Stage and screen
Styles made famous by film, music and dance. 29 hairstyles on EveryHairstyle so far.
Film, television, music and dance have made many hairstyles famous overnight. Silent-film stars made the bob respectable, Audrey Hepburn the pixie, Farrah Fawcett feathered hair, and Jennifer Aniston the Rachel. Music gave the world the pompadour, the mop-top, the hi-top fade and the Jheri curl. Stage and dance traditions have their own styles, from the ballet bun to the jewelled plait of Bharatanatyam.
Screen hair
Film studios employed hairdressers who set the styles audiences copied: the bobs of the 1920s, the finger waves and victory rolls of the 1930s and 1940s, the beehives and bouffants of the 1960s. In Japan the singer Seiko Matsuda made a feathered cut so popular in the 1980s that it carries her name. In India, the actor Sadhana's fringe of 1960 became the Sadhana cut. Television made the Rachel the most requested cut of the mid-1990s.
Music and dance
Singers have been trend-setters since Elvis Presley's pompadour; Dido's 2000s flip became the Dido flip, and Michael Jackson popularised the Jheri curl in the early 1980s. Classical dancers need hair that stays put under spotlights and in fast movement: ballet dancers wear a tight bun, Bharatanatyam dancers a long plait fixed with ornaments, and kabuki actors wear elaborate wigs.
Famous stage and screen hairstyles
The RachelFrom the television comedy FriendsFeathered hairFarrah Fawcett's 1970s style
Pixie cutAudrey Hepburn in Roman HolidayVictory rollsStudio styles of the 1940s
BeehiveWorn by 1960s girl groups
Jheri curlPopularised by Michael Jackson
Dido flipNamed after the singer Dido
Seiko-chan cutNamed after Seiko MatsudaFurther reading
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Seiko-chan cut: HouseGecko, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- The Rachel: ABC Television, Public domain, source
- Jheri curl: Olugold, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Beehive: MGM, Public domain, source
- Pixie cut: dvna creative agency: https://www.dvna.fr/, CC BY 3.0, source
- Dido flip: The original uploader was Djr xi at English Wikipedia ., CC BY-SA 3.0, source