One of the most iconic long hairstyles is the retro 70s feathered haircut. Reminiscent of Farrah Fawcett’s style, this look has lots of volume with or without feathered bangs. Using a round brush or curling iron to create the iconic face framing curls and style feathered hair, this look is a type of cut that has lived on for decades.

Watch this 70s feathered hair tutorial and follow along with the transcript below.

70s Feathered Haircut Tutorial:

Welcome back to Jatai Academy. I’m Russell Mayes, Director of Content. Today we’re going to be doing a study of 70s feathered layering. We’re going to modernize it using the Feather Plier Razor and I’m going to show you all the key points, how to make it move, how to make it flow, how to make it piecey. So let’s get started.

To go through and start I’m going to take a natural or center part to the crown, the crown to the occipital bone, occipital bone down to the center of the spine, occipital bone to the mastoid, which is that bump right behind each of the ears.

I’m going split this section in half because it’s a lot of hair and I can’t deal with that much hair at one time. I want to go through and establish my baseline of length.

Establishing the Perimeter of this 70s Feather Haircut

Now she has a lot of hair and it’s very thick and I want to keep it that way, but I do want the ends to be soft and airy and light. The classical way of doing a feathered haircut is you cut everything blunt and then you hit the ends with a thinning scissor.

I’m going to get a similar result by using my Feather Plier Razor. It is a guardless razor and it will give me the cleanest cut of any of my razor tools that I have.

So I’m going to start right here in the middle, comb everything clean from the roots all the way down to where I want my overall length to be and then we’re going to go through and with a pretty broad stroke cut my overall length.

This is going to give me a little flicky separation on the ends without a lot of weight on the ends, but it’s still going to be a solid shape because I’m not going through and doing a lot of internal texturizing.

We’re going to take our next section, bring this straight down. My fingers will run slightly past where I cut previously and then try to keep the same sort of razor stroke all the way through. We’re going to do the last section on the left side.

And here I’ll start on the inside. Try to keep the same razor stroke. And you’ll notice I keep this hand perfectly still. So once I plant my fingers this hand does not move, only the razor moves. I want a nice clean cut line. Now we’re going to take the next section.

Bring this down. Start right in the middle.

Comb this clean all the way from the roots down through the ends. There is my guide that I’m cutting to. Open my razor.

Cut on top of my guide as closely as you can. Now the shape of this is going to be very very soft. So I’m not worried about everything being exactly perfectly on top of. As long as it’s in the general vicinity of where my previously cut guide was, I’ll be fine. There we go. Here’s my guide. Cut that across.

Check that. We got a few little pieces there. And now we’ll go through and check and make sure it’s similar in length on each side and I don’t have any long little pieces that I missed. And I’m liking that and that’s looking pretty good except for that. There we go. That’s looking pretty good.

Now I’m going to continue on doing the same method of just taking parallel sections all the way up the head until I’ve cut everything the same length. Going to go through and finish our last section here and just make sure there’s no long little pieces hanging over.

Try to keep everything combed to the same area that I was combing it in before with my underneath sections. Meaning that if I combed everything at an angle and I was holding everything parallel to my parting, I want to make sure that each section is being held in exactly the same spot that the previously cut sections were so that I don’t end up pulling one section too far forward or another section too far back.

Not much to cut here, but just making sure everything blends perfectly.

Follow us on your favorite social media @jataifeather

Creating the 70s Feathered Layering

So now to go through and work on my layering, I’m going to go through and take a section where it’s one flat section, two flat section, the third flat section right here down to the corner of the eyebrow. That’s going to give me a pretty steep little angle here.

I want to make my partings match the bone structures of the head so that it’s easier for me to match the left side to the right side. If I’m going off bone structure and not just randomly guessing it’s easier for me to be more precise about my partings.

Okay so now from here I’m going to comb everything T to my parting and pull this forward.

And this part is going to be my shortest piece right through here. So I want to kind of visualize where that’s going to fall and I’m thinking probably about to her chin is a good length. Pull this forward, visualize where that short piece is going to be, comb it off the peak curvature of the head and then cut from the center forward.

So what this is going to do is this is instantly going to build this same steep angle into my section that I cut and it’s going to start forcing the hair to feather back. And since I’m holding it up at elevation it’s going to layer that and keep it light and airy.

Now the next section I’m going to go through is going to be parallel. I’ll take a flat section parallel to the previously cut section. Make sure that that parting looks the same.

Now from here it’s going to start to get tricky because I want to elevate off of the peak curvature of the head. So the first section is showing me to hold it there. The next section is showing me to hold it here. The one after that will be here.

So each time as I go further and further back I get more and more elevation. So I’ll section here. I’m going to pick up all my sections of hair making sure that I don’t pick up any hair from the opposite side of the head.

I want to make sure that this is pinned down, that I can’t pick any of that up. Because if I pick that up it’s going to end up getting short in a hole on the other side.

There’s my previously cut guide. There’s my razor. Keep the same broad razor stroke so I can keep the same sort of texture throughout. Following the curvature of the head and cutting that down and through. Check that and you can start to see I’m getting a real steep angle and everything’s already starting to move and feather back.

Next section parallel to the previously cut section. Now as I start to go back it’s easier for me to tilt her head down and continue my line going back than it is for me to try to over elevate. There’s my guide from underneath.

Remove some of that. I can’t handle all that hair at the same time. Bring that out and through. There’s my guide from underneath.

Cut that down and through. It’s important to keep my partings as parallel and as even as possible. Now we’re starting to elevate more. Tilt the head down a little bit more. There’s my elevation. Pick up my razor. There’s my guide from underneath. Cut that down and through.

Down and through. You can see I’m starting to run out of hair as I reach the perimeter over the ear.

Cut that down and through. Remove some of that.

My next section going off continuing off the peak curvature of the head and you can see I’m starting to really run out of hair as I reach the top of the ear.

Give us a thumbs up, click subscribe and the notification bell to be notified of future Jatai Academy content.

Next piece. There we go. Got just a little bit right there and the crown and I bet as I work here to the sides there’s going to be little to no hair to cut.

And there we go. So now let’s go through and do the exact same thing on the other side. Alright, here’s our end result of our cut. We’ve got a lot of layering concentrated here around the bang area and the front top of the head.

It blends through, but it still maintains a really solid shape here on the bottom and it allows that lightness of the layering to feather back while still maintaining that shape. So let’s go through and blow it dry and then we’ll see what we got.

70s Feathered Haircut End Result

Here is our end result. And I think that we really captured you know the essence of what a feathered hairstyle was and that’s light and airy layering around the front gradually getting more solid in the back with a real solid shape back here on the perimeter line and light airy feathered layers around the front view.

And by elevating everything and pulling it forward and going off the head shape that really helps release the weight and then combining that with a more modern approach of using the Feather Plier Razor that keeps me very light and airy in my layering but still helps me build up a nice solid shape. And I think that she looks pretty good. I like it a lot.

Note: Her hair color is light, but this will work on darker hair colors as well.

Check out the Jatai Academy. There’s all kinds of fantastic information on there that will make you a better hairstylist and barber. Also let us know what you’d like to see in the future and until next time take care. Thank you so much for watching.