From country larrikins to backyard punks and inner-city hipsters, the mullet is back — and it comes with decades of baggage and a new identity.
It's human nature to play with our hair. Ancient civilisations did it, and now a millennia later we drop hundreds of dollars a year cutting, colouring, smoothing and spraying our tresses because we know our hair says a lot about who we are, where we're from, or at the very least, how we want to be perceived.
And in the hierarchy of haircuts, is there one that says more than the mullet?
Business in the front, party in the back. Cropped tops and sides, flowing length down your neck. It's a bit weird, and for those who dare to go there, that's exactly the point. It's attention-grabbing, it's tongue-in-cheek and guaranteed to stand out in a crowd.
That is, at least until recently.
Mullets are back, baby, and they're everywhere. On runways, red carpets and in magazine spreads. On the AFL field, they're dime a dozen, ranging from shorter styles to Bailey Smith's Warwick Capper-esque bleach blonde mane.
And it's not just celebrities. They're as plentiful in inner-city hipster dives as they are in outer-suburban pubs. They've even infiltrated the corporate office, the spiritual home of the short back and sides, albeit in a pared-back form (which may or may not actually count depending on who you ask).
For better or worse — depending on your feelings about the '80s — the mullet is going through a 21st-century reinvention and shaking off the shackles of its long, and controversial, history.
The mullet's modern makeover
Let's just say it: mullets are kinda ugly, intentionally so. And yet they have staying power — like a disgraced celebrity, they disappear from red carpets and headlines, becoming the purview of daggy dads and diehard fans, biding their time to rise from the ashes into cultural legitimacy once more.
They transcend social groups and social class. They're just as at home on the head of the Tiger King Joe Exotic and country singer Billy Ray Cyrus as they are on his daughter Miley Cyrus and Rihanna.
Of course, in some circles, they never really went away. In queer communities, for example, they've been a mainstay — possibly owing to the style's not quite masculine, not quite feminine, somewhere in between character.
Then there are the rusted-on country boys and Aussie larrikins who still wear the styles of the '80s, not because it's fashionable but precisely because it's not.
Recently, however, the mullet has become something different, doing away with the cringe to once again become palatable to the masses.
Sydney hairdresser Laura Spinney has had a front-row seat to the shift. From a trendy salon in Sydney's inner west, she's cut and styled hundreds of mullets and shags, earning the nickname "mullet mummy" along the way.
"The nice thing about the mullet coming back is you acknowledge the history and go from there," she says.
Where previously the word "mullet" conjured up images of punks or country kids chopping at their locks with kitchen scissors, now she says it's about playing with texture, shape and personal identity.
The only requirement is some sort of disconnection between the front and back.
"I play with natural textures, and that is what changes it and makes it more individual for people, so they're not just looking like your backyard mullet," she says.
"Mullets now have a very new meaning."
But even in inner-city salons remnants of the style's backyard DNA remain. "This is a very weird thing, but people do like to look as if they're poor, it's almost in vogue to look poor," Laura says. "So people are still definitely acknowledging that."
It raises the question, why are people suddenly rushing en masse to get a haircut that was formerly so derided?
London-based hair writer and researcher Rachael Gibson — known by her moniker the Hair Historian — has a theory. After turbulent periods like, say, a pandemic that forced us to change every part of how we live, people often turn to reinvention.
"When you feel out of control, when the world is kind of out of control, your hair is a really easy thing that you can do to yourself to change the way you feel," she says.
In this instance, with the turmoil came the sudden and widespread ability to work from home, which meant many people were no longer as beholden to corporate dress standards.
"This idea of creativity and expression is something we're really noticing now in hair and beauty. People don't want to just have nice, long, wavy hair blow-dried, they want to do something more interesting," she says.
"Because life's too short — or because they're bored."
Chopping it off
Gee Tyszkiewicz has been toying with getting a mullet for the past few years.
On this day, a rare sunny break in the weeks of chilly rain lashing Sydney, the 22-year-old arrives for her appointment with Laura sporting straight, shoulder-length hair.
It'll be her first mullet, but she's not nervous. "It's just hair," she laughs while facing herself in the salon's mirror.
The pair consult and decide on a "femme mullet" — a textured style with a feathered fringe and soft, curly tendrils down the neck.
Gee has given Laura complete creative control. Over the course of half an hour, she sections and snips, razors and tussles.
Towards the end of the process, she twists the tips of Gee's new fringe between her thumbs and forefingers as if tweaking an old-timey moustache, demonstrating how Gee should style her new do.
Luckily, Gee's ecstatic with the result. "I can finally say business in the front, party in the back — I've always wanted to say that," she exclaims.
Afterwards, standing outside the salon, Gee explains what attracted her to the hairstyle. "I grew up with David Bowie, so it really symbolises that for me," she says.
"Femininity, masculinity, and the in-between — I've always felt that I didn't know where I fit, and I felt this hairstyle was both feminine and masculine at the same time so it kind of embodies how I was feeling."
Perhaps that statement captures the magic of the mullet: it refuses to be any one thing. Masculine and feminine, long and short, functional and high-fashion.
It's exactly why Laura believes the haircut has become so popular in recent years, because it doesn't "put you in a box". "A lot of my clients sit in the queer, non-binary, trans world … so this is a perfect haircut for them," she says.
For Gee, there's another aspect too: "I like the culture around it being kind of 'boganish' and a joke."
The many lives of the mullet
Australians have long loved the mullet. For evidence, you need to look no further than the success of Mulletfest — an annual event founded in the small town of Kurri Kurri in NSW's Hunter region.
It encourages mullet fans to subject their locks for judging in categories including "ranga", "extreme", and "dodgy".
While not a local invention, there does seem to be something quintessentially Australian about the haircut: it's laid-back, practical and suggests the wearer doesn't take themselves too seriously.
And in our history, there's perhaps one mullet that looms the largest.
Former footballer Warwick Capper was the AFL's golden boy in the '80s, after coming to fame for his high kicks, tight shorts and his unmissable blonde mullet.
His look kicked off a legacy we still see on the footy field today.
Now in his late 50s, Capper says it's great to see today's players picking up the mullet mantle.
Even if he's still holding on to his look.
"I get about 10,000 lookalikes a year, it's quite honourable," he says.
“It started in the '80s … and now they’re all copying me, it’s quiet nice, isn’t it?
"Hopefully when I pass away I get a state funeral for that; for kicking a hundred goals, being a movie star, making the Swans a million dollars and having the best mullet in Australia."
But the earliest-known mention of the mullet came long before Capper ever picked up a ball, on a different kind of battlefield.
In the Iliad — written around 750 to 700 BC — Greek poet Homer described warriors with "hair long at the back", while ancient depictions of Greek gods further support the theory that mullet-like cuts were popular at the time.
For example, the Apollo Belvedere — a Roman copy of a lost bronze statue dated to between 350 and 325 BC — appears to show the god with shorter hair on top and ringlets falling down his neck.
Rachael Gibson says there's a long list of practical reasons why ancient humans may have been drawn to the style.
For one, it's hard to find time for a haircut on the battlefield necessitating longer styles. Keeping some length at the back is also handy for warmth. But if you're dealing in hand-to-hand combat you probably also don't want hair getting in your eyes.
"Basically, it's just a practical solution to the longer hair that most men would have had," she says. "Chopping off a bit at the front so that you can see what you're doing is a really practical, sensible decision."
There are also examples of Vikings, ancient Romans, and Native American tribes wearing mullet-like looks, she says — though they didn't call it that.
Where the iconic name came from is still up for debate. One theory goes that it stems from the Beastie Boy's song Mullet Head, which included the line: "Number one on the side and don't touch the back, number six on the top and don't cut it wack, Jack." But there's a problem: the song was released in 1994, years after the mullet and its name became a fixture of popular culture.
Others believe the name originated with French fashion guru Henri Mollet, who wore the style in the 1970s. The timeline fits, but not everyone is in agreement. "I've never managed to find a definitive answer I'm afraid," Rachael says.
The moment it became a cultural phenomenon is easier to pinpoint. Rachael describes David Bowie's bright-orange coif, which debuted in the early '70s, as a "pivotal mullet moment".
From there, it was readily embraced by punk and alternative scenes which were in an era of experimentation. It was around that time that female rockers like Patti Smith and Joan Jett embraced shaggy androgynous looks that verged on mullets.
"It fits with the punk movement because it is such a DIY cut, I'm sure a lot of those guys would have been doing it themselves," Rachael says.
"It's quite confrontational, it's weird, it's a bit ugly — so that really starts it off as a cool, outsider trend and then, obviously, how trends work is they then go from being subculture to being mainstream and it gets softened on the way."
If mullets were a fringe trend in the '70s, by the '80s they were mainstream — and substantially bigger. Enter mullet heart-throbs like Billy Ray Cyrus, Lionel Richie and tennis player Andre Agassi.
This was the mullet's zenith, the era that many associate with the style and likely where it earned its controversial reputation.
"When you get to that peak of the mullet being completely ridiculous by the end of the '80s, that's when the trend naturally dies its death," Rachael says.
What makes the cut
So, what makes a mullet? Are there standard dimensions? A minimum length in the back? It depends on who you ask.
Warwick Capper is a fan of the classic "business in the front, party in the back", with a number one buzz cut on the sides. "It looks good and lasts longer," he says.
But according to Rachael, the definition of what makes a mullet is actually "quite loose now". "There are ways of being in the mullet realm, without being a full-on mullet, just a haircut that has a bit more disconnection between the front and back," she says.
"It's about having a cool haircut, it's not a haircut that you're doing to make other people think 'look how pretty she is'."
Deferring to the hairdresser, Laura also believes mullets can encompass a whole spectrum of cuts from mullets to shags and wolf cuts and everything in between. One version she does a lot is what she calls a "corporate mullet".
"For people who are wanting to get away from a one-length haircut, which Sydney is notorious for, we can introduce their version of a shag," she says. "It doesn't have to be these extreme cuts, there are so many elements in between, you can take bits and bobs."
Ironically, she says, it's the mullet's new widespread appeal that could mean its end as something that symbolises cool.
Given that much of the mullet's historical allure comes from shock value and a proud stance against convention, conformity will eventually spell its death.
"The history of the mullet is kind of derelict in a way, and when you have a clean-cut person wearing Stan Smith's, linen, and a mullet — it doesn't work for me," Laura says.
"When you start seeing private school boys have them, that's probably when you know it's time for something else."
Credits
Words and production: Maani Truu
Photographs and video: Jack Fisher, wires
