How to Style a Curly Bob, by a Beauty Editor Who Knows

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with my natural hair texture. Part wavy, part curly, it’s never fallen fully into one camp or the other, and, for that reason, I’ve always found it hard to find a haircare routine that both worked for me and made the most of my previously long, layered hair.

When I was a teenager, I decided to rectify this. I wanted curls at any cost, and so, I booked in for a perm. What I wish I’d known then, however, is that rather than spending hours in the salon, there was a much easier route to transforming my hair texture—it turns out, all I needed was a bob haircut.

You see, at the beginning of the year, I did just that, chopping seven inches off my hair to achieve the perfect chin-grazing cut. And, not only did my short haircut make me feel instantly chicer, it also transformed my hair texture, too. Where once my curls had fallen straight and stretched out, now, without so much length to weigh them down, they bounced up tighter and more defined. Learning to style my bob brought opportunities I hadn’t anticipated. While I thought I’d chopped my hair to achieve a sculpted flicked bob, I instead discovered I had another style open to me, too—a bouncy, curly bob.