Man #3. The Gentrification of the Haircut.
The fade was never meant for cappuccinos and co-working spaces. Once it belonged to squaddies, boxers, and lads whose Saturday night ended in a scuffle, not a selfie. Today it’s paraded by footballers and city boys who need a photo to prove their existence. The cheap fade is a haircut of the disposable man.
And that’s the problem, the modern fade isn’t built to last.
It photographs well on day one but collapses by week three. A sugar rush of barbering, designed for instant gratification, not longevity. A proper gent doesn’t need a haircut to shout his arrival; he needs one that settles and grows with him, like stone weathering and washed jeans that soften bringing character.
Hair has always been a marker of permanence in society. Samson’s strength was bound in his locks; Shakespeare’s Hamlet scorns “the bearded men that seem to have no more wisdom than their hairs”; Chaucer’s Knight is described with “his beard ful blak and square as any box.” Across history, a man’s hair was never just decoration, it was proof of his vitality, his honour, his place in the world. To treat it as a disposable accessory is to cheapen something deeper.
The quick fade mirrors modern culture.
Short-term. Replaceable. Like Tinder dates, it reflects a world that doesn’t want to grow with anything, not relationships, not clothes, not even its own hair. Our proper fades take time to create, require multiple tools, and they grows in, not out, they glistens like glass, making for a shape and look, that last for weeks not days.
At HARE, we refuse haircut expiry dates.
Our fade haircuts cuts are made to improve over time, cuts that sit better in the second week than the first, that still carry its strength after a month. This isn’t grooming for Instagram. This is grooming for life.
Oscar Wilde once observed that fashion is nothing more than ugliness so unbearable it has to be changed every six months. The cheap modern fade is that ugliness distilled. The Cotswold gent, by contrast, knows permanence. His hair, like his stone walls, grows imperfectly, endures the weather, and becomes quietly magnificent with time. That is the HARE cut, not chasing trends but outlasting them.
