It’s August, the schools are out and the youth are in full experimentation mode. Ever your intrepid style correspondent, MR PORTER has been out in the field to investigate. Our biggest takeaway of the summer so far? The emergence of a new trend that we’re calling the post-ironic mullet.
The remarkable renaissance of this much maligned ’do, once famously described as business up front and party at the back, is hardly a new development. Avant-garde fashionistas and punks have been rocking the style for years and it was all the rage back in lockdown when Tiger King and cutting your own hair were both a thing.
What we are witnessing now is different. In the world of fashion – and certainly in the case of Mr Joe Exotic – the mullet is a post-modern and deeply self-referential statement, the purpose of which is to affront and to challenge accepted beauty standards. By contrast, this new generation appears to be engaging with the mullet with absolute sincerity, either blissfully unaware of, or indifferent to, its complicated past.
