The Horny Hair Trend Has Gone From TikTok To The Red Carpet

Considering buzzcuts were trending all through 2020 and into summer 2021, there’s little surprise that people are increasingly interested in how to style short hair during the growing-out stage. Like the uneven layers of a mullet, growing out a buzzcut can feel awkward and at times infuriating. Thankfully, this Summer’s hottest new hair trend is all about styling short hair and short layers with a cute but unexpected twist— devil horns.

We first saw horn-styled hair on the red carpet courtesy of Jazzelle Zanaughtti, better known by her Instagram handle @uglyworldwide. While attending the Billboard Music Awards, the model, known for experimental looks and super skinny eyebrows, wore her short platinum blonde hair spiked up on each side. To top the devil-themed look off, including a revealing black crochet dress, Jazzelle wore longer hairpieces dip-dyed black as face-framing strands along with micro bangs gelled inwards also into a horn-like shape.

In the caption of her Instagram post showing off her event look, Jazzelle revealed that the “direction, hair, and makeup” was all done by her, which comes as little surprise to followers who saw her devil-horned sneak peek two weeks before the event. She’s also previously experimented with spiking her hair up into pieces all over and had been rocking horny hair to events in 2021.

After just a couple of weeks, horny hair has made another event appearance, with Iris Law wearing her take on the style on the Cannes red carpet. Iris had previously shaved her head for the Vogue 2021 issue, saying “the day I shaved my head, I changed my life.” Law rocked a shaved head for months but has recently been experimenting styling her slightly grown-out hair, including dyeing it blue and shaving a heart shape into the side earlier this year.

For Cannes, the rising model created whispy devil horns sticking up on each side of her head with a slicked middle part and two small front tendrils, and slits shaved in her eyebrows — only adding to the bad girl aesthetic. She also wore an all-black corset-style top and matching skirt by Dior. Iris’ bold new hairstyle was created by hairstylist Rio Sreedharan, who’s also worked with FKA Twigs.

It’s obvious that Iris has Jazzelle on her hair mood board (she also dip-dyed hairpieces black with a micro-bangs), but viral TikTok hairstylist Matthew Newman says hair horns were a micro-trend on the app last year. In one viral video, posted in May 2021, a creator cut shorter pieces into her hair and hairsprayed them into what she referred to as, “tiny hair horns”. Another popular video showed a creator cutting pieces from the under layers of her hair to create the same look.

While Newman does not necessarily recommend cutting long hair to take part in the now red-carpet-approved trend, he does think it’s a great way to style an already cropped haircut. “It’s fresh and fun and not too polished,” he says. “The red carpet version is a more editorialized look that is more like a messy pixie with a punk vibe.” If you’re wondering how to get your hair to defy gravity, Newman has the answer: “The key to styling is starting with products on very wet hair so that the style can set from wet to dry in the final shape you want it to have.”

Whether you want to take part in the devilishly cute trend, or just admire it, you’re about to see horny hair come out to play this summer. If you have long hair with shorter layers, Matt says you can still try it. “On longer hair with shorter layers, you could try isolating a section of just the shorter layer from the top of your head to create the horns,” but be warned it requires some more effort for shaping. He suggests that first you hold the “horn” up and saturate it with strong hold hairspray. From there, you blowdry the hair on medium fan power with the blowdryer pointed upwards from the base of the horn until it’s completely dry. It’s worth a shot— if you dare.