Hope you’ve enjoyed last weeks topic: Monday August 23rd 2021: Long Urban Femme Haircut
This Weeks Blog : Monday August 30th 2021 Describing an Under-Cut
History : The undercut was associated with poverty and inability to afford a barber competent enough to blend in the sides, as on a short back & sides haircut. Turn of the 20th century until the 1920s, the undercut was popular among young working class men, and more commonly with street gangs.
During the jazz age of the 1920s & 1930s, hairstyles of the type were considered mainstream fashion. Military barbers of the World War 1 era gave short back and sides haircuts as fast as possible because of the numbers, under orders to facilitate personal hygiene in trench warfare, and as nearly uniform as possible, with an eye to appearance on parade. This made the short back and sides style the norm in the UK after 1918, and its variant the brush cut became common in North America and France.
During the late 2000s and early 2010s, undercuts were often associated with villainous movie characters such as Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal Rising, Johnny Depp’s portrayal of gangster John Dillinger, Jared Leto as The Joker in Suicide Squad, German officers in war films, etc. By 2014, the haircut had become relatively mainstream in the UK and was worn by people not normally associated with the indie scene. During the late 2010s, the American and Israeli press associated the undercut with alt-right agitators such as the American white Supremacist Richard Spencer or the British far-right and anti-Islam activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson) and with neofascist supporters seeking a less intimidating alternative to the buzzcut.
Editor’s view: This way of undercutting created its place in history, whether it was for economic intent, fashionably radical for music or to help support a political taunt. Undercuts garnered recognition in our croquis history.
Please return for next week’s discussion Monday September 6th 2021: A Women’s French Under-cut.