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.
Emily Blunt, in a side part, at the 30th Annual Screen Actors Guild AwardsPhoto: Gilbert Flores/Getty Images
“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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Bette Davis, with a side part, as an flapper in The Rich Are Always With UsPhoto: UniversalImagesGroup/Getty Images
