Return of the mullet: from Rihanna to Miley Cyrus, the Kenny G look is making a comeback
- Actor Chris Elliott sports one in hit American TV show Schitt’s Creek and the hairstyle is a big favourite for most of the England rugby team
- Mullets made their first appearance in literature in Homer’s The Iliad and months of lockdown hair growth has seen them become fashionable again
“Business in front, party in the back”: a hairstyle considered so obnoxious that for years it verged on being an arrestable offence, the mullet has made the unlikeliest comeback of the century.
From pop stars like Rihanna and Miley Cyrus to a surprisingly high proportion of the England rugby team, the short-front-long-back style has reinvaded the world’s TV screens and high streets.
In hit TV show Schitt’s Creek – which centres around the Roses, a wealthy family that suddenly goes bankrupt and has to move to an ugly small town named Schitt’s Creek – the town mayor, Roland Schitt, sports a mullet and a beer belly. Played by actor Chris Elliott, Roland represents everything that the Roses are not; unrefined and with very little taste, he’s a country man at heart and styles his often-derided mullet with trucker hats.
Sharon Daniels, 26, an Australian living in Brighton, England, explained the thinking behind her mullet: “My idols have always been David Bowie and Princess Diana, so the initial idea was to look like their love child,” she said.
“Shaz” was well ahead of the game, and when she first arrived in Brighton two years ago, only one other person around town was sporting her do – she knew, because people kept sending her pictures of him. Now, the mullet is everywhere. “I don’t necessarily appreciate that, since now it looks like I’m trying to fit in,” Daniels laughed. “I don’t mind. I know how long I’ve been rocking it.”
Fashion cycles are as inevitable as the turning of the planets, but this is one style that many thought buried for good.
“It’s back from the dead,” said Tony Copeland of the British Master Barbers Alliance, theorising that a few months of lockdown growth helped propel the resurrection. “We’re going to see more this year. Guys are just fed up with all the skin fades.”
