Are we ready for the return of the David Beckham "fauxhawk"
'Stranger Things' star Joe Keery just revived the infamous "fauxhawk"
BIG YEAR TO BE DAVID BECKHAM. Not only has the record-breaking footballer been made an official Sir after being knighted by King Charles, but he’s also lived long enough to see one of his most iconic haircuts become adopted by Gen Z.
On the red carpet for the final season of Stranger Things, Joe Keery (aka Steve Harrington), in head-to-toe Gucci, arrived with a haircut that could have been pulled straight from FHM’s “Top Ten Styles for the Modern Man” circa 2002. Short at the front, fluffed up top, long at the back. It was a fluff piece version of the infamous Beckham fauxhawk cut, back when he was bending it for Real Madrid and single-handedly convincing a generation of men to invest in their own hair straighteners and experiment with bronzer.
Good times, truly.
It’s also a sign of the current times. Gen Z’s love for Y2K aesthetics has meant many of us who left our frosted tips and shell necklace days behind are witnessing their revival in painful real time.
Are we truly ready for the return of the fauxhawk? And by extension, the metrosexual blueprint who wore it?
Looking at Keery happily plunder my culture, it does bring back visions of the early ‘00s with a vengeance. Ones that smell like Acqua Di Gio and wear Von Dutch trucker hats (also, back), boot-cut denim, and the ubiquitous Millennial pink shirt. That pink shirt. Not Barbie pink. Not salmon. It was vivid and came with its own migraine and it was everywhere. Beckham wore it. Jude Law wore it. Even my accountant wore it.
Now, thanks to the cyclical nature of style (and TikTok’s obsession with rediscovering irony), the fauxhawk is back. The shell necklace is back. The baggy denim shorts and tight t-shirts that falls short just above the beltline, back. Only now he’s called the performative male.
Instead of Dermalogica, it’s The Ordinary lining the bathroom shelf. Instead of an X-Box, it’s a Switch.
Every generation needs its own version of the guy who tries just a wee too hard while pretending he doesn’t. For us, it was Beckham and his carefully tousled hair, the one that launched a thousand asymmetrical fringes. Now that baton’s passed to Keery (among others), who insists he doesn’t care about his hair even as it trends worldwide and spawns a dozen TikTok tutorials titled “How to Get the Keery Cut.”
I like to think Sir David is watching on his iPhone 17, moisturised and face fresh from a round of PRP, slathered in his La Prairie, happy at scoring yet another cultural goal post.
Related:
