‘You look like an Agatha Christie villain!’ The mustache is back – but should it be gone again?
When I reached adulthood, mustaches were up to the cool step. They were evil, old fashioned and scary. The male ideal was clean shaven, unless you were Des Lynam. A weird thing happened 20 years later, when ridiculous mustaches and mustache iconography came into vogue, and people even tattooed them on their fingers. It disappeared, and we didn't talk about it anymore. But I started seeing them again, like ghosts from the Civil War. From the Heist Food Market in St Leonards-on-Sea to the All Points East festival in London's Victoria Park, young men with mustaches everywhere. What's going on?
If you're old like me - someone who believes the 1990s and 2010s were both 10 years ago - you won't like the answer. Fashion's classic 20-year trend cycle is no longer fit for purpose. On TikTok, anything over five years old is treated as vintage and eligible for revival. So mustaches join indie sleaze, wired headphones and Polaroids, Tumblr girls and twee in a cursed repackaging of 2014 hipster style. It's the nostalgia of nostalgia, hipster squared. God help us.
Wearing mine on the streets is is like walking around with a new friend: the one I'm not sure my other friends will like, the one who's likely to crack a dirty joke in polite conversation. Initial reactions to my new look range from "I can't take you seriously" to "You look like an Agatha Christie villain". They might reflect my own clumsiness. "I don't remember what you looked like before, honestly," yawns my friend Suzie. As compliments, light beer; but at a book launch Grayson Perry tells me the mustache is nice and he won a Turner Prize.
When I reached adulthood, mustaches were up to the cool step. They were evil, old fashioned and scary. The male ideal was clean shaven, unless you were Des Lynam. A weird thing happened 20 years later, when ridiculous mustaches and mustache iconography came into vogue, and people even tattooed them on their fingers. It disappeared, and we didn't talk about it anymore. But I started seeing them again, like ghosts from the Civil War. From the Heist Food Market in St Leonards-on-Sea to the All Points East festival in London's Victoria Park, young men with mustaches everywhere. What's going on?
If you're old like me - someone who believes the 1990s and 2010s were both 10 years ago - you won't like the answer. Fashion's classic 20-year trend cycle is no longer fit for purpose. On TikTok, anything over five years old is treated as vintage and eligible for revival. So mustaches join indie sleaze, wired headphones and Polaroids, Tumblr girls and twee in a cursed repackaging of 2014 hipster style. It's the nostalgia of nostalgia, hipster squared. God help us.
Wearing mine on the streets is is like walking around with a new friend: the one I'm not sure my other friends will like, the one who's likely to crack a dirty joke in polite conversation. Initial reactions to my new look range from "I can't take you seriously" to "You look like an Agatha Christie villain". They might reflect my own clumsiness. "I don't remember what you looked like before, honestly," yawns my friend Suzie. As compliments, light beer; but at a book launch Grayson Perry tells me the mustache is nice and he won a Turner Prize.
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