SHORT (AND LONG) STORY

If you type ‘mullets are’ into Google, a compelling list of thought finishers pops up: hot, ugly, weird, cool. Few hairstyles are as polarising as the business-up-front, party-at-the-back optical illusion featuring a straight-on short cut that is quickly betrayed by cascading longer lengths down the neck. It provokes such strong feelings that the look has actually been argued over by legislators – banned in Iran in 2010 and forbidden in a Western Australian school just this March for being ‘untidy’ and ‘non-conventional’.

But unusual times call for unusual haircuts. As the world adapts to a new normal, hairstylists are reporting that their novelty-starved clients,