Features, Gallery
By Andrea Petrou on January 29th, 2010
Lauren Bravo writes:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that men’s style just isn’t as exciting as women’s. Naturally this only goes a small way toward making up for periods, childbirth, Nuts Magazine and centuries of oppression, but we can still celebrate it as a small victory. Men’s fashion, far more so than women’s, tends to divide itself into two distinct categories: dull things they will actually wear, and trendy things that they definitely shouldn’t.
The latter exists on the catwalks, in endless parades of leather sandles, jodphurs and McQueen mankinis, while the former exists in M&S, with occasional forays into Topman and Uniqlo. Of course there are concessions – indoor scarves, deck shoes and cardigans have all found their way quietly into the wardrobes of the Average British Male this year without prompting any kind of mass panic, while the Hoxton/Shoreditch contingent of East London have created their own concession commonwealth, impervious to the fashion judgements of the rest of the male population.
But on the whole, male dressing remains a bleak landscape. If female fashion is a treacherous jungle, full of beauty and drama and potential pitfalls, then the male fashion equivalent is probably Bognor Regis. And nor do they have the creative playground of hair and make up to mess around in. Which one could easily argue is a blessing, of course, but I’d wager there isn’t a man alive who hasn’t looked in the mirror the morning after the night before and thought “a bit of concealer would sort this right out”.
So it’s lucky, then, that they have beards. In the desert of men’s style, facial hair is a rare oasis (or just a big bush, if we’re doing analogy accuracy). It is, the more I think about it, a much better version of the female hairdo. It is free to grow and free to maintain. It can be altered day to day with only minimal effort. It requires no straightening, curling, spraying or highlighting. They aren’t made to feel inadequate by celebs with ‘beard extensions’. And, as far as I’m aware, no man is afraid to go out in the rain in case his beard goes fluffy.
Facial hair is having a particular renaissance right now. Where designer stubble reigned for most of the noughties (we’ll call it the ‘Beckham years’), recently we’ve seen a shift toward proper, full beards. The kind that suggest rugged, manly pursuits like chopping down trees and grouting bathroom tiles, and slaughtering livestock with their own bare hands. George Clooney’s has got fuller and embraced his grey, Brad Pitt is working a loo brush/sporran hybrid and even Robert Pattinson was spotted last week sporting whiskers that wouldn’t look out of place on an island castaway.
Sadly though, like most male fashion moments, women have been quick to condemn the bushy beard. Personally, I’ve found it hard to overcome the memory of Roald Dahl’s Mr Twit, who kept morsels of food in his beard to enjoy later on. But overcome it I have, because the bush is the lesser of two evils, the other one being nasty, overshaped, Craig David-style facial topiary. How soon we forget, ladies, that only a few short years ago, men’s grooming was inspired by Zoolander and cultivated by set squares and stencils, like a border freize on Changing Rooms. We should be grateful for the return to caveman chic, and understand that, like the perfect LBD or cover-up jacket, its job is to hide a multitude of sins.
Yes, there is always an air of mystery surrounding a beard; that is both their appeal and their downfall. We want to know what’s beneath it. On an average-looking man, we wonder if he might be ravishingly handsome without the beard, while on a ravishingly handsome man we wonder if under the hair lurks the face of a gawky 12-year-old. Beards are an illusion, like spanx or Peaches Geldof’s ‘career’. They work hard for their status, without appearing to work at all.
So I bid men to enjoy the hirsute trend and really let rip with some A-grade chin forestry. They deserve it, they so rarely get to have fun with fashion. And I’ll leave you with this interesting proposal: if they get to forgo the razor, does that mean we can too?
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were very “proud” of themselves after cooking their family Thanksgiving dinner.
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