I recently had to renew my passport, and when I paged through it, there, staring back at me, was a picture of myself a decade younger—with a side part. What a shock! For the past several years I had been studiously parting my hair down the middle, shamed by TikTokers into believing the style was universally more flattering. Search the internet and you’ll find thousands of #MiddlePartChallenge videos testing its supposedly superior aesthetics. Suddenly, we millennials were dating ourselves, and I didn’t want to look old—who does? So down the middle I went, growing out my layers until I could wear two thick bunches of hair on either side of my face like Emma Stone’s character in Poor Things or a Kardashian in a confessional video.
Lately, though, there is blessed evidence that the reign of the middle part may finally be over. At the Screen Actors Guild Awards in February, there were side parts aplenty, from Emily Blunt to Penélope Cruz to Da’Vine Joy Randolph. At recent spring collections—Hermès and Victoria Beckham—there were slicked-back no-nonsense styles, which were echoed at the fall ’24 shows by the sleek and dramatic hair at Fendi, Tory Burch, and Max Mara. Even the fantastical windblown bouffants on the models at Marc Jacobs’s fall ’24 collection had a distinct slant.
“I’ve seen people asking for the side part now at the salon,” says Tommy Buckett, a celebrity hairstylist at the Marie Robinson Salon, who can attest to the stranglehold of the middle. “These severe center parts immediately made you feel like you had a style.” What is it about a middle part that makes it seem low-maintenance but also pulled together? Hair historian Rachael Gibson suspects the association might be connected to ancient values of symmetry, which lend a straightforward appeal: Think Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Side parts, on the other hand, have often been associated with moments of transgression and freedom. The first one appeared in the West with the arrival of the flapper in the 1920s, says Gibson: “The whole flapper movement is about going out, drinking, smoking, and being able to live your life without a chaperone. Hair dovetails in with that.”
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But hang on: Not everyone can change how they part their hair so easily. “I find hair patterns are very similar to your fingerprint, with waves that radiate out from the center,” says Joey George, the stylist who created dramatic 1940s-style side parts for Willy Chavarria’s spring collection, inspired by the zoot-suit-wearing pachucas of East Los Angeles. “It falls the way it falls.” Buckett, who has been side-parting the hair of his clients such as Elisabeth Moss and Maggie Gyllenhaal, agrees. If your hair has become too accustomed to a middle part, Buckett suggests parting it the way you want at night and sleeping with it in bobby pins or hair clips. Regardless of trends, Buckett adds that side parts tend to be more flattering. “No one’s symmetrical. We all have an eye that is a little wider on one side than another, our ears are off,” he says.
Convinced, I book my appointment with him that week. As his assistant combed my wet locks, she looked at me in the mirror. “Down the middle or to the side?” she asked. I felt a flicker of panic. The face reflected back at me was many things—older, yes—but also a little less concerned with what others thought of her. Hair grows. Parts move. What feels right today can feel wrong tomorrow. That’s the freedom—and beauty—of fashion. “To the side,” I answered.
