In this layered graduated bob with fringe tutorial, Russell Mayes explores a popular older women's hairstyle that consists of layers, graduation and more layers. This layered bob haircut starts with an inverted bob followed by graduation and then more layering on top. The techniques discussed are great for removing bulk from thick short hair.
Finally, bangs are added followed by some blending. Short bob haircuts have always been popular but modifying them based on hair texture and designing bob hairstyles to complement client face shapes, hair texture and density is always a challenge. Watch this short layered inverted bob with bangs tutorial and follow along with the transcript below.
Layered Graduated Bob with Fringe Tutorial:
Welcome back to Jatai Academy. I'm Russell Mayes, Director of Content. Today we're going to be doing an in-depth study on how to add layering to graduation. How to keep the graduation from being too thick and overly mushroomy, how to keep it more modern. And it works really well on super thick hair or hair that's really stiff and needs a little bit of pop from some movement.
We're going to show you how to add the graduation and where to add it. We're going to show you how to add layering, where to add it, and how to disconnect everything but still make it look like it's connected. So, let's get started.
Inverted Layers
So, we're starting here in the nape. I took a center part all the way down to the occipital bone, occipital bone to the mastoid. That's my first flat section I'm working with in the back.
I'm taking my Jatai Tokyo Scissors. This is the 6-in version. I like the point on these scissors. And the blade is very, very sharp, but the point is not overly bitey, so I don't have to worry about poking myself if I'm doing a lot of um point cutting.
Here, we're going to take a center section, and I'm going to determine if I want graduation or if I want layering. This first section, I'm actually going to invert the layering a little bit. So, it's going to be a little shorter at the occipital bone and then a little longer towards the hairline.
So while this looks like it could be graduation based upon the head shape, it's actually layered quite a bit because it's shorter at the top of the section and longer at the bottom. So, by layering this first section, especially on these graduated type of shapes, this can make the shape instantly start getting very, very full and very bulky.
Now, if I have someone with thinner hair, then that's definitely what I want. But on someone with thick hair or where it's very stiff and doesn't move, by going through and layering this first section, it helps it lay down a little bit closer against the head so I don't build up so much volume.
I started in the center. I determined what type of layering I wanted and now I'm walking my guide towards the left and then towards the right. So the way I do that is I take the center as my guide, determine what my length is, and then add the next section to the left, a parallel section. I comb those two sections into the center and cut. And then I remove the previously cut section.
And my new guide is the guide for the next section as I walk all the way over to the left. And now I'm going all the way over to the right. So it's just continuing to take the same length in the center and work that towards each side.
I want to try to maintain as even of a balance as I can between both sides. Now, here you see me, I'm just going through and just cleaning it up, making sure it's nice and clean. After I finish that, I'll move on to the next section.
Graduation
The next section is going up to two flat sections of the head and then to the top of the ear. Now, here you'll see the underneath completely drops out. And I'm going to completely ignore that guide and create a new guide. This is where the graduation of the haircut really starts to happen.
So, whatever angle of graduation I create, you can see here which is fairly steep, that's going to be what the visual representation of my graduation is going to be. And you can see it's already, even though it's sitting on top of a layered section underneath, it still has that typical classic graduated shape, even though it's less voluminous because the underneath hair has been layered.
I'll continue to just walk my guide from the center over to the right. And I'll check each time to make sure I'm building up a consistent flow of graduation from the center out. Try to maintain the same levels of elevation that I was going through and trying to maintain cutting directly on top of my previously cut guide as I start to work around the sides.
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Continuing to take my vertical sections as I walk around to the head. And here is a really good angle to see what type of graduation that I'm putting into it. And I'm just continuing to work this around. This is what you would consider classic round graduation because the shape is round vertically and horizontally. That looks pretty good.
So now we're going to continue on to the next two flats up into the top of the crown. We're going to move that around to the front of the hairline at the bottom of the recession.
Layering
Now, this section, you can see where my graduation is starting to fall out of my fingers. And then I'm going about a finger length further and cutting that straight up and down. So, by cutting that section straight up and down and leaving it a little longer, it really kind of exaggerates the graduated shape, but it doesn't add volume to it like if I was to continue to graduate this shape.
So by pulling it up and cutting it straight up and down, I'm actually layering this top section. So I have layering for the first nape section. I graduate to center right at the curve of the head at the occipital bone and above to the drop crown. Now from the drop crown above, I'm pulling that up and layering it again. So I have layer, graduation and layer.
So, it seems counterintuitive that I would want a graduated shape that has more layering in it than it has graduation. But because we put that graduation right in the center and sandwiched between those two layered sections, it really gives me a nice smooth graduated shape, but without that stiffness and that bulkiness that comes from that kind of brutalist aesthetic that Sassoon had back in the 70s that on certain types of hair, it was just very very stiff and had no movement to it. And if you didn't style it properly, it just looks completely out of sorts. By having this layering in it, it lightens it up and it loosens it up and gives it a lot more free flow.
Here we've done both sides. And I think that that looks pretty good. It really collapses the nape there quite well and still gives me that nice graduated shape. Now we're going to go through and start working on the top.
Top Section
I'm going to take a center section from the back all the way to the front. I'm going to pull the crown up. I'm going to take that guide that I had cut underneath from my layering section. And now I'm going to continue vertically layering this at 90° all the way from the back into the front. This is just going to remove a lot of excess length that I don't need.
I'll hold this straight up at 90 from each section of the head as I'm working from back to front. Now, this shape gives me a lot of versatility and a lot of variations that I can layer into this and add into this shape because everything is kind of disconnected and I'm not building up this architecturally over structured shape that doesn't allow for any kind of variation.
This shape, because there's so much disconnection in it, gives me that option. Now, instead of taking sub-sections and holding everything up into the center where my layering guide was initially, I'm going to take the entire right side of this head because there's no hair from the underneath. I'm going to pull everything straight up into the center and cut that.
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Continuing to pull everything over into the center until I completely run out of hair. Once I finish my layering here on the top, I'm going to go through and anything that hangs over from this top layering hangs over the underneath section that I've already cut.
I'm going to go through and double check here and make sure that it doesn't hang over. So, I'm just going to clean this up. There's a little bit of hair that hangs over. So, I'm just going to go through and vertically section like I did my layering underneath in the third section that I took. And make sure nothing hangs over that so we have a cleaner shape.
I could have done this first and then layered it, but I find that I would end up taking more time cutting the hair on top that I end up cutting shorter anyway. So, this way I'll end up cutting less hair, making sure it blends.
The Fringe
Now, we're going to go through and take our bang section. We're going to take a pretty good section to the corner of the hairline right there at the recession. And then I'm going to subsection that into a small little section that goes right to the corner of the eye on each side. This is the hair that's going to hang right in the center of the face. Going to create a straight bang here, but curtain bangs or side swept bangs work well too.
I'm going to hold that down and cut that to where it hits right at the center of the eye. This is a very popular aesthetic in Japan where it's like right at the most irritating length at the eyeball.
Now I'm going to hold this section up and then layer that section just to bevel that edge right there around the face a little bit. So it keeps it blunt but it bevels that edge so it softens it up just a little bit but still maintains that real solid shape.
Now we're going to take the rest of the section, hold it down, and I'm going to determine the length that I'm going to right there at the jaw. Cut a little bit right there so I have a guide, and then I can match that on the other side.
So, I'll figure out where it is on the other side. Make sure I'll double check and then go through and cut it shorter than the other side. Oh well, we'll figure it out.
Blending
Now, I'm going to comb this forward, take the center out of it, and then connect the guides that I've created. I've got the shorter guide in the center that I've created going to that longer guide right at the edge. And that's going to give me a nice really steep line that's going to brush that bang out of the face a little bit.
Now, we're going to go through and take a real vertical section here, right above the ear. Hold that down. And I'm going to look at where my little graduated short length bob was starting in the back.
Hold this section straight down and then visualize where I want that to go. Now, this is the part here that can really make the shape a little more conservative or a little bit more edgy and soft. I'm going for a little more blunt of a shape, but you could certainly, you know, go through and make sure that this is a lot longer and piecier and a little bit more um, you know, Korean in its aesthetic, I think.
So, now we're going to take the next section down, comb that straight down, point cut that through to make sure that my edge is soft right through there, so I have a little bit more flow
And I'm not being real precise with this section. I'm allowing the shape to have some movement to it and some softness and some flow to it. Everything has been real structured in this with blunt lines that I've cut.
So right here around the edge where I want a little bit more exaggerated movement, I'm going to go through and soften that up by point cutting it. Now we take our last section and you see that little corner that just hangs out there between the back and into the sides and I'll cut that through so we make sure we have a nice smooth blend from our graduation to the back into the sides.
Texturing and Removing Weight
Now I'm going to take my Feather Styling Razor and I have the pink version. And then I'm going to add the Texturizing Blade. So this blade has little guards that cover every other section of the blade so that as I run this across the hair, it doesn't cut everything straight across. It gives me little channels so I can add some texture to it and remove a little bit of weight. You may not need to do this part if working on fine hair.
So I make this softer without necessarily going through and adding deep channels to it like I would if I was to hold this section vertically and cut into it with my regular styling blade.
So, after I finish doing some sculpture cutting in the back, I'm going to take each section horizontally and just add a little bit of texture to it just to create some more internal variation and to give me a little bit more softening and some interest to it.
Now, depending upon the hair, I may do a little bit more, I may do a little bit less. But because I've cut this shape very very blunt except for that little bit right in front of the ear. This gives me a still solid shape but softens it up internally and gives me a little bit more visual interest.
I'm really liking the texture that we have there. I think that looks pretty good. Now we're just going to go through and blow it dry and style it. I'm going to use my Du-Boa High-Tech Brush to polish everything off and then a little bit of styling wax after. You can also use a round brush to style it.
Final Look
Well, here is our end result. And I think that we got a really, really nice shape. I think that by going through putting our layering first, our graduation second, then layering on top, it really gives us a nice graduated shape without it being too mushroomy or too stiff or without it looking like, you know, grandma's graduation.
This haircut doesn't have to look like a women over 60s haircut. It keeps it more modern. And and let's face it, most modern haircuts have a lot more texture to it than the the stuff from the 60s and 70s that were just overly stiff. So, I think that this works really really well.
I like this kind of heavy bang that hits right in the eye and kind of blends into the side. And I think we've got just the right amount of texture to where the bottom lays flat, but we still have a nice little pop here for our graduation. It kind of makes it look like a shaggy bob. This kind of bob works well on straight hair, but can be adapted to wavy hair or curly hair. You can also add a pop of hair color or highlights for additional points of interest.
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