Backstage at New York Fashion Week: The Rise of the Blunt-Cut Bob

When Karen Elson turned up backstage at Jason Wu earlier this week, it was hard to take your eyes off her. A flame-haired beacon in a steely jade satin dress, the nineties-era supermodel was making her New York Fashion Week debut—with a new blunt-cut variation of her chin-grazing bob. “I was on a cover shoot for Chinese Vogue, and the hairstylist asked me if he could cut it. I said, ‘Sure, give me a trim,’ and he just took my ponytail and chopped it!” Elson recalls with a laugh. “I’ve never had my hair all one length before. It’s easy.”

From a quick survey of New York collections, she’s in good company. British stunner Sam Rollinson opened Rag & Bone with a ruler-straight variation of her brunette crop that lent a hint of tough-chic attitude to the label’s easy slip dresses and athletic crop tops; runway favorites Catherine McNeil and Chiharu Okunugi kicked off the spring 2014 season with ends so uniformly blunt, they looked like they’d been cut with a razor. They wore their shorter lengths, which fall somewhere between the chin and the middle of the neck, slicked back tight against the head at Prabal Gurung, where the hair conjured the controlled cool of a 1950s mannequin.

“There is something very elegant about it,” backstage fixture Odile Gilbert explained of the shearing technique which imparts an otherwise nondescript bob with a spirit of intention, at Altuzarra, where she was busy giving model Ashleigh Good’s collar-skimming length a severe dead-center part.

If a definitive sign that last season’s intentionally choppy DIY crop is giving way to a more geometric incarnation, you only had to look at Karlie Kloss as she dashed backstage between shows this afternoon. A recent on-set touch-up left the model—whose jagged, wispy bob has become so popular that it is more commonly referred to as The Karlie—with a more linear variation of her signature look. “That’s what’s great about short hair,” she said brightly, ticking off the list of styles she’s embraced over the past year. “I've had my bangs more shaggy, I’ve had it shorter in the back, I’ve played a lot with variations.” Let the blunt-bob mania begin.