The mohican: time to celebrate a classic haircut

A bloke I was sitting behind on a flight the other day had a mohican haircut. One of those freshly-strimmered, flattish-strip-down-the-middle ones. Robert De Niro's Taxi Driver cut, only in this case it came with a short beard. All in all, a surprise hit of a look! Mohicans are so deeply uncool that I find myself quite liking them these days. Imagine a setting - any setting - where a mohican haircut wouldn't look out of place. It's well nigh impossible. The haircut is utterly reviled, the lowest of the low.

You sneerin' at me?

When, very occasionally, someone appears at a gig with a mohican my instinct, I must admit, is to give said mohican-ed person a wide berth. But why? They're championing an unfashionable haircut, but so what? It must take a certain amount of nerve to go around with the double-scalped look. It risks marking you out as a throwback, an antediluvian fan of the Exploited or Anti-Pasti. And if that wasn't a heavy enough cross to bear, there's every chance that mohican man (very, very occasionally mohican woman) is going to catch people smirkingly eyeing them up wherever they go. There's no hiding place! No, it's time to rehabilitate the humble mohican. I seem to recall that certain "full-on" music scenes like the techno one in London in the mid-90s would include a version of the mohican amongst some of its afficianados, a welcoming in, as it were, of a kindred spirit, one ready to embrace the extremity of 150bpm at Turnmills on a Sunday night, haircut at the ready. So next time you see someone with a mohican repress your cowardly little sneer. For that mohican-ed stranger is probably a brave soul with a brave heart. They may like music infinitely better than the dull stuff you like, and they may be witty and smart to boot. And of course, as sightings of properly mohican-ed people become rarer and rarer, you never know - that person across the room from you may even be the very last of the mohicans ...