[Closed] Why did beards become fashionable?

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!

[url= http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2014/apr/16/fashion-conscious-men-warned-we-may-have-reached-peak-beard ]Peak Beard[/url] 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.

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I always thought that it was [i]shaving[/i] 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.

Speaking as someone who has sported a beard of ever-varying length since 2002 - I know a few things:

1. As with all hair lengths and styles - a lot of other people will assume not only your your 'motives', but your persona too. Based upon the length/style of your hair. There is no escaping this. I chose a very long time ago (when had long hair) to ignore these people as much as possible (sometimes they will get in your face about it)

2.

bald men have something to stop their face looking like a testicle

3. I'm aware that certain people have beards right now because they've seen them in magazines and in the street and consider them to be 'hip'. This doesn't mean anything at all yet people will talk about it a lot. Hairstyles change all the time.

4. Clean-shaven will become the default Western trend again, which is actually a little odd (to my mildly autistic thinking) as a 'default' man is not clean-shaven ye tbeards have long been (at least since Victorian times) considered 'other'

5. I'm aware that people have beards for different reasons. For example - I first had one because I was in South Florida and shaving made me rash-up something terrible. A beard grew because I stopped shaving. Proper neck-beard too (shaving the neck was the worst). My wife said she liked the beard. Lucky.. I also realised - in the humidity - that my once-full head of hair was not quite so full as it used to be. And thought about shaving it off. Back inthe UK I took a chunk out of my head on the hatchback, needed to shave a patch to treat the wound. Taking this opportunity I finally opted against comb-overs and entirely shaved my bonce with clippers. The beard stayed. And none of it means anything at all except for what I've written - yet plenty of strangers will have my entire persona/motives assessed simply on account of shaved head/beard. Weird really, but so it is with us puny humans, so many of us like to think we know it all.

6. When I shaved it off an old flame on facebook commented 'always the extremist'. This meant that I used to have long hair and now no hair. Seemed to suggest that there is a 'middle ground', somewhere 'normal'. I really struggle to understand what use that is? Some kind of evolutionary trait of social animals?

I have a beard because your wife likes it.

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.

+1. ^ This is the correct answer.

Edit: After now reading so many comments online re beards and fashion - it does seem that the beard, like the bicycle and women either in trousers or out of bras - the beard is a projection screen for the observer. What people say about the beard, and the cyclist, and the woman in trousers - often says more about the observer than the observed.

On the two occasions when I've shaved off my beard I've been struck by the sensation of air passing and parting around my chin as I walked along.

Great places to keep a bit of breakfast hidden away as a snack for later.

I'm sticking with mine hoping that they soon go out of fashion. First decent beard at 17 , by 20 it was a ZZtop thing. Over the past few years its has ( because of the wifes nagging) been trimmed down to #1 with cut outs. Winter is nearly here so time to let it go wild again. Trouble is at 52 a lots of it is white 🙁

I had a beard in one of my passport photos then shaved it off. Shortly afterwards I went to ****stan on a business trip. Passing through Immigration the officer stared at the passport photo, stared at me then asked very loudly: "What happened to your beard?" His colleagues, all bearded or at least moustached, crowded round to look then point and laugh at me. Why would anybody shave off their beard?

The fashion isn't just having a beard, as in the style of Uncle Albert.
As I understand it the beard renaissance is part of the overall hipster trend. These aren't your normal "just let it grow" beards, these things are treated better than your average celebrity's handbag puppy.
I'm not into the Hipster style myself, mainly because it wouldn't suit me and I'm lazy. In terms of the amount of income they spend on their cobbler and down the barbers, it's almost up there with Mod levels (i.e. 50-75% of your disposable income should go on your style).

Youre over thinking it a bit! £12.99 clippers from argos pointed in the general direction of my face once a fortnight keeps the chuck norris look at bay.

I also own a SS road bike and drink craft beer, have i become a hipster by default?

always ended up with a scruffy beard if i didnt shave for a week then i started to just grow a semi goatee then eventually decided 2 years ago that the full beard would become a permanent feature.
cant be bothered shaving so the beard serves its purposes and it keeps my face warm when its cold

wifey wont let me keep a moustache though so i still have to shave that off every week

fasthaggis - Member

Beards are no longer viewed with suspicion

You should have seen my PaedoBeard (tm). Genuinely never left the house with it once, I was too afraid Big Mags Haney'd get me

You should have seen my PaedoBeard (tm)

had sideburns since i was 15 and a beard since i was 20, i guess that will go in and out of fashion in over my lifetime. the main reasons for having one are :
laziness
ingrown hairs if i shave
i never wanted to be mistaken for somebody who works in an office job with a dress-code and a line manager.

they keep your face warm when riding in winter too.

i never wanted to be mistaken for somebody who works in an office job with a dress-code and a line manager.

i'd work on updating your cunning disguise if i was you. i work in an office with a dress code and i have a beard. so does my line manager

Had a beard for 20 years, fashion in, fashion out. The ladies love it! 😉 Can't imagine what it would be like to get up in the morning and scrape my face with a very thin, sharp piece of metal, every day?!

If ****ing gives you hairy palms , how do you get a beard?

thisisnotaspoon - Member
...clippers...once a fortnight...

If it wasn't for mrs_oab, I would have a beard. She cannot stand it.

Pah, two weeks of stubble is not a beard!

😆

No, 2 weeks get's me back from 'Grizzley Addams' to 'your mother wouldn't approve'.

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

Craft ale, darling. And your sister's jeans.

Now I have no hair, if I grow some stubble, people naturally assume I'm a ginger. A beard would be beyond the pale.

I also own a SS road bike and drink craft beer, have i become a hipster by default?

I live near a hipster barbers and get the impression that for full acceptance in the clan, you have to spend 2 hours a week there, talking about tattoos and bands no-one else has ever heard of.

For me it's simple, I don't have enough hair to style so it's a substitute for that. The fact that women seem fascinated by it & constantly ask to touch it was an unforseen but enjoyable bonus

The fact that women seem fascinated by it & constantly ask to touch it was an unforseen but enjoyable bonus

Is it a REALLY big beard then?

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[i]Great places to keep a bit of breakfast hidden away as a snack for later. [/i]

You are Mr Twit!

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Is it a REALLY big beard then?

Craft ale, darling.

Ohhh no no no no my follicularly challenged friend. Tonight I'm drinking some black larger, it's a bit niche you wouldn't have heard of it.

Larger than what?

Why did beards become fashionable?

Me think rip-off price of razor and laziness ... 😆

edit: ... and poor personal hygiene.

Racist.

mikey3 - Member

Racist.

😆

I like to be clean shaven but due to laziness I sometimes keep them for more than 3 days then realised I was no longer beautiful due to my white beards ... 😆

Ohhh no no no no my follicularly challenged friend. Tonight I'm drinking some black larger, it's a bit niche you wouldn't have heard of it.

Larger than what?