it too late. My hair is grown out and broken, in need of more than a few centimeters off to keep it looking healthy. My comfort in Rapunzel-like hair, at risk. The more anxious I’ve gotten in the run-up, the more I’ve put it off, the more inches need snipped.

The last time I went to have my hair colored, my hairdresser suggested I get some long bangs, to my cheekbones, with the promise that my hair would look longer and healthier. “This type of fringe visually lengthens the hair,” he told me as he took the scissors to my front pieces. And he wasn’t wrong.

We’re calling them the ‘trompe l’oeil’ bangs—the French phrase meaning that which ‘deceives the eye.’ Quique Sanchez, hairstylist at the Madrid-based salon Espacio Q, confirms this bangs-related revelation. “It is true that this type of fringe creates the ‘trompe l’oeil’ effect of longer hair, because it visually lengthens the face and thus the contour of the hair,” Sanchez says. “They integrate perfectly with the rest of the cut because they create continuity and length from a cascading effect, giving the impression of longer hair.”

Hairstylist and makeup artist Gabriel Llano adds that the key success with ‘trompe l’oeil’ bangs is that they’re integrated seamlessly into the rest of your hairstyle, creating a “frame that directs the eye downwards, especially if they are styled with a natural fall or slightly curled.”

Photo: Getty Images

Why get ‘trompe l’oeil’ bangs?

Long and short bangs have been top of the hair style trends and a regular request from those in the hair salon chair for quite some time now: Side fringes of the early ’00s, baby bangs a la Emma Stone, and pumped up hair with big bangs to match by way of Keke Palmer. Curtain bangs have been the dominant, longer style—think Priyanka Chopra and Emily Ratajkowski’s bouncy sets, which frame the face and hit at the cheekbones, or Dakota Johnson’s ever-coveted, cool shape.