Every decade has a signature haircut. The fifties had a neat short, back and sides, the seventies had long hair and sideburns, the eighties had mullets. In the nineties, it was all about the curtain hairstyle, aka an eboy haircut. Worn by everyone from David Beckham and Brad Pitt to countless boyband members and that guy from Dawson’s Creek, it was the style for would-be heartthrobs and a generation of men getting more and more comfortable with the idea of grooming.

The curtains hairstyle should you have missed it or forgotten, is a style where hair on the top of the head is grown into a fringe and defined by a strong middle parting along the centre. It’s floppy, it’s quite high maintenance, and it’s one of the most popular haircuts for men today.

A quick glance at the spring collections from any number of brands will confirm the nineties fashion revival is still going strong, and with it is the haircut that defined the decade. But it wouldn’t be the first comeback, because the history of curtains goes back a lot further than the turn of this century.

The Eboy Haircut History

“It was a hugely popular haircut with men at the end of the 19th century,” explains Josh Gibson, principal at the Sassoon Academy, “with famous icons like the writer Oscar Wilde and artist Aubrey Beardsley sporting the look. The trend continues among working-class men until the end of the 1920s, and then returns briefly when hippie culture spreads from America in the 1960s.”

The 1990s revival of the eboy haircut came with the rise of grunge and home-grown indie bands. Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder, Placebo singer Brian Molko and Blur bassist Alex James were notable champions of curtains. Then the boy bands took over; Take That wore them (apart from Gary, who was still in his awkward phase) and Westlife, along with every teen TV star (see Jared Leto, straight out of the test tube, in My So-Called Life) and the look subsequently filtered down to the teenagers and beyond.