Gamine / Urchin / Pixie cut

Fashion Synopsis

When women bobbed their hair in the 20’s, who would have guessed that it would keep getting shorter? So short in fact that the hair would look like a boy’s? Actresses Jean Seberg and Audrey Hepburn both cut their locks ultra-short into a style called the gamine, a term named after their petite, boy-like body frames.

Gamine is French for ‘street kid,’ and this new cut had a street-wise attitude attached. The cut was also called the urchin, like a street urchin’s hair was chopped off for fear of lice, but you probably didn’t care to know that. Beatnik ladies were the first to copy the cropped locks, but soon the gamine cut became the ultimate in 50’s cutting-edge chic. It featured short, fringed bangs, cut straight across the forehead and tousled for a wild look. The rest was cut so short that it couldn’t be styled or curled like the longer Italian cut.

The gamine continued on into the 60’s when Twiggy popularized the boy look even more. It resurfaced once again in the 90’s, renamed the pixie cut when girls like Winona Ryder adopted the spiky cut for their signature style.

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