The men’s French crop cut hairstyle is known for its short sides and cropped textured top with a short fringe. The sides can have a high or low fade or taper and the top works well with thick hair and even curly hair. A blunt fringe or textured fringe give a distinct look. The French crop haircut is a great style to learn how to cut. Watch the crop hairstyle tutorial below and follow along with the transcript.

Men’s French Crop Cut Hair Tutorial:

Welcome back to Jatai Academy. I’m Russell Mayes, Director of Content. Today we’re going to be doing a practice on the French crop.

The French crop taper fade is very very popular. It’s very versatile. You can use it on a lot of different textures and a lot of different types but there are some fundamental skills that you really need to hone in and practice and get good at in order to deliver a very very good French crop. So let’s study that. Let’s get started.

To get started what we’ve done is we’ve taken the center of the recession straight back to the quarter part down and curved that around into the back so that we have half of the parietal ridge sitting up top, half of it sitting on the bottom.

Tapering and Fading with a Clipper

So I’m going to start and just remove some hair. So I just want to get most of this hair out of the way before I start worrying about my taper. So I’m gonna use a number three guard on my clipper and then just go straight up and take all of this hair off.

Now as I start to go, sometimes this hair gets pushed up and out of the way. So if I just grab it and pull it into the teeth it makes it easier for me to get all this off.

Now whenever I’m doing some short hair like this I don’t want to go through and necessarily cut everything in my fingers first and then go through and cut it shorter with scissor over comb or clipper over comb or whatever that may be.

Sometimes I just need to remove some hair so I can start whittling my shape in. So now that I’ve got my overall length cut off and I’ve established my length that I’m cutting to here at the top, I can go through and approach my taper in one of two different ways.

I can skin the bottom up to where I want the skin part to be and then fade from short into long or I can work from long to short. It’s really a personal preference on what style works best for you.

I find personally if I’m doing something really high, like a French crop high fade, like I’m skinning it up really high, then I’d prefer to skin it first and then work out my line. If I’m keeping the taper lower and the skin fade very low, then I’ll go from long to short.

So let’s go from long to short for a French crop low fade. So I had a three. Now I’m going to go down to a number two and I’ll go up about a finger length away and as I start to run up the head I want to rock the clipper away from the head. That’s going to allow me to cut this hair underneath short and then as I rock it out it allows me to blend into that longer length.

So I finished with my number two. I got everything done like I want. I can look at it from a profile and see that it tapers quite nicely. Now I’m going to go down to a 1-1/2.

And on the one and a half I’m going to do the same methodology that I was doing before where I’m not going up as high as the last one and as I get closer to where I want it to start to fade, I start rocking the clipper away from the head. So it’s this type of arching motion that’s coming from your wrist.

I finished my one and a half so you notice that the steps went from three to two to one and a half. Now I’m going to a one. So as I get shorter the steps become smaller because you notice the difference much more as the hair gets shorter and you see more skin sticking out.

Now we got a number one. Going to do the same thing. Start low where I stopped before. Run up to that point. Arc the clipper to start working on my blend. Now we’re to our 1/2 so I run a 1/2 right at where I want my shortest bit.

And then I open the blade a little bit and I start using my arcing motion of my wrist to help the clipper go through and blend that through as best I can.

Now I’ll take the clipper itself with no guard and just here on the very bottom take all of that little residual hair off. That’s not looking too bad.

Follow us on your favorite social media @jataifeather

So I’ve gone through and finished my tapering. Now I’ve gone and washed the hair because the clipper cuts better on dry hair and I can see everything a little bit better on dry whereas the scissors and razor cut better on wet hair.

Cutting the Top Back with Scissors

So I’ve gone and shampooed. Now I’ve sectioned off from the high point of the head over to the top of the ear and I have the whole back of the head. I want to make sure that this blends well with the underneath without them getting a flat head.

So I’ll start right in the middle and I will take a parallel section. Now I’m going to separate this according to where the crown is. I’m going to hold this hair at this elevation because I want to make sure I continue this angle of graduation so it prevents me from getting a flat head.

So I’ll hold that straight out, plant my fingers, there’s my guide I’m cutting from. Now I’m going to pull that out and continue that angle that I had there. Take that a little shorter through there by building up a little bit more length in the crown when the hair falls.

It’s going to continue this natural fall of head shape. So now from here after I’ve got that length going up from there, I’ll use that as my length and follow the head shape from there forward.

Oops! Once we got that through now that should be a nice curved shape blending right into my longest part of my taper underneath. I will go through, I will pivot the section from the center, get this other hair out of the way and continue to work that around into the sides.

Now I’m using my Jatai Tokyo Scissor this is a 6 inch scissor. It’s got a nice little point on it and it gives me enough scissor length that I can really work in larger thicker sections of hair.

And it’s also good if I need to do some scissor over comb type of blending. Continue up the head working to the center top of the head. One more pivot. Pin this hair out of the way. Take my previous section, hold that out. There’s my line from underneath.

Follow my tapering angle and then start to head shape the rest of the cut so I continue this nice smooth bevel. I would rather have too much hair through here than not enough because I can always take it down. If I end up with not enough hair, then I end up with a flat head.

Fine-tune this a little bit with some scissor over comb, just trying to get a rough shape into it. Get my lengths even. Get everything blended in the back.

There we go. Now I’ll go through, separate my center section again. This was the original section that I cut and I’m going to go through do the same thing on the other side.

Cutting the Top with Scissors

After I finish the back I’m going to go through and take a center section right down the top of the middle and here I know that my bangs are already here.

I can go shorter than that or longer. I’m going to leave that about that length so I’m going to go through and cut from this length to this length, going from back to front.

Now I like to cut from the shortest part to the longer part. So I’m going to turn to the other side, pick this straight up. There’s my short part and cut from longer. I’m sorry from shorter to longer.

Holding this straight up into the center of the section straight up towards the ceiling to this length right in the front, comb that forward. Check the lengths out. Think that’s okay cuz I can cut this a little bit more in the front.

All right, so once we’ve got that we’re going to go through and take a parallel section. I have my center section and my first section that I’m adding to. I will comb those two into the center of both of those sections, cut that going from back to front, from shorter to longer. Get that done. Okay very good.

Now I will remove my first section, my first guide that I cut. I’m going to go through and remove that. I no longer need it. I have a new guide now. I’ll take my next section and do exactly the same thing, work from short in the back to long in the front.

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

There we go. I will remove my second section. So now I have the third section and the last section on this side. I’ll comb that straight up. There’s my guide from the back. There we go. Cut that shorter to longer than the front.

Now I’ll go back, find my very first section that I took right here into the center, pin this other hair out of the way so I don’t get confused.

I will add my next section on the opposite side and go through and do exactly the same thing that I did on the right side. Now I’ll go through and do that on the left using my center guide to walk my guide all the way to their left side.

Blending and Sculpting

So to work on my blend, I’m going to go through and use my Feather Styling Razor. This is a wood grain so it’s a wood look finish and I really like it. I think it looks very cool. You can also use all three different types of blades on it: the Texturizing, the Standard or the R-Type.

I am using the R-Type Blade so I get a little bit more blade exposed so I can cut a little cleaner. So from here we’re going to hold this straight out. There’s my line in the back and I’ll just start razoring from short to long in the front just like I was doing on the top.

I want to do this little bit right here on the sides to make sure everything blends through. There pull my next section. I will probably not have a whole lot of hair reach and I don’t so we’ll take a little bit of that off right through there. That’s looking pretty good.

A little sculpture cutting right through there to make sure I take some of the weight out and have a nice blend. When I do this it’s a very gentle laying of the razor on the surface of the hair to remove some weight from it, remove some solidity and I think that that’s looking like a pretty good blend through there.

Now we’re going to do the same thing on the other side from here. Okay that’s looking pretty good. I want to go through and just clean this line up here in the front, not a lot but just clean that up a little bit. Take a long stroke to take out weight as I cut my length right there, a little bit right through there.

Here we’re not taking off any length. I’m just going to add a little bit of texture to soften that up and we need a little bit more over here.

All right, I’m thinking this shape is looking pretty good. Now let’s go through and blow it dry see what we got.

Final Men’s French Crop Cut Haircut

Here’s our finished look. I think we got a really nice kind of taper. One thing I will say is when you’re doing a taper, especially when you’re practicing on a mannequin head you’re not going to like it while you’re doing it.

You’re going to freak out, but wait till you wash it and wait till you get it dry before you can really judge it completely. It takes a little time to dial it in and to get your hand motions right, but we got a nice little taper.

We got it blended through the crown really properly so it has a nice head shape to it. It’s not the anti-head shape where it’s flat and collapsed in the back. You got a nice little solid top and we’ve got this lad kind of look in the front where it’s straight across but still has a little bit of texture.

And I think that this really surmises the French crop in that it’s solid, soft and short on the sides with a little bit of texture in the front.

So add this to your repertoire practice and it’s just skills that you need to have in your arsenal and this is really a straightforward haircut that’s very versatile that you can use on a lot of different hair types and a lot of different hair textures and thicknesses. So there we go.

Please check out the Jatai Academy. There’s all kinds of fantastic information on there that will make you a better hair stylist and barber. Also let us know what you’d like to see in the future and thank you so much for watching. We’ll see you next time.

If you’re looking for men’s haircut ideas, the French crop is good one. Crop fade haircuts are popular among men all over the world. Learning how to do a mens crop haircut requires precision and proper technique since it shows all flaws. Using various tools to achieve seamless crop cut hairstyles, you can create a masterpiece of your own!