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Hi
I have just discovered something else about hairstyle fashions. Apparently hair on guys was longest (halfway down the back)between 1969-73 then after that hairstyles shortened and became more styled although the hair still covered the ears and back of the neck.
Also in the UK at least long hair was supplanted by the Bubble Perm which became fashionable for men from 1977-78 until 1983-84 when the mullet haircut took over. I seem to get the impression that in the UK footballers tend to be fashion leaders and pioneers.
What do you think?
Hello Everyone,
It seems in Canada, there was a two year delay in the dates you mention:
Long hair down one's back started to be more visible, in 1970-1971, and reached its peak around 1974-1975, and gradually got shorter as disco brought in what you call the "Bubble Perm" (which we called a perm, or disco haircut). The eighties however, brought the business "power cut", and the so-called laied back middle of the ears style. The mullet started to be visible in the late eighties, and ponytails were in style from the early nineties to the mid nineties, as shaved heads became in.
The nineties also brought a mentality where there are "no fashions" and any style of one's choosing was ok, and that brought an explosion of metal, goth, retro-seventies, un-natural colors, medieval fair goer, etc.
Even in the eighties I felt I was the only true longhair in my town until the nineties when there was a revival of ponytails and longer hair. When the shaved heads became in, contrary to the eighties, when long hair was almost unseen, long hair was still a visible minority. Paradoxically, in the eighties, longhairs seemed to come out of the woodwork around metal concerts :) but otherwise they were few and far between.
Have a nice day,
Georges in Montreal.
Was long hair on men still fashionable in Montreal in 1978 as per your Block party photo?
I saw the real LONG hair explosion in my area then (Northeast US)during the late 80's and early nineties, during the metal/glam/big hair band days. This being where I got my inspiration :-) It seemed to fade away with the grundge scene and all but dissapeared in the mid to late nineties :-(
In the UK quite a few of the footballers have long hair
I think everyone experienced a different reality.
I never met a long-haired guy until college --- in 1984!
I was born in the mid-1960s when "mainstream" mens' hair styles were SHORT. And by short I mean like military style. All my male relatives and teachers had short hair. Long hair was only for hippies, rock stars, etc.
It wasn't until the 1970s when longer hair on men STARTED to become more mainstream. Even then, in elementary school, the longest hair any of my male classmates had was shoulder length.
In the mid-1970s, I transfered to a private conservative Christian school, and we were required to keep our hair "neatly trimmed" above the collar. That part of the dress code became unnecessary by 1983 when boys at my high school seemed to prefer short hair anyway.
I graduated from high school in 1984 and attended a liberal hippie college. It was like stepping into a time warp. Even though it was the mid-1980s, our campused looked more like DAZED AND CONFUSED. A number of guys had long hair, some even as long as WAIST LENGTH!
After graduating from college, I entered grad school. In the 1990s, ULTRA SHORT hair was the norm, even in the early 90s. I never experienced the grunge thing. Guys' hair remained short through the early 2000s. It was only around 2005 that I started to noticed male hair lengths trending longer.
Well, your reality was certainly different, alright. Where were you? I think the differences all come down to geography. I have a theory that most trends start in California, then hit England about the same time as the US East coast, and fill in between the two coasts rather slowly afterwards, taking especially long to reach the Bible belt. Obviously, that doesn't take large chunks of the world into account, but it's a work in progress.
I am a few years older than you, I reckon about eight years older. I am from England, and have lived in the US since '89.
IME there were no guys with long hair before the Beatles released 'She Loves You', which was c. 1963. OTOH, there were no crewcuts either in England at that time, not even in the army(!), and these only appeared on skinheads in the late '60s and in the mainstream no earlier than the '90s, i.e. only after I emmigrated, which is a major difference vis-a-vis the USA. Skinheads were associated with soccer violence and with racist anti-immigrant political parties. Beatles cuts weren't long either, by modern standards, because they were really only long at the front.
The number of guys with long hair, and the length they grew it, increased at the same time, but rather gradually, as the idea of what actually counted as long hair gradually changed. Again, the Beatles were a bellweather, at least for a while, as they grew their hair in pace with that. By the time they split in '71 long hair had become mainstream, but it meant shoulder length.
I started to grow mine out c. '72. By that time I was complaining to my parents that I was the only kid in school with short hair. OK, I exaggerated, but I genuinely was in a short haired minority by then, believe it or not.
I went to college in '76, and punk music hit that year, or maybe it was '77 if it was after Christmas, but at any rate that college year. Suddenly, long hair was no longer cool in the music press, and while the students kept their long hair, the kids in the town didn't, so you had a classic division between 'town and gown', with long haired students and short haired 'townies' as the locals were labelled.
So, at least where I was, the period when long hair was mainstream was really from about '71 to '76 or '77, but it was cool from as far back as 1963. I have seen it drift in and out of fashion several times since then, and it seems to be back in now, but IMHO it doesn't really count after that first fashion cycle. It is more important to me that crewcuts are back out, as I can't stand them. Truthfully, that's an unfair prejudice that I have because of the skinheads. Some people say the same thing about long hair and hippies, but I find that rather odd, because try as I might, I can't recall any incidents of hippies beating up rival sports fans or people with a different skin colour. Funny that, isn't it?
To me, long hair will always be cool, although I am too old for my opinions on fashion to impress anyone. After all, I'm eligible to join the AARP* now, ROTFL! OTOH, if that makes me a 'senior', then I should be able to complain about 'the youth of today' whilst brandishing a walking stick, LOL! Must put one on my shopping list.
(* An American organisation for the over-50s)
>>>"IME there were no guys with long hair before the Beatles released 'She Loves You', which was c. 1963"
Wasn't the late Screaming Lord Sutch, founder of the Monster Raving Loony Party, sporting long black hair and a top hat before Beatlemania. He was remarkably similar to Alice Cooper.
I don't think it was before the Beatles. Maybe before the Beatles hit your neck of the woods?
A good friend of mine once ran into Screamin' Lord Sutch in a pub, and got some free concert tickets after drinking with him for a while. Apparently he didn't like the concert much, sad to say. The entrance in the coffin was apparently a highlight, but I think the guy who wrote 'Monster Mash' used to do that way before he did, so even that was a stolen idea.
OTOH, I think the Monster Raving Loony Party was brilliant. Even then, that name appeared on the flexidisc (45" flexible single, probably on the cover of the NME, I think) "Monty Python's Tiny Black Round Thing" and maybe in the TV show, and I think that was before Sutch started the real eponymous political party. Or maybe not, as I know he stood for election earlier than that.
All the same, David Screamin' Lord Sutch was a 'one off'. He is missed by many of us. He died on the 16th of June 1999, an apparent suicide.
Hawaii. Hawaii is a little detached from the rest of the U.S. Sometimes it follows the national trends, sometimes it doesn't. For example, I noted how grunge fashion never made it big in Hawaii, at least not to the extent in other parts of the country. Hip hop fashions, meanwhile, were huge.
The UK was definitely ahead of Hawaii on that one. I wasn't even aware of punk until the winter of '81, and it didn't become "mainstream" (if that's the right word) until around '83.
Yes! I too experienced the "town and gown" cliché, except this was in the Midwest during the 1980s. In 1984, the typical young townie guy had short hair, while us college kids were stuck in a timewarp with tie-dye T-shirts/hippie fashions and longer hair. [Actually, there was a 60's/early-70's nostalgia/revival movement in some parts of the US during the 80s and early-90s. Perhaps we were ahead of the times, not behind! :)] But the gap seemed to narrow by 1988.
In high school, the DESIRE for long hair seemed to peak around 1978/79, even if the Dean's scissors kept actual hair lengths in check. (Yes, they forced you to get a haircut and if you refused they sent you home with an unexcused absence.)
The UK was definitely the trend setter here. I remember looking through some old high school yearbooks from the 1960s, and was struck by how short the boys' hair styles were -- vitually indistinguishable from the 50s.
Even in my college's archives, the earliest yearbook picture I could find of a guy with below-shoulder hair was in the 1969-70 school year; men had longer hair in '86 than in '68.
OK, well an island culture makes sense in this context.
I think that's another US/UK difference. Our schools didn't try to control hair length, at least not in the '70s. Sadly, it seems some are doing that now, for what reason I can't even begin to guess.
That may be not so much different really. Even if longhairs were the majority in school by the start of the '70s, I don't think they were in the '60s, no matter how much everyone associates the '60s with long hair. I think this is because long hair takes years to grow and because mainstream society lags behind trends. In 1963 the longest hair I saw on a boy in school was a Beatles wig, purchased in Woolworths!
I also think long hair revived a bit some time in the '80s, for a while.