Summering in the South of France requires plenty of rosé wine, crochet dresses, Breton stripes, and some Françoise Hardy playing softly in the distance. Sofia Richie Grainge has been enjoying the abundance of the French Riviera, hopping from a Monaco-set wedding to the exclusive Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc with her family—and has now debuted a hair transformation to fit the vibe.
Quelle surprise! Richie Grainge has a bob. A “French bob,” as she wrote underneath its reveal on her Instagram. The carousel post showed said bob-in-progress, by London-based hairstylist George Curran, and a series of more selfies and shots in her sunny holiday setting. Known for her signature long blonde hair, as well as a penchant for a clean girl, slicked back bun, the new hairstyle keeps her middle part and hits at chin length. The bob shape accentuates the dimensions of dark and lighter pieces of blonde to create some dynamic movement—perfect for moving leisurely in the French Riviera winds.
“Sofia’s hair was at the stage where it needed a bit of a revamp,” Curran tells Vogue, noting Richie Grainge’s hair history of up-dos; looks that have come to define the clean girl aesthetic which she’s been a driving force of. “She was nervous, but super excited,” he adds. It’s a decision, Curran says, that Richie Grainge had been thinking about for a few weeks. “Sofia had chopped a bit off before—she had cut off about five inches already—but she wanted the full refresh.”
She explained her own thinking in a TikTok that documented the bob du jour. “I did one too many Keratin treatments on my hair, and I’ve just been cutting at it and cutting at it, hoping I could get this ‘dead’ away…and it’s just not going away,” she said to camera. “I know what I have to do to make this hair healthy again, and it’s to start over—so we’re cutting a bob.”
The nerves were palpable—doing what we all do before a big chop, she decided for a moment that it looked pretty good as is. Still, she soldiered on with Team Bob. “It’s a great look for 27, we’re starting fresh,” she reassured herself. In bed the night before the haircut, she added: “I’ve decided I want a bob. Like a real [gestures to her chin length]. It’s gotta go—it’s fried.”
She asked her husband, Elliot Grainge, for some solidarity: “Will you shave your head?” she asked.
“I already have a bob,” he replied.
“No, you have a pixie,” she retorted.
“We had spoken a little bit about references before and she had sent me a few pictures—the ‘old money’ longer bob, with a few layers around the face,” explains Curran, who cut her hair on location in France. “There were lots of different lengths, and she was undecided on what she wanted to do. But like I said to her, until I see the person in real life, when they’re sat in front of the mirror and we’re chatting, it’s hard to decide before. We decided on the day.”
Back on Richie Grainge’s TikTok, she shows Curran coming to her hotel room to start the process. “Last time I had a bob, I was a crazy teenager, and I didn’t style it not one day and I looked insane,” she told him, while sipping a matcha and eating a croissant. “I love George—if i have a son, I’d probably name him George.”
How did it all go down? “We did it slowly but surely, stage by stage, going a little bit shorter, and shorter, and came to the length it is now. It’s the perfect length,” says Curran. The London hairstylist often works with REFY beauty founder Jess Hunt, and has crafted more than a few slick and refined bobs.
As shown on Richie Grainge, Curran likes to keep a bob quite blunt. “When you’re cutting your hair shorter, it’s such a nice look from when you’ve been long, because you have that thickness through it,” he explains, “so I don’t like to break up the ends too much—I like to keep it quite blunt. I go through and soften and texturize the ends, but it’s blunt, and the ends are heavy.”
From Gigi Hadid’s flippy bob, to Selena Gomez’s shoulder-grazing lob, and Keke Palmer’s crisp red chop, the short and sweet haircut is a fast track to a style revamp and a seasonal refresh. The French bob—usually one length, earlobe-teasing, effortlessly tousled—is so enduringly popular because of both its ease and iconography. “It’s never going to go anywhere,” affirms Curran. “It’s very chic, it’s wearable, and it’s not too short so you can do different styles with it. There’s nothing more of a statement.”
The French bob seems to fit perfectly with Richie Grainge’s attitude: Effortless, playful, chic, and as her TikTok presence will tell you: unbothered. “I love my bob!” she told TikTok, flipping her hair in the dance we all do when we’ve gone for that chin-grazing chop. “I fricking love it!” Her husband Elliot gives his own seal of approval: “I think it’s really really pretty,” he says in the background of her TikTok. “It’s like…’90s New York!” Friend, podcaster, and comedian Jake Shane was also around in Richie Grainge’s to add to the bob approval.
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Richie Grainge’s hair is easily replicable, too. “The most important thing when cutting hair is that it has to look good when it’s just left natural,” says Curran. Therefore, products and styling techniques can be up to the individual, If you want some volume, opt for a volume spray and add some serum. Keeping it natural, use a curl cream, and let it dry naturally. “No one wants a haircut they can’t style.”
Bonjour bob, reste avec nous.
