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Seattle Times 2006: The mustache, ready for a comeback

You heard it there first. At the dawn of 2006, the Seattle Times ran an article, headline booming "Mustache backlash just keeps on growing." The article details how we associate mustaches with villains, not heroes, how the days of a "mouth-mane" signaling virility were long gone, that it had become not only unfashionable, but a source of humiliation and ridicule, a style choice of cops and perverts.

Midway through, the author asks the question. We can all agree that certain trends go in and out of style, he suggests, grooming habits included. Doesn't that augur well for the mustache? Isn't it time the stash made it's comeback?

The answer, in 2006, was no. A timeline is presented. It started dying in the 50s; the hippie beard took its place in the 60s; chops in the 70s; and in the 90s, "the goatee ascended to the top of the facial-hair food chain." And the author offers multiple quotes from stylists and trendwatchers, in a chorus of RIPs to the mustache. "It was great in it's heyday," says one Michelle Volpe, of New York, "but it's just not fashionable anymore. Let it die."

They didn't know nothing back then. The mustache lives.