The New Look hairstyle is a defining feature of 1950s hair fashion, but its roots are firmly planted in the late 1940s.
As I was digging through some of my vintage hair magazines, looking for something completely unrelated, I kept coming across this “New Look” language stamped everywhere in the copy.
To say it peaked my interest would be quite the understatement. 🧐 I dug even deeper into magazines and newspapers from 1947 through 1949. And now let’s get into… the New Look in Hair!
I also walk through this entire transition of the hairstyles visually in the video below, where you can watch the silhouette shift.
Table of Contents: (Click to Jump)
A New Direction for Postwar Hair
In the mid 1940s, after WWII had ended, women’s hair began to change. Hairstyles in 1944 did not look like they would in 1949. The shift was subtle at first, more about shape and direction than length, but it would go on to redefine hair fashion for the next decade. What emerged in this moment became the foundation for the hairstyles we now associate with the 1950s.
When the term New Look began appearing in beauty and fashion writing in 1947, it signaled more than a passing trend. Something fundamental was happening to the silhouette of women’s hair, even if hairstylists had not yet fully defined it. The outline of the head itself was being redrawn.
The New Look in hair was not a single style or haircut. It was the beginning of a transition, one that reshaped how hair was worn, styled, and eventually cut in the postwar years.
Christian Dior and the New Look
The New Look term started when, in February 1947, Christian Dior unveiled a fashion collection that became a global sensation. He called it “La Ligne Corolle”. But a journalist overheard Carmel Snow, editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, tell Dior that he had “really created a new look.” The journalist repeated the phrase in print, and the term spread throughout fashion media.
After so many years of wartime austerity with fabric rationing and practical clothing, Dior’s designs softened the female silhouette with rounded shoulders, a defined waist, and full skirts instead of the more female empowering, boxier shapes of WWII. It signaled a broader cultural shift away from the utilitarian mood of the early 1940s.
Hair magazines quickly picked up the “New Look” language to describe a new approach to the postwar woman’s hairstyle. For hairstylists, it was not about copying fashion directly, but aligning with it. Hair needed to visually support this new silhouette and fit under the new hat styles.
As hairstylists studied the new fashion and hats, they experimented with new shapes and direction to harmonize with this new postwar ideal.
The Silhouette Shift: Early-1940s Hair vs. the New Look
To understand why the New Look in hair felt so different, it helps to look closely at the shape and direction of hairstyles that were common just before it.
Early-to-mid 1940s hairstyles were built for practicality and also for projecting, literally, uplifting confidence. Hair was worn with lift above the forehead and movement that pushed away/outward from the face.
Halos of curls framed the face but did not lie against it. Sculpted shapes like pompadours and victory rolls projected public-facing polish. Silhouettes felt upright and energetic, very much an external expression of a hopeful wartime mood.
The New Look introduced a very different visual feel. The emphasis shifted to containment and smoothness.
Hair at the sides and on the crown of the head moved down and toward the face, instead of up and away from it. Ears were often covered.
Styles hugged the head more closely, with the overall shape appearing smaller and softer, visually echoing the rounded lines and fitted proportions of New Look fashion and cap like hats.
This shift in hair design marks the real beginning of the hairstyles we associate with the 1950s. It was about redrawing the outline of the head to match a new idea of chic style, one meant to be in harmony with the New Look in fashion.
You might also like: The History of the Victory Roll Hairstyle
Was it Long? or Was it Short?
At first, what changed was not how much hair women had, but where the hair lived. Many New Look hairstyles were not created on newly short haircuts.
After the war, most women were still wearing the same medium-to-long hair lengths they had worn throughout the war years. While magazines were calling for a shorter, closer-to-the-head silhouette, some women were cutting their hair early, while others were not yet ready to do so.
Salons across the country were advertising the “New Look Hair Cut” as early as 1947 and 1948.
Some stylists believed the New Look demanded shorter hair. Others argued that direction mattered more than length.
There was debate. And that debate created space for interpretation.
Hairstylists, by pinning and tucking, were able to create styles that looked short while leaving much of the length intact.
New Look hairstyles functioned as a visual bridge. Flat waves were molded close to the head and the outline of the style suggested shortness even when length remained underneath.
Longer hair will be given an appearance of shortness by being pulled to the side. But the nape of your neck is going to see the light of day again regardless of long or short hair.
Evansville Press, October 1947
These techniques allowed women to adopt a modern silhouette without immediately committing to a haircut, smoothing the transition between wartime hair and the genuinely short styles that would soon follow.
But by October 1948 Vogue is declaring “In little more than two years’ time, the fashion for short-cut hair has grown from cult-size to a national habit; from a drastic step which a few women took (almost emotionally) to a calmly-accepted must for today’s fashions.”
You might also like: Iconic 1950s Hairstyles for All Hair Lengths
It was a Little Bit Vintage
This approach of shaping instead of cutting was actually very vintage for the time. A similar transition had taken place decades earlier, when women moved from voluminous Edwardian hairstyles worn high on the head into the close-to-the-head bob styles of the 1920s.
In that earlier shift, the full hairstyle of the 1900s was brought down around the neck then pinned up into faux bobs in the 1910s . The volume was still there, but the direction changed. Soon after, the volume itself disappeared into the close-fitting bob haircut.
Even the writers in media during the new look era, were picking up on it too.
Another hair fashion presented was for both long and short tresses -sides waved forward in dips, very much as it was in the twenties.
Evansville Press, October 1947
Hairstylists were explicit about looking to the past for inspiration. In January 1948, Modern Beauty Shop noted, “The popular mode of the ’twenties finds new favor in the current trends for hair brought forward onto the face” (Modern Beauty Shop, January 1948).
The similarities between these close-fitting New Look styles and the finger waves of the 1920s are hard to miss. Both were created on longer hair, and when controlled waves are styled on long strands like this, a distinctly 1920s feel is almost unavoidable.
Hats and the New Look Hairstyle
Hats played an important role in the New Look hairstyle. By the late 1940s, millinery was moving away from perched, sculptural hats and toward styles that sat closer to the head. Berets and other shallow, cap-like hats emphasized a compact silhouette and encouraged hair to be smooth, controlled, and contained underneath.
This shift was not happening in isolation. Hairstylists were actively responding to fashion as it unfolded. Many attended couture shows in New York and Europe, and their high-end clients were arriving at appointments wearing the latest hats.
Trade magazines made this relationship explicit. In November 1947, Modern Beauty Shop urged stylists to “gear your hairstyles to the New Look,” noting that hair needed to fit “snugly and becomingly under the new deep hats” (Modern Beauty Shop, November 1947).
Hair was shaped to be seen beneath the hat’s edge. Flat waves were molded against the head, ears were partially or fully covered, and bulk was reduced throughout the entire style. The result was a unified outline where hair and hat appeared designed together rather than layered separately.
The 1950 Hairstyle We Recognize
By 1950, what had been promoted as the “New Look” hairstyle, was no longer experimental. It was standard.
Haircuts were now designed for the silhouette that had first been achieved through shaping and pinning. Lengths crept upward and side layers were cut shorter. The complicated weaving of waves required to control longer hair gave way to simpler, cleaner patterns.
The New Look in hair was never just a moment. It was a transition.
Hairstylists first reshaped the outline of the head. Then they reshaped the haircut itself.
The result was a completely new, decade-defining 1950s look.
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