Something in the air recently has been inspiring celebrities to make drastic haircuts left and right, and it’s likely the start of summer influencing these changes. Nina Dobrev, for example, just got thick bangs that resemble her own childhood fringe — she joins Lucy Liu, who ended May by chopping her hair into a blunt bob, and Ariana Grande, who popped out with wispy blonde bangs the same month.
On June 26, Dobrev debuted the new bangs at the Los Angeles premiere of Netflix’s The Out-Laws and posted three times to Instagram to show them off to her fans on June 27. Her first post is a slideshow showing the behind-the-scenes process of the haircut, completed by hairstylist Mark Townsend. The first photo shows her posting with a thick chunk of her freshly cut hair as a moustache.
Townsend chopped the front of Dobrev’s brunette hair to make the thick fringe cover the majority of her eyebrows; you can see slivers of her arches peeking through from some angles. Townsend curled her hair lightly so the chest-length ends had some texture. Her blunt bangs were a noticeably darker brown hue than her caramel brown tips.
Dobrev also worked with makeup artist Daniel Kolaric for the Netflix film premiere. He added a light pink shimmer to her lids and buffed some pink blush on her cheeks. He coated her lips in a mauve lip gloss.
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Bangs are an exciting haircut, but a fringe during summertime seems a bit risky, or, more accurately, sweaty. Dobrev might be used to having bangs in the heat because she had them in her youth, which you can tell by her current Instagram profile picture. Perhaps her new cut was influenced by nostalgia for her youthful bangs.
This feature originally appeared on Allure.