Look outside on any given night in London, Berlin or New York, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that we are not on the cusp of 2025, but rather 2005. The jeans have gotten really low. The coats have gotten really parka-like. People are wearing skirts over trousers (skousers) like their lives depend on it. I saw someone the other day in an Alexander McQueen skull scarf dupe. You get the idea. The Noughties trend has tipped from the odd kitsch diamante halter top or ironic Juicy Couture rewear into a full-on revival – but with iPhones instead of Razrs.
The one thing that’s missing from all this is glaringly obvious. Painfully absent. You already know what I’m talking about: the side fringe, which dominated the 2000s and early 2010s to the extent that a centre parting would have immediately singled you out as a freak. Millennials will remember a time when the side part became so extreme, fans began to look as though they’d scraped their entire head of hair to the one side of their head. “Have you got… a comb over?” I remember my mum asking me as a child. “No, mum, it’s a side fringe, everyone’s got one,” I expect I replied.
And then, of course, it disappeared sometime around the mid-2010s in favour of straight fringes or middle parts or some wispy, shaggy, mullet-y version of the two. Side fringes became widely maligned; a sign that you were an uncool millennial who had chosen one haircut and then stuck to it. But look, people are wearing skinny jeans again (they were similarly maligned for a time), and leopard print faux fur. None of these outfits look right, really, without a side fringe. Which is why I’m calling it: 2025 will be the year of the side fringe.
I’m not just plucking this from nowhere, or consulting my imaginary crystal ball. There have been clues. Rihanna, famously the coolest person on the planet, was spotted earlier in 2024 at the launch of her Fenty Beauty product Soft’lit Naturally Luminous Longwear Foundation with a…
