How To Choose A Fringe

Hello, my name is Andrew Jose, of Andrew Jose salon in Charlotte Street, London. How to choose a fringe? Now first of all, a fringe can be the most fantastic thing for choosing and bringing attention to the drama and the great points of the face. It's a wonderful thing for making different lines on the face stronger, different points smaller and really being very dramatic.

Bringing fabulous attention to the eyes. The important thing is how to judge your own face. So when I am choosing to do a fringe, the first thing I'll do, is literally pull the hair right the way back, off the face so that I can see where we are.

And then little by little, let the hair fall forward. Then start to choose what is the line and what is the shape that we want. Do we want a shape that goes really square? Or do we want one that falls around? You can just do something, if you can't use your hair use your hands on your face and see what happens to the face.

If we come around and come down, so that you would have, I suppose, classically you could call that a 1960s type fringe. Then you could come down like that. And what happens, as you move your hands slightly further forward, then you'll see that the attention comes down onto the point of the chin, or onto the mouth.

But then as we come higher and we lift up. Then you'll see the attention starts to draw the line of the eyebrow and of the side of the eye. Equally you can say, do we want a fringe that is very small? So that if we bring the hair right the way forward, so that the sides of the fringe may stop, literally at the side of the eye.

Or do we allow the fringe to come right the way back to the side of the cheekbone. All of this will change the way that your face and the way that it appears. So don't be afraid of really experimenting, use your hands.

If you're at the hairdresser's, get the hairdresser to really show you exactly what shape of fringe that you should have. Now the fringe that we've chosen for Katie, is one that's going to be quite soft, but quite long, because we are going to choose a length where the eyes then drawn into, by being near her eyes it will bring attention to her eyes and actually widen them. Naturally, she has quite small eyes, quite petite eyes, but this will really make them appear just a little larger.

Now I'm going to cut a straight line, but I'm going to cut a straight line with the point of my scissors, which just makes it very soft. So we'll lift out and I'll just shape through. A question is often asked.

How much hair should you have in a fringe? What I would advise you don't do, is to take the hair from the back of the head all the way forward. Because then when you've cut your line it will then travel all the way back into your haircut. So what we do is, if you'll put in a natural parting and just let the hair fine, you'll find that naturally the hair will drop forward into a fringe.

How wide you take will be your personal choice, but that is the hair that you cut. Don't start combing it forwards because it will always come back to where it came from.