Women style

A "bob cut" is a women's short haircut in which the hair is typically cut straight around the head at about jaw-length, often with a fringe (or 'bangs") at the front. Made internationally popular by American film star Colleen Moore in the early 1920s, it was then seen as a somewhat shocking statement of independence in young women, as older people were used to seeing girls wearing long dresses and heavy Edwardian-style hair. Hairdressers, whose training was mainly in arranging and curling long hair, were slow to realise that short styles for women had arrived to stay, and so barbers in many cities found lines of women waiting outside their shops, waiting to be shorn of hair that had taken many years to grow.

By the mid 1920s, the style (in various versions, sometimes worn with a side-parting, curled or waved, and with the hair at the nape of the neck "shingled" short), was the dominant female hairstyle in the Western world. Close-fitting, bell-shaped hats ("Cloche" hats) had also become very popular, and couldn't be worn with long hair. Well-known bob-wearers were actresses Louise Brooks, Clara Bow and Joan Crawford, as well as Dutch film star Truus van Aalten.