Coping with a disasterous haircut - help!

Dave Hill of Slade

Never trust a hairdresser who tells a thirty-something woman their proposed haircut will make them look 'edgy'.

It is impossible to look edgy when you have a face puffy from lack of sleep (thanks darling toddler) and lack the sharp cheekbones of Audrey Tatou. The concept of 'edgy' in these circumstances is about as likely as an outfit making me look 'fierce'.

I asked for a hairstyle that might make my standard 'Rachel cut' updated. (yes, I know it's all a bit 90's, but it really suits me. Honestly - I even look a little like her if you squint really hard after a glass or two of Pinot Noir) My perky 20-something hairdresser suggested an asymetric 'edgy' fringe and then lots of flicky layers.
It sounded so reassuringly nice...

...and looked great coming out of the hairdressers.

The problem is, in common with most mothers, I do not have the time (or finances) to apply three different products to my hair, use clips so I can pouf it up at the back and then flat-iron the hell out of it.

The asymmetric fringe has boinged up a centimeter so I look like a cross between Dave Hill (above) of Slade and the local village idiot. The flicky layers have removed any natural volume there was before so I now have, what can be best described as a limp mullet.

I have not had such a bad haircut since I requested my mum cut my hair to resemble Princess Diana in the mid-80s. At the end of that I looked like a boyish village idiot.

Why is there not a mirror at the hairdressers that doesn't show the hair as it is immediately after a cut, but as it will be when you have had a bit of a go at it two days later? I am going to develop one to save millions of women every year the trauma of FDS - Follicular Disappointment Syndrome.