Gentlemen, put down your razors. The hairy chest is back in style!
Are we seeing a return to the ‘rugged manliness’ of Burt Reynolds and Tom Select? / CREDIT: GETTY
Once every few years, an item of clothing or grooming style long written off by the world makes an inexplicable and almighty comeback. From pocket squares to cargo trousers, the great unwashed happily adopt fads and fashions that, only months before, they presumed had been confined forever to the big lookbook in the sky.
While this means that a resurgence in mullets or shellsuits lurks forever on the horizon, I ask you to push those shuddersome thoughts to the back of your mind. Because we have bigger news: male chest hair is back on trend.
Yes, we’ve been here before. The furry front was a symbol of unbridled virility during much of the 20th century, worn with pride by Hollywood leading men like Sean Connery, Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck. That all changed in the 1990s, however, when Mark ‘Marky’ Wahlberg’s smooth chested Calvin Klein advert set the world swooning – and its men waxing. Pileous pecs were out; trimmed torsos were in.
However, in the age of the lumbersexual, chest hair appears to be having a renaissance.