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Mustache Inspiration 01
Get ready for Movember with Shave Your Style's guide to growing and styling the most iconic styles of all time
In the first of a series for Movember, we take it back to the '70s and '80s with David Glover's take on three classic mustaches as worn by three iconic figures of their generation.
You'll need some time to grow out the styles shown here - that's why we're posting this piece nice and early!
Freddie Mercury
Want to break free? Follow Freddie's lead and grow a Chevron mustache...
Maintaining a Chevron is not as hard as it looks, and simply requires regular shaping around the mouth to avoid catching particles of food, or adding it as an extra topping to your next mouthful of hamburger.
Begin by cleanly shaving the cheeks, neck and chin and do not allow the upper lip growth to extend more than half an inch past the corners of the mouth. Shave the very top hairs on either side of the mustache forming a slightly inverted-V shape. Trim the longer hairs so that they just cover the upper lip, but don't snip any more than you have too as the Chevron looks best when left a little rugged.
Leatherman, from the Village People
Little known fact: leather-clad biker Glenn Hughes made People Magazine's 1979 list of most beautiful people.
And to join the beautiful people of today, maybe a horseshoe mustache will help you on the way. It'll certainly help you stand out...
The horseshoe is a full mustache resembling an upside down 'U'. Grown on the corners of the lips and down the sides of the mouth to the jawline (spanning the upper lip) the whiskers grown along the sides of the mouth in the horseshoe are referred to as "pipes".
The style works best on men with angular faces and is not recommended for people with long or oval faces. Men with round faces should shape a more squared-off, sharper design on the upper lip. Shave your cheeks clean, leaving the area surrounding the mouth untouched. Create a vertical line of whisker (about half an inch wide) from the corner of your mouth to your jawline, keeping both sides even. The hair should create a continuous horseshoe shape from above your lip to your chin.
Shaft
Of course, the 70's weren't just about mo's. It was also a good decade for sideburns, afros, and abundant chest hair. Richard Roundtree (alias ‘Shaft’) brought the Horseshoe mustache to an entirely new level by adding sideburns and creating the Winnfield. Shaft birthed the 1970's 'Blaxploitation' film movement and became a major black power iconic figure.
Grown thick and lush, slightly turned down on the sides around the mouth, his Horseshoe mustache was completed with a wicked set of flared sideburns that ran along his cheeks and almost reached the corners of his pipes. This works well if you are trying to highlight your cheekbones by shaving the neck and cheeks cleanly, forming a line from the corner of the mouth to the lower earlobe, using downward strokes and leaving space for the edges of the mustache.
As the Shaft theme tune attests, this cat is one bad mother...
