Article content Is the stache back? It is neither with distaste nor eager anticipation I pose this question. Save for participation in Movember a few years back, a trimmed beard a decade or so ago and a healthy beard during COVID, I’ve rarely sported facial hair. In fact, I haven’t had a moustache as a fashion statement for more than 40 years; any dude in high school in the early 1980s who could grow one usually did.
And I was able. Sort of. It is true more young men are wearing moustaches these days.
In fact, data from Gillette estimate that 12.5 million U.S.
men, or 9.6 per cent of the U.S.
male population, were wearing mustaches as of September 2022. That figure has likely grown. Perhaps there’s also a craft beer connection.
Lots of young fellows who frequent The Tap Room, my neighbourhhood pub, sport moustaches. In fact, last Friday night, my close-in-age buddy, Paul, and I were likely the only two men in the joint who had applied razor to face that morning. Beards are certainly back big-time – perhaps a pandemic hangover – and the three-day growth look is common, too.
Even among professionals in board rooms. Of course, the unshaven look was hip to some in the 1980s with the likes of George Michael and Don Johnson, as Sonny Crockett in Miami Vice, routinely dodging the razor for days. But it didn’t seem many guys embraced that look then, likely because maintaining an even three-day growth is actually more labour intensive than shaving daily down to the skin.
A.
