Shag Past and Present – History of This Great Hair Style
The shag hairstyle is a youthful cut where you have short and layered hair. Mostly hair is layered at the crown of the head rather than below. As an option you could add bangs to the cut which you should be able to push off your face. The look should allow you to tuck hair behind your ears and keep them in place with barrettes. Today’s shag could be a variation with more layers towards the bottom of the cut or longer length.
In recent years, the most outstanding and noticed shag hairstyle was Meg Ryan’s in IQ. The flirty short shaggy bobs were a variation which really motivated a number of us youngsters waiting at our stylists with her picture, queuing up for a similar look. Though it may look real neat and trendy, you need a stylist with ‘shear magic and eye for styling’ to get you the right look. He should know exactly where to layer your hair depending in your face and features; where to thin out thick hair and give volume to thin hair. A shag hairstyle is the most versatile haircut giving you the option to style it in two to three different ways! You could add bangs on one side, both sides, keep it long or short, keep it messy, styled or carefree and the best is you can manage them at home without the need to buy every styling product in the market.
Paul McGregor had invented the Shag hairstyle and gave it to Jane Fonda in the movie Klute . Farrah Fawcett wore it in the famous Charlie’s angels television show and it became a phenomenon of sorts. Shag is the classic hairstyle of the ’70s and considered one of the ‘coolest’ as it was worn by the heart throbs of that time. David Bowie, Rod Stewart, everybody who was anybody had the shag hairstyle. During the ’80s, adaptations of the shag hairstyle were worn by the heavy metal rock bands who wore their hair in long shag cuts. The shag hair style was the ultimate unisex style and women and men were both wearing it with élan.
Another theory suggests that in the 1960’s men had begun wearing their hair long after the hairstyle Process brought in the 1920s by the African Americans. In the 1970s when hairstyles were changing and the process style was fading, men were habituated to wearingh their hair long. So, in the 80s, they let their hair grow at the back of the head while keeping them shorter at the top. This was the first form of the shag hairstyle worn by men which was soon adapted into various styles.
The 70s was an era of the youth, the end of the Vietnam War added in making it the turning point for them. Platform shoes, disco dancing and the Beegees; this new found youth was perhaps the reason for the emergence of this carefree, youthful and messy hairstyle- the Shag hairstyle.