Us beardies will never give up being hipsters
STYLE is timeless, fashion’s only now …” That line by Hall & Oates, the 1980s white soul duo, defines the dichotomy between faddy fashion and sempiternal style. For me, it all started in the mid-1970s with an Action Man. In what was once a beard-free world, save for the dedicated followers of religion (and geography teachers), the “Adventurer” Action Man stood alone as a bewhiskered man in a world of the clean-shaven. In his thick, woollen adventurer polo neck, this hirsute hero was the only man I can remember who made a beard look cool. You have to understand that as a young, turbaned Sikh I knew that the sprouting of random facial hair was inexorable. Puberty is challenging enough, without having uncertain fluff adorning your self-conscious teenage face while all your friends are flufffree. For them, Gillette was just the beginning of what a man can get. Beards would never be cool, never be stylish. Maybe a Magnum PI moustache or the surreal swirls of Salvador Dali’s moustache art could convey cool. But never, ever a beard. So I wandered, cloud-lonely and bearded, through my teenage years and 20s. I had at least learned to corral my beard and make it as presentable as possible. Never would I have imagined a brave new bearded world, in which hairy-faced men would be the arbiters of elegance, the keepers of cool, the harbingers of hip. But then, it happened. I had been living in east London, the epicentre of the painfully chic. This was where trends would start; many would, butterfly-like, live and fly for but a day. Others would become mainstream, forming the new normal. Gradually I noticed that I wasn’t the only beardy boy on the block. This was some 10 years ago and almost overnight, the trend for hairy-faced men had become endemic.
Rock stars, rugby players, footballers, catwalk models all sported face furniture. At last, I felt a brimming sense of vindication. I, too, joined the legions that spent stupid amounts of money on beard oil/cream/moisturiser. Why? Because I’m worth it.
But we all knew that it simply couldn’t last. Then, in 2014, “peak beard” was proclaimed. The height of beard, the societal saturation point had been met. As with North Sea oil, the only way was down – fewer and fewer beards.
That didn’t happen. Neither did it happen in 2015 or indeed as reported by my colleague, Barry Didcock, in this newspaper in 2016. As Beardy Barry informed us: “The ‘peak beard’ theory was proposed by researchers at Australia’s University of New South Wales and in its simplest form it ran like this: when you reach a point where the majority of men have beards, the ones who don’t stand out and start to look more attractive as a result. That point, the researchers thought, had been reached. Hence ‘peak beard’.”
I heard on the wireless earlier this week that the trend for men wearing beards was on the wane. Ironically, I heard this minutes after spending £28 on beard moisturiser. You may think I chastised myself for the purchase of expensive facial hair products. But rumours of “peak beard” have been greatly exaggerated.
Us beardies will never be denied our rightful place as hipsters. I have to confess I once believed that the trend for face hair would be temporary, a passion fad in a fashion-frenzied world. My neatly-trimmed, close-cut beard was allowed to grow and develop, to run free as, ZZ Top-like, I embraced the temporary love of beards. Every passing season I have imagined a return to my previous look, and every passing season my beard has remained unruly and long.
Calls of “peak beard” will come and they will go. Male facial hair has transcended fashion and become a style. It’s quietly reassuring that something as primitive, as untamed as a beard can still make a major impact in the world today in and among the Pradas, the Guccis and the rest.
Hardeep Singh Kohli is a Scottish writer and broadcaster. Follow his antics @misterhsk