The Return of Hair-Raising Style
Click here for a slideshow of notable pompadours past and present—and to learn how to get one of your own.
If you followed the January men’s shows from Milan online, you might have thought you were clicking through a casting call for Jailhouse Rock. Seemed like nearly every editor, stylist, and model caught on one of those ubiquitous street-scene blogs was rocking a pompadour.
Shorn on the sides and back, long enough on top to be swept forward and back onto itself, the whole thing looks like one big, bold whoosh! sound effect. It’s the kind of do that says "I’ve got a great head of hair—and I know it." James Dean and Elvis made the gravity-defying style famous in the ’50s, but it nearly died with the Beatles (then bassist Stuart Sutcliffe could be credited with the death knell, when his German girlfriend tossed out his pomade and broke out her scissors in 1961 and gave him a soon-to-be-legendary mod mop top). About twenty years later, when London’s punk movement abandoned its safety-pin-and-bondage-pants roots, style icons like Morrissey and the Clash’s Paul Simonon revived the coiffed hairstyle. And now it has resurfaced again, with fashion designers, musicians, and celebs embracing this once-but-no-longer-rebellious statement.
So, no, a pompadour won’t scare the bejesus out of parents any more. But as long as there are guys who part their hair on the side to say "I work in an office," there will be others sculpting theirs into a giant wave, signaling something entirely different to the world, one that—they would like you to think—says: "No, I don’t have a 401(k), I’m not putting out this cigarette, and I don’t care what your pops thinks. Now, you gettin’ on this motorbike or what?"
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