1960s Hairstyles
To understand why 1960s hairstyles looked the way they did, it helps to know a little about the world women were living in at the time. At the start of the decade, life still looked a lot like the 1950s. Women were expected to look neat and ladylike at all times, and their hair reflected that expectation.
The result was a decade of two very distinct halves. The early sixties were all about structure, height, and glamour. The late 1960s swung in completely the opposite direction, embracing naturalness, length, and freedom. Both halves were equally exciting, and together they gave us some of the most iconic looks in beauty history.
The Bouffant
If you could pick one hairstyle that truly captures the spirit of the early 1960s, it would be the bouffant. Hair was teased, backcombed, and shaped into a rounded dome that sat high on the head. The finished look was smooth on the outside but full of volume underneath. It was the kind of hairstyle that said: I made an effort, and I look magnificent.
It also had a very important cultural boost. When Jacqueline Kennedy became First Lady of the United States in 1961, the whole world was watching what she wore - including what she did with her hair. Jackie Kennedy was a fan of the soft, rounded bouffant, and her influence cannot be overstated. Millions of women wanted to look just like her.
The bouffant required a good amount of hairspray - a product that was booming in the 1960s - to keep its shape throughout the day. Women would visit the salon regularly, and a well-done bouffant was meant to last all week.
The Beehive
If the bouffant was big, the beehive was bigger. Hair was teased and coiled upward into a tall, rounded column on top of the head, resembling a beehive. It sounds dramatic, and it was.
The beehive was created and popularized in the early 1960s, and it quickly became a symbol of confident, bold femininity. It took skill to construct properly, and women who could pull it off wore it like a crown. It depended heavily on teasing, pinning, and an impressive quantity of hairspray.
Certain celebrities helped cement the beehive's place in popular culture. Amy Winehouse would revive it decades later, but in the sixties it was worn by pop stars, actresses, and everyday women who simply wanted to look fabulous. Dusty Springfield, the British soul singer with her ice-blonde beehive, became one of the most iconic images of the decade.
The Flip
Not every woman wanted hairstyles with dizzying heights. For a younger, more casual take on 1960s glamour, the flip was the answer. This was a medium-length style, typically sitting at the chin or just above the shoulders, with the ends curled outward and upward in a neat, cheerful curve.
The flip was the hairstyle of the girl-next-door, the student, the young working woman. It was pretty without being fussy, polished without being intimidating. It could be worn to work, to a dance, or on a Sunday afternoon, and it always looked just right.
The television show The Mary Tyler Moore Show would make the flip famous in the early 1970s, but it was a 1960s creation. It was also associated with another hugely influential person: Marlo Thomas, the actress known for the show That Girl, who wore a bouncy flip that young women across America imitated.
Achieving the flip required the use of large rollers, which were set in the hair while wet and left to dry under a hood dryer at the salon or at home with a portable dryer. The result, when the rollers came out and the hair was brushed through, was a lovely curve at the ends that gave the hairstyle its name.
The Bubble Cut
Closely related to the bouffant but shorter and rounder, the bubble cut was another favorite at the beginning of the decade. The hair was cut to roughly chin length and then styled into a smooth, rounded shape that curved inward at the ends. It was like a bubble sitting neatly on the head.
The bubble cut was particularly popular among younger women and teenagers, who loved its fresh, fun appearance. It was easier to maintain than a tall beehive hairstyle and had a sweetness to it that suited the early-60s love of all things youthful and pretty.
Sandra Dee, the American actress beloved by teenagers of the era, was often spotted with variations of the bubble cut, and her influence helped make shorter, rounded styles fashionable among the younger crowd.
The Pageboy
While many 1960s hairstyles were about height and drama, the pageboy took a calmer approach. This was a smooth, sleek style in which the hair was cut to roughly jaw length or above the shoulders and curled under at the ends, creating a clean silhouette. It lay close to the head without excessive volume.
The pageboy had actually been popular since the 1940s, but it carried on beautifully into the 1960s because it suited women who wanted to look elegant rather than trendy. It was a classic, and classics never really go out of style.
It was particularly popular in professional settings: offices and occasions where the more dramatic styles might have seemed too informal. A woman with a well-cut pageboy looked capable and put-together without appearing flashy.
The Pixie Cut
Halfway through the 1960s, something extraordinary happened. A young model named Twiggy stepped onto the world stage with her enormous eyes, her slender figure, and her boyish pixie cut. The fashion world went absolutely mad for her.
The pixie cut was not entirely new. The actress Audrey Hepburn had worn a version of it in the 1950s. But Twiggy brought it to a mass audience at a moment when young women were hungry for something completely different from the carefully coiffed styles their mothers wore. The pixie was radical. It was modern, and it was freeing.
Cutting off long hair had traditionally been seen as something of a sacrifice. Hair was tied to femininity, and short hair on women was sometimes viewed with suspicion. But the pixie cut flipped that idea on its head entirely. It said that a woman did not need long hair to be beautiful or feminine. She could be bold and striking with barely any hair at all.
The pixie required very little maintenance compared to the structured styles of the early sixties, which was part of its appeal to the younger generation. It was also photogenic. It showed off the face, the eyes, the neck, and the ears in a way that longer hairstyles could not.
Closely linked to the pixie cut was the mod look that swept through fashion and beauty in the mid-1960s. Mod - short for modern - was a movement born in London, and it was all about sharp lines, bold patterns, and a futuristic appeal.
In terms of hair, the mod look meant geometric cuts with clean, precise edges. The most famous example is the five-point cut created by the legendary British hairdresser Vidal Sassoon. Working with razor-sharp precision, he created cuts in which every section of hair fell into a perfect geometric shape. When the head moved, the hair moved with it and then fell perfectly back into place.
Sassoon's cuts changed hairdressing forever. Before him, the expectation was that women would visit the salon regularly to have their hair styled. Sassoon's philosophy was that a great cut should do the work itself and that the right shape, done well, would look beautiful with no elaborate styling required. This was perfectly in tune with the sixties' growing desire for independence and ease.
The model Grace Coddington wore one of Sassoon's famous five-point cuts, and it became an image that defined the era.
Long and Straight Hair
By the late 1960s, the neat and structured hairstyles that had dominated the early part of the decade began to give way to something very different. As the counterculture movement grew - bringing with it protests against the Vietnam War, calls for social justice, and hippie culture - a new beauty ideal began to emerge.
Long, straight, natural hair became a powerful statement. Where beehives and bouffants spoke of conformity and carefully maintained femininity, long straight hair spoke of freedom. It said: I am not spending hours in a salon. I am letting my hair be what it wants to be. I am natural, and I am real.
The look was simple but required its own kind of effort to achieve. Women with wavy or curly hair who wanted the sleek, straight look would iron their hair - literally, using a clothes iron or a specially designed hair-straightening iron - to achieve the desired smoothness. The result was a beautiful, glossy, perfectly straight curtain of hair that became the signature style of the late-60s woman.
Natural Curls and the Afro
While much of mainstream beauty culture in the sixties focused on straight or carefully styled hair, the decade also saw an important shift in how Black women related to their hair. For generations, Black women in America had often felt pressure to straighten and process their hair to conform to Eurocentric beauty standards. The Civil Rights Movement began to challenge that profoundly.
As the decade progressed and the Black Power movement grew in strength, natural hair became a symbol of pride, identity, and resistance. The afro became one of the most politically charged hairstyles in history. Wearing an afro was a statement that said: My hair is beautiful exactly as it grows. I do not need to change it to be worthy.
The afro was also part of the broader 1960s shift toward naturalness and authenticity that ran through the counterculture. In that sense, it fit perfectly into the spirit of the time.
The Half-Up Style
Not everyone wanted to commit fully to either the structured hairstyles of the early decade or the completely free-flowing straight hair of the later years. The half-up style offered a middle ground, and it was enormously popular throughout the decade.
In a half-up style, the top section of the hair is pinned or tied back, while the rest falls loose around the shoulders. It could be done very simply, with just a ribbon or clip, or elaborately, with the top section teased and pinned into a small bouffant before the rest was left to flow freely.
The half-up style was versatile in a way that more extreme looks were not. It worked for daytime and evenings, for the office and for parties. It suited women who wanted to show off their length while keeping their hair out of their face.
Wigs and Hairpieces
One of the more fascinating aspects of 1960s hair fashion is the enormous popularity of hairpieces. Wigs, both synthetic and human hair, became fashionable accessories for women who wanted to change their look quickly. A woman might wear her own hair in a simple style from Monday to Friday and then wear a wig for a Saturday evening out.
Long hairpieces attached at the crown or sides to extend the length of natural hair were also widely used. They allowed women with shorter hair to achieve the long hairstyles that became fashionable in the late sixties without having to wait years for their own hair to grow.
This was, in many ways, ahead of its time. Extensions and hairpieces are now completely normal, but in the 1960s they were a relatively new option. The fact that women embraced them so enthusiastically says something about how playful and experimental the decade was when it came to personal style.
Hair Accessories
No discussion of 1960s hairstyles would be complete without mentioning the accessories that went with them. Headbands were enormously popular throughout the decade: wide fabric headbands in the early years, and simple leather or woven bands in the later hippie years.
Scarves tied around the head or through the hair were another favorite, offering a splash of color. Hair ribbons, bows, and flowers were beloved by the younger crowd. Toward the end of the decade, flower garlands worn in loose, natural hair became one of the defining images of the Woodstock generation.
Large decorative pins and combs were used to sweep hair up into elegant updos for evenings out. And of course, there was hairspray: the hero of the entire decade, sold in enormous quantities and used by virtually every woman who wanted her hairstyle to last longer.
Why 1960s Hair Still Matters
Looking back at 1960s hairstyles more than sixty years later, what strikes us most is how much they meant. These were not just ways of wearing hair; they were statements about who you were and what you believed. The structured styles of the early decade spoke of elegance and social expectation. The geometric mod cuts spoke of youth, independence, and the excitement of a new modern age. The long, free-flowing hair of the late decade spoke of peace, freedom, and a rejection of conformity. The natural afro spoke of pride and political awakening.
Hair has always been a form of communication, but rarely has it spoken so loudly and with such variety as it did in the 1960s. The sixties gave us hairstyles that were technically innovative, politically meaningful, and simply beautiful.
Many of these looks have never really gone away. All of them can be seen on women today, reimagined and updated but rooted in that extraordinary decade. Every time a stylist creates a pixie cut, or a woman sits down to have her hair teased and pinned into a high updo, she is, in a small but lovely way, keeping the spirit of the 1960s alive.
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