Some men get their hair cut; other men are their haircut. From Bob Dylan and James Dean to Harry Styles’ hairstyle, we humbly bow before their flowing locks.
As he morphed from earnest folkie to counterculture prophet, his hair grew from a tufted thatch to a mushroom cloud. And he was gloriously, characteristically weirdo-poetic about it. “All this talk about long hair is just a trick, ” he said in 1966. “It’s been thought up by men and women who look like cigars – the anti-happiness committee. They’re all freeloaders and cops. You can tell who they are: They’re always carrying calendars, guns, or scissors.”
Nearly 20 years ago, when I started working in magazines, John F Kennedy Jr – No, not John-John; nobody who knew him called him that – was the editor-in-chief of
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, and I was an intern. There was no time to be starstruck, and besides, John had no patience for sycophants. But once in a while I’d catch an angle and see him almost the way a stranger did: I’d see that squared-off jawline, that leonine profile and that shampoo-commercial hair. Kennedy hair. Heir hair. Monumental in volume and wave, it looked like it should have a constellation named for it. I remember that John loved hats, and looking back I wonder if he wore them to appear more like the rest of us – to hide that beautiful mane. There were baseball caps, beanies, even berets. He wore them out in the city, riding his bike or walking his dog. I don’t know if they provided him any anonymity, really. What could?
“The bald man is the better lover. First, you have the appreciation factor. The bald man is so thrilled to be in bed with a woman that he’ll do anything and everything, and all with tremendous gusto. And, of course, there’s the testosterone. We’ve got it in spades. That’s why we went bald in the first place.”
A pain in the ass (but worth it). The ultimate high-risk, high-reward haircut requires a lot of product and a lot of patience. Fortunately, you have David Lynch, Alex Turner, Morrissey and James Dean as role models
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The cut: Ask your barber to go shorter on the sides and leave layered length on top. (Don’t worry, he’ll know what that means.)
The styling: On wet hair, comb gel or a light pomade back from your forehead – all the way through to the roots. Blow-dry back and up, creating height from roots to tips.
The finishing touch: Once your hair dries, use your fingers and some more product to define individual pieces as you like. Finish with hair spray. Let no one touch it.
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When Karl Lagerfeld was seven years old, his mother presented him with an oil painting of Voltaire meeting Frederick the Great of Prussia. Fascinated by this image of elaborately bewigged aristocrats, he kept it into adulthood, hanging it outside the exact reproduction of his childhood bedroom he assembled in his Parisian mansion. Once he became creative director of Chanel and completely transformed the staid French prêt-à-porter into the global juggernaut it is today – an insouciant mash-up of goth streetwear and frilly couture – he seemed determined to make his personal style as evocative of the 18th century as possible. And so he swept his silver hair into a beautiful low ponytail straight out of
. Note its smooth adherence to his head, characteristic of ponytails pictured in the oddly two-dimensional portraits of Colonial America. Observe its shortened sideburns, which might have been cut by the steel pivoted scissors invented by Robert Hinchliffe in 1761. It is a ponytail of sleek modernity and a ponytail of the rarefied past, the coiffure equivalent of a tweed Chanel iPhone sleeve.
Every man under 50 who is purposely bald has been touched by the long arm of Michael Jordan. Rather than attempt to pass off his filmy shadow of vellus as real hair, Jordan accepted Mother Nature’s will – then he shoved it back in her face, shaving his head clean. Suddenly he looked even more athletic. Veins rippled backward when he strained. The curves of his smooth dome mirrored those of his biceps. The effect was greatest when he sweated, which made him look as if he had been carved from marble and polished to a high sheen. Gatorade executives beheld that glistening head and saw valuable advertising space; they coloured Jordan’s perspiration fluorescent orange and turned it into a marketing campaign. With the swipe of a razor, Jordan not only created an iconic silhouette for himself; he shaved the way for generations of premature baldies.
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If you wanted to politicize your hair in the Seventies, you grew it into long, straight, face-framing curtains that spilled down your shoulders and back. Unless you were a black guy – then the Morticia Addams look was tough to pull off. So you did what Sly Stone did: Instead of growing down, you grew wide, in every direction, like the rays of the sun, allowing the kinks and curls of your natural hair to dictate its shape, gloriously unrestrained. Sly was already a musical prodigy when he made his first foray into the business, as a clean-cut teenager singing doo-wop. But it wasn’t until he grew out his hair into a perpetual black halo that he transformed into a pioneer of psychedelic soul.
All hair is faith – you comb it, shave it, style it, point it in a direction, and pray that others will believe as you do. But dreadlocks are different, more literal. The Bible says, “He shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow.” So there’s Bob Marley – still young, newly returned from America and the Chrysler plant in which he worked, back in Jamaica, devoting himself to reggae and Rastafarianism. He let the locks of the hair of his head grow. He was saying: I am a believer. He was saying: Look at God. Then there was The Weeknd, still young, coming out of anonymity and the Toronto shadows, finally ready to put a face to his name, wearing his hair like a crown made from coral. “I want to be remembered as iconic and different, ” he told
Last year. “So I was like, ‘Fuck it – I’m gonna let my hair just be what it wants.’” This, too, was an act of faith, if a more secular one. He was saying: Look at me.
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Pat Riley: I was in between jobs – I’d just retired as a player – and I spent a couple of weeks on the beach. And during that time, I started to comb it back while it was wet. It’s been that way since I was 35, so a long time now.
First you’ve gotta get the cut right. It’s gotta be a layered cut, done by somebody who really knows what he’s doing. It can’t be more than three-and-a-half inches long. Then you shower, shampoo, spend very little time with a dryer. You put whatever goop you like through it and then finger-comb it. I rarely use a brush or a comb. You’ll know you’ve got the right haircut when you can finger-comb it and it stays back.
When I was on the cover in ’89, Mychal Thompson told me, “Coach, you can get too many of those things and make the players jealous.” I said, “Don’t worry, there won’t be many.”
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Do: Have it trimmed every three months (yes, even if you’re growing it out). When your hair is this long, the ends can get dry and damaged. If your hair is thick, ask for subtle layers to remove weight and density. Otherwise you’ll look all bushy.
Do: Double-dip on products. Style with a grooming cream (which you may already have) and sea-salt spray (which you don’t already have, but which is a real thing).
Unless you’re cool with a crosshatch of head scars, do not just grab an electric razor and let it rip. Remember, your scalp is made of skin – like your face. Find a professional who’ll give you the full-service treatment: shave, shampoo (to clean your newly shorn scalp), head massage, hot towel, moisturizer. For at-home touch-ups, use an electric trimmer and leave a tiny bit of stubble – and don’t walk out the door without sunscreen.
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