Bring Back the Mullet! The Ultimate Bad-Good Haircut Is Street Style’s Unlikely New Star

Over the past few years, the fashion world has proclaimed the triumphant return of the ever-polarizing mullet. From the red carpet’s foremost disruptors Rihanna and Zendaya giving it their stamp of approval to the runways, where, last September, design wunderkind Virgil Abloh sent models down the Off-White catwalk with tightly coiled, wedge-shaped iterations, the appeal of the infamous style is being thrust back into the zeitgeist. The mullet does, after all, have extraordinary iconoclast roots.

During the hairstyle’s ’70s heyday, David Bowie’s ethereal alter ego Ziggy Stardust had an unmistakable flame red fade, while fellow musicians Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde sported choppy shags tailor-made for headbanging. Not to mention the twofold endorsement from one of the era’s golden couples, Paul and Linda McCartney, who sported his-and-hers mullets in perfect harmony. But in the decades that followed, there was a seismic shift—spurred by country singer Billy Ray Cyrus in the ’80s, aggravated by NHL hockey players in the ’90s, and cemented by 2001 “white trash” comedy Joe Dirt in the early aughts—that tarnished the mullet’s reputation.

Mullets: Sara Hiromi

“When a mullet’s done wrong, it looks like it’s straight out of a bad ’80s fashion meme,” says the New York City–based model and freelance designer Sara Hiromi. “But it’s a [frustrating] connotation because then well-executed styles get overlooked. Anyone can pull off a mullet when it’s done right.” And with blunt micro-fringe in the front and hip-grazing waves down her back, Hiromi walks the walk among a slew of impossibly stylish women who are bringing the style street-level. Five years ago, the 25-year-old Austin, Texas, native, who inherited her preternaturally long hair from her Japanese mother, began rocking her high-low shape, and it’s only gotten more extreme with time. “I haven’t cut it [length-wise] in over two years, and my bangs just keep getting shorter moving further back on my head,” she says with a laugh. But as directional as her look may be, she insists it’s low-maintenance. “It requires almost no effort to style,” she explains. “In the mornings, all I have to do is run my fingers through the front and brush out the back.” A similar simplicity manifests in her personal style, a mélange that runs the gamut from exotic floral-printed blouses to modern utilitarian pieces. “Japanese cowgirl goes to summer camp,” is how Hiromi describes it, with her wardrobe predominantly comprised of thrifted wonders and hand-me-downs from her parents—the perfect complement to her cool hybrid mane.

Mullets: Josephine Lee

Across the country in Los Angeles, Josephine Pearl Lee, better known as Princess Gollum on Instagram, is equally meticulous about styling herself. Two years ago, “I needed an identity change after a breakup,” confesses the 26-year-old Korean American, who adds even more drama above the neck by bleaching her brows and saturating her eyes in sparkles. With two aspirational photos of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings in hand, she visited hairstylist Sully Layo and the two collaborated on a style loosely emulating the fictional hobbit with jagged baby bangs and a trail of rattail-like lengths. “My haircut adds so much edge to my look, I like to find balance with my choice of clothing,” says Lee, who counts Icelandic producer Björk as her enduring fashion muse. “I love mixing the mall rat look with pieces from thrift shops or the local military surplus store,” she explains. Pairing oversize sweatshirts or ribbed tanks with hot pants and cowboy boots, Lee does fantasy on her own terms. “I wanted to create a new kind of princess,” she says of cultivating her image. “Mullet-haired girls have way more fun, anyway.”

Mullets: Ariel King

Ariel King, a 24-year-old model and self-proclaimed “’80s vampire,” also relishes bucking beauty norms, offsetting her Angelina Jolie good looks and pillowy lips with a boyish crop. “I spent the vast majority of my life with hair down to my butt,” explains the New Yorker. “[But] one day, I lopped off a chunk with nail scissors and cut it super short. It became a mullet on its own because I kept cutting the front and sides and [let the back grow].” King continues to style her mullet—“A Chelsea cut with a little of fauxhawk thrown in,” she says—haphazardly with a thinning blade. Makeup-wise, she tends to mimic her idol, Dave Vanian, frontman of punk rock band the Damned, veering into vampiric territory with faded smoky eyes and black lipstick. Teaming her choppy coif and gothic visage with a wardrobe of baggy, borrowed-from-the-boys separates, such as old T-shirts, roomy raver pants, and Hanes briefs, King is blurring gender lines in more ways than one.

Mullets: Veronika Vilim

Like King, born-and-bred New Yorker Veronika Vilim also takes a DIY approach while tending to her shape-shifting mullet. Growing up as a ballet dancer, the 24-year-old model wasn’t able to do anything drastic or permanent to her hair. But once Vilim began modeling, she started cutting it, bleaching it, and getting Technicolor dye jobs inspired by German performer Nina Hagen. It was at 20 that Vilim first took the business-in-the-front-party-in-the-back plunge. “I just was like f**k it and started cutting my hair myself,” she says, adding that whenever she needs an intervention, she goes to pro hairstylist Travis Speck and colorist Aura Friedman at the Sally Hershberger salon. Summing up her style in three words—edgy, punk, slutty—Vilim gravitates toward barely there club dresses “that make [her] feel as hot as possible,” piling on silver jewelry and slashing neon pigment on the eyes. She’s also never phased at the prospect of a transformative, there’s-no-turning-back-now dye job backstage at Fashion Week, most recently going petrol blue for Marc Jacobs’s Fall 2018 show. With a good sense of humor and lots of high-octane hues, Vilim embraces the mullet unabashedly despite its pitfalls. “I love it even more because it doesn’t have a good reputation,” she says. “People make fun of them, but you figure out a way to make it [chic], and that inspires me.”

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