The fickle nature of trends sees the pendulum swing from one extreme to the opposite so rapidly it might be not possible to maintain up: in case you were to imagine the dictatorial headlines of leading fashion magazines, hemlines are short one week and long the subsequent, eyebrows go full before swiftly becoming thin again, bumsters are in then flares are out. Whether you select to follow the trend bellwether is as much as you, in fact; but even to those observing from the skin, its ability to lurch from one end of the style spectrum to the opposite could be head-spinning.

So it was with men’s hair within the mid-60s. It is likely to be a decade best known for the longer hair popularised by The Beatles, but just as soon as their mod-inspired mop tops gained global currency, the mod movement underwent something of a schism. While the unique mods were aspirational with their slick tailored suits and hair cut with razor-sharp precision, there was a younger generation emerging who were completely satisfied to embrace their working-class heritage, rebelling against what they perceived because the empty guarantees of the, then fading, hippie movement, or the “peacock” mods’ idea of gentlemanly style.

Like so many moments in British countercultural history, this latest attitude was born from the poorer corners of London’s East End, which was, throughout the 60s, undergoing something of an upheaval. Many families had been uprooted and moved to the brand new, Brutalist housing blocks that were spreading across the east of town, fostering a spirit of cross-cultural pollination between the white working class and Windrush generation immigrants from the Carribean, and soundtracking this cultural shift was a fusion of rock’n’roll with ska and reggae.

For early adopters of the trend, the choice to shave their heads was, to start with, a matter of practicality versus any sort of style statement: lots of the movement’s progenitors were blue-collar employees, and within the factories, long hair wasn’t just hot and heavy, but actively dangerous. Choosing a No. 2 or No. 3 grade clip guard haircut, for these youths, the utilitarian nature of the skinhead look became a approach to reflect a way of pride of their working-class roots and allowed them to develop a latest sartorial vocabulary that was cheaper than the expensive suits of the mods, and more practical than their meticulously managed hair-dos. For young women sporting the look, a shaved head became a way of rejecting society’s contention that a lady’s beauty was tied up with possessing long, lustrous locks. Inside just a few years, the style had develop into town’s hottest youth movement. But just as quickly because it spread, by the early-70s it had already faded, as its most faithful followers grew out their hair to show back to their mod roots — only to be revived within the late-70s as a response to the arrival of punk rock in a really different, and altogether more disturbing, guise.

A disenfranchised generation of working-class youth adopted a revamped version of the skinhead uniform that got here to be related to far-right politics and the neo-Nazi philosophy of the National Front Party: Doc Martens, bomber jackets, braces and bleached jeans. As an alternative of the No. 2 or No. 3 grade clip guard haircuts of their predecessors, a lot of them shaved their hair off completely with razors, and where the music had previously reflected the multicultural spirit of their city, the brand new skinheads embraced Oi!, a subgenre of punk that included elements of pub rock and football chants.

Where many style-focused subcultures have seen themselves unfairly vilified within the media, within the case of the skinheads, it was somewhat earned. It’s said you can often find skinheads of this ilk stalking the streets of Bethnal Green in packs and harassing the local Bangladeshi population, or attending gigs that descended into racially-motivated violence and arson. Members of the National Front would attend football matches to further stoke the flames of their ethno-nationalist agenda, handing out propagandist flyers and inspiring post-match hooliganism that made every day headlines across the country.

It’s this association with neo-Nazism that has colored the understanding of skinheads in the general public consciousness from the late-70s onwards, making for a status that has been hard to shake off — even when there are actually organisations, akin to Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice, which have made it their goal to confront the movement’s links with white supremacy and return to its original, multicultural spirit. Indeed, what makes it so unlucky is that the primary generation of skinheads were, in reality, non-violent idealists: they simply desired to take pride of their working-class roots and develop an inexpensive style they may make their very own.

Fast-forward to today and the shaved head has seen something of a resurgence within the worlds of fashion and sweetness, particularly for ladies: just take a look at Ruth Bell, who shaved her hair off for an Alexander McQueen campaign and saw her profession skyrocket, becoming an ongoing muse for Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Dior; or Adwoa Aboah, whose buzzcut has graced the covers of Vogue editions all world wide. Before it became clouded by the distasteful politics of the second wave skins, the shaved head was understood by its female followers as representing something else entirely: a new-found freedom from the strictures of how society told you to decorate or fix your hair, and a chance to craft a trendy look that also functioned practically throughout the day-to-day lifetime of Britain’s working class. Reminiscent of these early interpretations of the style, today the skinhead look reflects the defiant independence of its wearer.

And yet, regardless of what number of women have attested to the liberating power of shaving one’s head, the act of a lady shaving her head remains to be stigmatised: take Britney Spears’ 2007 self-administered buzzcut, which has been unfairly extrapolated by the tabloid media to associate a shaved head with mental health issues. It’s telling of our culture’s misogyny that a shaved head on a person has come to represent a sort of warrior-like confidence or mere practicality, while if a lady does the exact same thing, it’s interpreted by the media as an indication she’s troubled. Even when it’s a mode that has been increasingly co-opted by fashion, the skinhead look continues to be misunderstood.

What stays from the roots of the skinhead movement, nevertheless, is the importance of shaving one’s head as an act of defiance: a two-fingers-up to the sartorial strictures of Western society, with its deeply ingrained codes that tell us how we should always look, dress, or indeed, style our hair. Shaving your head isn’t a pledge of allegiance to right-wing causes or an indication of declining mental faculties, but an act of bravery: it’s an invite for those taking a look at us to see us within the raw. No beauty statement might be more powerful than that.