The Best Long Hair of All Time: From Brigitte Bardot to Kim Kardashian West

The Best Long Hair of All Time: From Brigitte Bardot to Gisele Bündchen Inline

Spring is in the air, and with the change of season comes the natural desire to switch things up above the neck. For those rebelling against the now ubiquitous bob, growing out your hair lands on the opposite side of the spectrum to alluring effect.

Forever synonymous with untamed beauty, long hair may be iconic year round, but there's no denying it sets the mood for summer. Just ask Stevie Nicks, the good witch of rock ’n’ roll, who entered the collective consciousness in 1975, dressed like a modern-day Lady of Shalott—her draping, heavily fringed blonde hair cutting an image as striking as her draping, heavily fringed dresses. Although, if we've learned anything from Botticelli's Venus or Irving Penn's 1999 portrait of Gisele Bündchen, a woman with hip-grazing waves need never be fully undressed anyway. And surely Yoko Ono and John Lennon, who famously posed nude together on the cover of their 1968 album Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins and expressed their love by growing out matching manes, would echo that sentiment.

Carrie Bradshaw may have lamented that she’d "never be the woman with perfect hair," but when the power of waist-skimming lengths is in effect, perhaps you don’t have to. And then there's Kim Kardashian West, who, no matter what color her hair happens to be at the moment (Jet Black! Silver Platinum! Raspberry Pink!), is keen on channeling Cher with an extreme, down-to-there mane. Here, a look back at the men and women who will make you want to cancel your next haircut and order Viviscal in bulk.