SPOTTER’S GUIDE TO MEN’S HAIR
THE LONG FADE
“The most popular look this year, especially in the summer, was the skin fade, where the hair is trimmed ‘right down to the wood’ at the back and sides and left long on top,” says Daniel Davies, general manager of Pall Mall Barbers in London. What’s left can be styled any way, from an Elvis Pompadour to the kind of girlie “curtains” favoured by David Beckham.
DIGITAL VICTORIAN
A more restrained version of the look known as steam punk: longish, unruly hair twinned with a trimmed beard and an expressive moustache (up to and including waxed tips). Often worn with specs, it suggests you are working on both a time machine and an Internet startup.
THE GRIZZLY
As sported by Christian Bale, it’s a beard and mop of hair so bountiful it implies you have been roughing it in the Alaskan wastes for a year, and only tied your hair in a bun to stop it getting tangled in your bear-trap.
THE MOD-MOD-MOD (MODIFIED, MODERN “MOD” LOOK)
“We’ve seen ’90s revival with the growth of interest in bands like the Stone Roses,” says Davies. “A lot of people are coming in asking for their own versions of the Noel Gallagher/Paul Weller/Jake Bugg style.”
THE GREY CAVALIER
A luxuriant wave starting high in the crown and cascading back over the shirt collar, worn by men of a certain age to suggest sustained potency.
And for 2016?
BLUE STEEL
Popular films inspire copycat styles, such as Daniel Craig’s “class men’s cut” in Spectre. Ben Stiller returns next year as the vain male model in Zoolander 2. If there is an upsurge in spiky black urchin cuts (plus a pout) we’ll know the same is true of the male population.