Well hello, Mrs Bieber and can I say... Rawr. Hailey looks as impossibly hot and chic as always in her latest IG story, and yet we couldn't help but think we haven't seen a side fringe so swooping and dominant since the scene kid or emo days of the mid-late 00s.
Now, Millennials and Zillenials will remember this first hand – I personally wore a straight side fringe with my big curly hair, it wasn't a good look – but whether you were deep into your emo era or not, side fringes were non-negotiable. For the large proportion who were living their Paramore-worshipping best life, there was no limit to these spikey fringes swooping sideways across as much of your face as you could manage.
For Gen Z, you've probably seen the TikToks of 2007-2009 high school yearbooks. You know what we're talking about.
Hailey is wearing her bob hair pulled tightly back into a clean girl-esque bun, but this addition of an intense bang is really changing everything.
Is Hailey's fringe spikey, dyed black, and badly highlighted with blonde/red/orange? No no, it isn't. Something about the drama of this swoop feels like a descendant of those days. Where the fringe isn't an addition to the hairstyle or a feature of it, the fringe IS the hairstyle, the rest is just the backup dancer.
Seeing more statement fringes like micro-fringes and waterfall bangs continue to dominate, are we moving into an era where the side fringe is kind of one again? I, for one, hope so.
Elena Chabo is Cosmopolitan UK's former beauty writer, working on everything from buzzy celeb news and trending beauty, to sincere first-person reviews and engaging video content for social media. She also creates meatier features and expert-led how-to guides, for print and online. Her passion for Black beauty, textured hair, and the ways beauty interacts with culture, society, identity and relationships, quickly took over her writing career and led her into beauty journalism. Following an MA in Magazine Journalism in 2017, she cut her teeth across various roles at Stylist Magazine, before taking on a Digital Writer role at Good Housekeeping. It was here that beauty took centre stage and she launched and ran the site's first stand-alone beauty section. Remaining at Hearst, she joined the Cosmo beauty team in 2022. Find her on LinkedIn.
