I'm someone who typically doesn't do too much with my hair — I haven't had a fringe since the time in middle school when we all collectively decided to get that single-swoop bang [1]; I haven't dyed it since I attempted to colour the ends of my hair like an ombré in high school; and I rarely even style it with hot tools. The one thing that I'm not afraid to do, though, is change up the length of my hair. That's why, no matter how many times I try to grow it out, I always end up cutting it off [2] to a lob length [3] in the autumn or winter.

I don't know what it is about this time of year that makes me want to chop off all my hair, but it happens like clockwork every year. Even though the consensus is usually to go shorter in the summer to keep it off your neck and longer in the winter to say warm, I like to do the reverse. In the summertime, I feel like my loose, wavy texture embodies that effortlessly messy, beachy style, but by the time winter rolls around, I'm ready for a change. To me, short hair looks chic [4] and polished, which is exactly the vibe I'm going for.

But aside from wanting a short, sophisticated haircut to match my more serious, neutral-toned winter wardrobe, there's another very practical reason why I like to chop off my hair in the winter: scarves. As a New Yorker, I spend a majority of the time from late November to February in a scarf, and nothing irks me more than the knotted, tangled mess that you get at the back of your head from walking around in a scarf all day. It might seem like a trivial reason to go for a drastic cut, but the ease of being able to layer without messing up my hair is worth it to me.

During My Lob Haircut

For the last 10 months, I've been growing out my hair — partly because I had no choice thanks to COVID-19 – but this past weekend I finally decided to pay a visit to Rob Peetoom Salon [5] in Williamsburg, NY, for a long-overdue change. I went in with the idea to cut my hair short again, but let my stylist, Drew Schaefering [6], decide exactly the right hairstyle for me [7].

Based on the natural wavy texture of my hair and my current hair-care routine, we landed on an easy lob hairstyle [8] and took off a good four inches or so.

After My Lob Haircut

To really get an idea of what this new hairstyle looks like, Schaefering and I chose to diffuse my hair and style it like I typically do at home (which involves using my fingers to shape the waves and a lot of texture spray) rather than going for a salon blowout.

I walked out of the hair salon feeling 10 times lighter with my dream winter hairstyle. Now I'm officially ready for New York's oversize-coat-and-scarf winter weather.

Before and After My Lob Haircut