Pear shaped hair & Rinka cut - Taking over Asia, one celebrity at a time

For quite a while, I have been wondering how many longer would the long, ginger, layered (razored), wavy (sometime) cascading hair style remain popular. well, it's gets a bit boring when practically everybody in Japanese magazines is sporting the same hair look: Angelababy, Yamada Yu, Lena, Hasegawa Jun...to name a few.

Anyway, a breath of fresh air was blown to the Japanese model circle after magazine model Rinka (who also modeled for Bobbi Brown and NARS Makeup Your Mind) got her new hair cut during summer of 2009. Since Rinka was a fashion idol for many, her hair style slowly (or very quickly) became popular in the fall and it seems to be going strong for 2010. So what exactly was her hair like?

Rinka's hair style was simply a ginger colored medium-length cut with blunt fringe that covers the eyebrows. At the tips, the hair curves inward to form a pear or bell shape. One thing Rinka Cut is differed from the standard wavy medium length is that instead of having volume at the top of head, there is a lot of texture, volume and thickness (they are the same thing?) at the tips and they are most likely to be roughly mono-length or even blunt cut at the bottom.

Before this cut was was made popular by Rinka, it was already seen on another (less famous, obviously) Japanese model a few years ago. Many Chinese speaking people call it Rinka head not only because she popularized it, but also Rinka's name is written in two kanji that means "Pear" and "Flower", which indicates/hints the overall shape of the style. (I don't know how they call it in Japanese or if a name actually exists, since my Japanese sucks.)

When I search for Rinka head in Chinese engine Baidu, this is the top result (her pictures even got into the Baidu-pedia.)
Chinese magazine model (for Ray) Ayuki : She also has a blog (music diarrhea alert!) and a Rinka head tutorial as well as one for meat ball bun. If you do some related search like using auto-complete on Baidu (the first suggestion pops out after you type in Ayuki is Ayuki plastic surgery. lol )you will see this hair actually make her look a lot more youthful compared to the older pictures in which she is sporting the long layered wavy look.

Let's take a look at other models who went under the scissors (Since Ayuki isn't that popular outside of China):
Suzuki Emi- actress, model for Pinky (The magazine has already been discontinued this spring) and spoke model for Shiseido Ma Cherie, has also chopped off her long, ginger hair (it's a bit varied from the standard Rinka cut though, since Emi doesn't go for the cutie-pie route). Here she is modeling for the Autumn/Winter 2009 Catalogue of Cher. You probably can't tell but it's a beautiful phonograph taken by Ninagawa Mika (very typical of her style) and the water mark pretty much ruined it.

Another ex-Pinky model Sasaki Nozomi also made (and documented ) her 20cm/8 inches chop in the December issue of Pinky. She has long wavy here on the cover but inside the spread..
Nozomi is modeling with her bell shaped cut. (This is just an ad page for Lotte gum, love her earrings here. ) Of course the trend doesn't stop at 2009.
January (or February) 2010 issue of Mini. There is a whole page (pg 34) dedicated for the pear shaped hair. I just picked the most "standard one." If you don't want to be overly cute and immature...
There is also a center part version of the cut, it would probably be more suitable for the conservative office lady or people are not compatible with fringe (like me, since I always turned out looking like Chibi Maruko...)
Vicky Zhao's (Who is almost 34 years old) new cut (from fall 2009) is another popular request in Chinese hair salon. The length and wave looks soft, clean cut and quite refreshing. Shibasaki Kou for Coffret d'Or 2010 spring collection-click here for the commercial video (For some reason I always thought that she is in her 30s while Kitagawa Keiko and Natatani Miki each represents women in their 20s and 40s, but it turns out that She is in her late 20s while Nakatani Miki is in her early 30s...Oops.) I think (hope) this is a fake bob since the hair style doesn't look that flattering.
If you want to go for the mature and elegant route, here is Mastuyuki Yusako (Mastuyuki is actually just a few months older than Rinka, who was born in May 1973...Oh, come on, Gigi Lai holds on to her beauty much better with zero sagging!) in Feb issue of Mina. It seems that, with a little bit of variation, Rinka cut is suitable for many people. Anyway, I personally have already chopped of the longer layer of my hair at the end of 2009 and now I do have a more-or-less blunt cut so I will attempt to do the hair once I figure out how to work out those curlers...What about you, would you give it a try?

P.S. Beside the Ayuki blog page, Arora also has a Youtube video tutorial with the medium length curling (you need to turn on the caption...somewhere or just look at what she does.)

P.P.S. There are also some Korean girls with this kind of cut but I personally am not a fan of the sweetie-pie-overkill type of expression, clothes and makeup (especially on adults) and the generally high pitched singing so I am not bothering with those.