After years of beards, beards and more beards, the moustache is having a moment. But do you have to be Mark Owen or Henry Cavill to carry one off? I put it to the test
When I came of age, moustaches were the height of uncool. They were pervy, old-fashioned and creepy. The masculine ideal was clean-shaven, unless you were Des Lynam. A bizarre thing happened 20 years later, when ridiculous moustaches and moustache iconography came into fashion, and people even had them tattooed on their fingers. That went away, and we said no more about it. But I have started seeing them again, like civil war ghosts. From Heist food market at St Leonards-on-Sea to All Points East festival in Victoria Park in London, young men with moustaches, everywhere. What’s going on?
If you are old like me – someone who believes the 1990s and 2010 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 older than five years is treated as vintage, and eligible for revival. Thus moustaches join indie sleaze, wired headphones and Polaroids, Tumblr girls and twee as part of a cursed repackaging of 2014’s hipster style. It’s nostalgia for nostalgia, hipster squared. God help us.
