“So I want it kind of rough and ready but like really shiny and smooth and kind of chin length but shoulder-draping lengthy and like straight but a bit curly and a crass golden blonde. Wait a minute let me get my People Magazine out!”
That was the conversation held in thousands of hair salons in the mid-1990s as women everywhere, throughout the multiverse, tried to describe a bouncy, square-layered hairstyle the “Rachel Cut” aka The Rachel named after and inspired by the character played by Jennifer Aniston in the sitcom Friends which was then at the peak of its popularity. This definitive ’90s hairstyle is a shoulder-draping, sleek, and layered style with a grown out fringe. Its implicit center part, a cosmetically smooth front hairline, and the faintest suggestion of a widow’s-peak prevent the hairdo from obscuring the wearer’s face. So. Paradoxically. Sans bangs, the woman’s forehead is left exposed. It was the most popular hair fashion fad of the ’90s and the envy of all women, human and inhuman. It also inspired many a “just got out of bed” hair product, for example one of the originals Tigi Bed Head.