A Look Back at Harry Styles’s Iconic Hair Evolution

From boy band frontman heartthrob to buzzy actor to flamboyant fashion icon, December cover star Harry Styles has enjoyed a career marked by big, bold moves. Along the way, the pop star’s (undeniably great) head of hair has served to echo his growth, marking transitions with fluid above-neck styling that served to supplement his sartorial inclinations. 

Styles’s One Direction days came with a lustrous mop of not-quite curls worn brushed across his forehead, fluffed up to voluminous heights, or pushed back by myriad fabric headbands. As he began to embrace his identity as a style savant—now more of a mainstay—Styles’s mane was there to amplify his cause, combed back into ever-higher sweeps and bouffants, growing all the while. By 2015, Styles’s rumpled, finger-raked brunette hair was decidedly long, halting a few inches past his shoulders and offering casual tees and jeans a grunge appeal while artfully offsetting more elegant options, like the floral suit he donned for that year’s AMAs red carpet. 

Then came the haircut heard around the world, an above-neck transformation chosen to accompany Styles’s role in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. The chop also closely coincided with the 2017 release of Styles’s debut self-titled album, thus visually ushering in a new phase of his career. From there, the multi-hyphenate has enjoyed a more polished take on his mane, opting for combed-back crowns and textured curls, volleying between medium-length and abbreviated, but kept far shorter than his past length level. For an appearance at the 2020 Brit Awards this past February, Styles coupled a burgeoning goatee with a piece-y look, hair pulled upward in segments for a jaunty feel—made all the more striking when finished with a simple string of pearls. And for Vogue’s December cover story, Styles emerges from a cyclonic year with a sleek coiffure, a style as unruffled as the star himself seems to be. Here, a quick peek at Styles’s eye-catching hair evolution.