19 of the ’80s Strangest Hair Styles
The 1980s had a complicated relationship with hair. Bigger was better, subtlety was practically forbidden, and an astonishing amount of styling products went into making hair defy gravity. Perms, mullets, mohawks, rat tails, teased bangs, and enormous curls all became part of the decade’s unforgettable aesthetic.
Evolved from music and counterculture, plenty of these hairstyles seem wonderfully excessive, but that’s precisely what made the decade so distinctive. Here are some of the strangest, wildest, and most wonderfully excessive hairstyles that defined the era.
The Rat Tail
The rat tail took an otherwise conventional haircut and added one bizarre detail: a long, narrow strip of hair hanging from the nape. Popular among young people in the 1980s, it was sometimes braided and could extend several inches down the back.
The Liberty Spikes
Liberty spikes took punk hair to spectacular extremes, with sections of hair pulled into long, rigid spikes radiating from the head. Often dyed vivid colors, the style was deliberately confrontational and became strongly associated with 1980s punk culture.
The Jheri Curl
The Jheri curl created glossy, tightly defined curls through a chemical process and became particularly prominent in Black popular culture during the 1980s. Michael Jackson famously wore the look, helping make the style recognizable far beyond its original audience.
The Hi-Top Fade
The hi-top fade combined closely cropped sides with a dramatically elevated, squared-off top. Closely associated with hip-hop culture, the style became especially prominent during the decade and was later immortalized by performers including Will Smith during his Fresh Prince years.
The Mall Bangs
Mall bangs were essentially a battle against gravity. Hair was teased upward into enormous mounds or peaks, then secured with generous amounts of hairspray. The style became particularly associated with teenage girls and the shopping-mall culture of 1980s America.
The Glam Metal Mane
Glam metal bands turned enormous, teased, permed hair into practically a uniform. Bands such as Mötley Crüe, Poison, and Bon Jovi embraced massive waves and curls, creating hairstyles that were almost as visually spectacular as their stage costumes.
The Mullet
The mullet offered a strange compromise: business in the front and dramatically longer hair in the back. Its popularity exploded during the 1980s, with musicians, actors, athletes, and ordinary men embracing its uniquely divided personality.
The Mohawk
The punk mohawk involved shaving or closely cutting the sides while leaving a dramatic strip of hair running along the center. The remaining hair could be spiked vertically and sometimes dyed, making the style an unmistakable statement of rebellion.
The Feathered Blowout
Feathered hair carried over from the 1970s but remained hugely popular into the early ’80s. Layers were blown outward and backward to create enormous wings around the face, with Farrah Fawcett’s famous look remaining an especially influential example.
The Permed Bouffant
The 1980s perm was rarely satisfied with simply producing curls. Hair was frequently teased, lifted, and expanded into enormous bouffants. Princess Diana became one of the decade’s most recognizable wearers of the voluminous, permed hairstyle.
The Crimped Look
Crimping transformed straight hair into a series of tiny, zigzagging waves, producing a distinctive textured appearance. The technique became a recognizable 1980s trend, particularly among young women, and could be used across an entire head of hair or selectively.
The New Romantic Quiff
New Romantic fashion brought theatricality to men’s hairstyles, with hair swept dramatically upward into sculpted quiffs and pompadour-like shapes. The look emphasized height and volume, often combined with flamboyant clothing, makeup, and the movement’s deliberately extravagant aesthetic.
The Spiky Punk Crop
Punk’s influence encouraged people to turn short hair into something deliberately aggressive. Hair could be bleached, colored, gelled, or sprayed into stiff spikes, rejecting the polished, conventional styles favored by mainstream fashion and creating an unmistakably rebellious silhouette.
The Side Ponytail
The side ponytail took an ordinary ponytail and moved it dramatically off-center. Usually worn high and secured with a scrunchie or other colorful accessory, it became one of the decade’s quintessential youthful hairstyles, particularly among girls and young women.
The Big Hair Blowout
“Big hair” wasn’t one specific cut so much as an entire philosophy. Teasing, mousse, hairspray, curling, and backcombing were combined to maximize volume, producing enormous silhouettes that became one of the defining visual characteristics of 1980s fashion.
The Seiko-chan Cut
Japan developed its own distinctive 1980s hair phenomenon with the Seiko-chan cut, named after pop superstar Seiko Matsuda. The rounded, feminine style became enormously popular among Japanese women and demonstrated that the decade’s hair trends extended well beyond Western pop culture.
The Shaggy Mullet
The shaggy mullet combined the mullet’s short-front, long-back structure with layered, deliberately messy texture. Rather than creating a sharply defined silhouette, the cut embraced feathering and movement, producing an especially recognizable variation of the decade’s favorite divisive hairstyle.
The Bleached Spikes
Bleaching and spiking created an aggressively artificial look that became closely associated with punk and new wave. Billy Idol’s platinum, sharply spiked hair became one of the decade’s most recognizable examples, combining rebellious styling with an unmistakably theatrical appearance.
The Rock Star Perm
The 1980s rock star perm took already substantial hair and made it even bigger. Male musicians embraced chemically created curls and waves, often combining them with considerable length, producing the huge, glamorous hairstyles that helped inspire the phrase “hair metal.”