Is it because Middle-Eastern fashion is becoming more influential? I do know that Arabic smells are making an impact in perfumery with Arab-influenced ideas coming from fashionable perfumers like Jo Malone and Tom Ford. So has everybody seen a Muslim sporting a magnificent bushy beard and thought: “Hmmmm…. that actually looks rather manly.”?

Beards have always been fashionable, long before we had much dealing with those funny brown people.

Next?

I can’t be arsed to shave, but then again I’m not always that fashionable

Its the prevalance of steel frames, single speed & real ale.

Was wondering the same thing last week. Not sure why Noel Edmonds has suddenly become a styling cue for the fashion conscious

The whole Hipster thing has brought them back in vogue….

I expect some of singletracks finest condescending posts to follow…

short answer to the OP.

Nope not that reason.*

regards

Beardless of airportview.

Kings of Leon , copied by Beckham …..hey presto !

It is to provide balance to the hair bun, therefore preventing the head from constantly tilting backwards.

Gilette pricing strategy.

Flippin’ hipsters and Joe Marler 😆 when he first appeared at an England Scrum and Clive Woodward wasn’t impressed… was that 2012?
Beards have come a long way in a few years

I blame that ‘real man’ fashion from last couple of years however the styling has become more Victorian over the last few years, which I love. Good beards are brilliant. Nowt to do with the middle east, more to do with Canadian loggers methinks. I do dread the return of the tash. that does worry me. but I can see the 70’s porn star look coming into fashion next year. then you lot will have to copy me!

Peak Beard was reached last year. I’m just, like, soooooooooooooo over it

I blame Jeremy Corbyn and the new optimism in bearded revolutionaries.

I have a mate that decided to grow a ‘year’d 3 years ago, NYE stopped shaving and 3 years on it’s just trimmed now, he was picked out at Primvera by MTV as a face of Primvera or something, so blame it all on him.

Either that, or it’s a peado thing – time was only peado’s had beards (FACT). Then everyone who was ever famous turned out to be a peado, so it became cool to have a beard too.

Nowt wrong with beards so long as they’re kept clean and tidy. 🙂

Fashion will just seek out and assimilate anything from general life. It has to constantly evolve and stay fresh or it’s not fashion. It’s probably not any one specific thing, but if I had to guess at it, it could be something to do with the resurgence in popularity of fantasy films, stuff like LOTR, The Hobbit, Game of Thrones etc, combined with TV shows about lumberjacks and ice road trucking. Etc etc etc. Maybe.

I always thought that it was shaving that was actually a relatively new trend.

All due to the Crimean War according to Horrible Histories

Beards are no longer viewed with suspicion ,and the once overused stereotype of “people with beards must have something to hide” is no longer believed *

* not in our house though 😉

Peak beard was reached far earlier…. From the moment Paxman appeared looking like a tramp they became fine only for Sheep and the advertising team behind the Vauxhall Mokka

Ed Oxley has a lot to answer for.

I stopped shaving in 2009 after a facial injury made shaving both difficult and uncomfortable. For me stopping shaving was quite liberating and my skin is in a lot better condition too.

BTW. I don’t have a beard but am never clean-shaven, going from grade 0 .5 to grade 4.

They’re only really fashionable among men though. Handsome men, who look a bit feminine, can look more ruggedly handsome, ugly men can cover most of their ugly faces, bald men have something to stop their face looking like a testicle and fat men can craft some sort of jawline.

It’s a response to the rise in feminism, the emasculation of men, and more powerful women in general. Men needed to re-assert their ‘manliness’, hence beards and check shirts (linked to traditionally masculine jobs).

bald men have something to stop their face looking like a testicle and fat men can craft some sort of jawline.

Not sure that works for me.

If, as mentioned above, it’s to make said fashion person more manly I can confirm that it does not work at all. They also don’t make you individual, just as a sleeve tattoo doesn’t.

Fashion goes in cycles.

Beards are a fashion. Now every folower of fashion as one.

Its the same as any other fashion, the hipster folk do it because they are being cool and different. Reality is they just look tits and are conforming to a norm

It is hardly a new fashion though is it? Over 6 years ago I’d take a guess?

Why is somthing fasionable? is about in line with the what is art question?

It is becasue it is.

Beards are fashionable?? Ah crap. Shaving mine off tonight now then.

When I was a student and a member of the Poly climbing club every bloke had a beard, and a couple of the girls as well…

Beard, long hair and a blue Northcape piley jacket with grey shoulder and elbow patches were the uniform.

it’s not just beards.

it’s part of the general trend towards an aesthetic that celebrates ‘authenticity’ – and has been going on for a good few years now.

See also the rise of craft beer – good old fashioned, local ale etc. Dressing like a lumberjack – because you’re a real man who kills bears and chops down trees. Eating pulled pork and artisan burgers and other such unfussy, back to basics nosh because etc. The whole log cabin, Americana, rustic / shabby chic, have a stove, bare wood floors vibe – because in another life you’d basically be a pioneer in the American West, not an accountant in Cheltenham.

It’s part of the aesthetic of our time in the same way that brown was in the 1970s and chrome and glass and snazzy red bits were in the 1980s. It’ll be replaced in time.

But you can probably see the appeal; it’s arguably a reaction to the homogenous British high-street, the realisation that whatever career you see yourself in, the chances are it will involve sitting in front of a computer all day, and if you’re under 25 you can forget any ideas that you might ever own a house or retire. **** it, you might as well get a semi-ironic tattoo and at least there’ll probably be some decent ales down the local

About a quarter of a century ago I left a job that I’d always shaved for and stopped shaving. Since then I’ve been bearded apart from two weeks doing a show for which I had to be clean shaven. It’s got shorter and greyer over the years, now would probably be a good time to shave it off.

They became fashionable because they’d been unfashionable for so long. This is basically the same reason that they are going out of fashion again. Its all nonsense.

Many people feel the need to belong to something. Similarly, many of us go through that stage in our lives where we have absolutely no idea as to who or what we are/ meant to be and so, we join a clique and immediately gain ourselves an identity.

Over the years, for example, we have rock-a-billy, mods, punks, goths, new romancers, denim, plaid etc etc. All kind of uniforms and gives the members an overall guideline as to how to relate and react to their world around them.

Beards, same innit. Uniform, identity, projecting one’s self to one’s world. Which is all perfectly fine as long as the intent is good and honest.

If fashion is so good, why do they keep changing it?

Fashion or:

Saves x minutes a day.
Never cut yourself shaving.
No need for razors or smelly gels/aftershave.
Ladies hate stubble but find beards OK.
No shaving induced spots or rashes.
People recognise me even with a helmet and sunnies on.

I think one of the main reasons is that beards are now more acceptable in the work place and won’t put your career on hold.

Are Canadians dictating UK fashion these days? How the mighty fall 😀 Is everyone covered in tattoos too? You know….to be different yet everyone ends up looking the same. Oh the irony…

If fashion is so good, why do they keep changing it?

Because it comes under the remit of what E.P. Thompson used to call that “old bitch” consumer capitalism.