History of the Kate Gosselin hairstyle?

May 19, 2019 2:05 PM

Are there any good articles/blog posts/etc about the rise and fall of the hairstyle Kate Gosselin popularized?

It seems like it arrived on the scene of pop culture out of nowhere and disappeared into ancient history just as quickly. What was the genesis of this style? Did Kate's hairdresser make it up, or did it exist before Kate started sporting it? How popular was it really, at its peak? How quickly did it become seen as uncool? How long did it take to fall completely out of common consciousness as a hairstyle someone might request? Is anyone still rockin' this do? (If so, rock on!)

posted by srrh to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (7 answers total)

Best answer: Some info here.

For further information, maybe search for variations on: "can I speak to a manager hairstyle."
posted by slkinsey at 2:18 PM on May 19, 2019 [14 favorites]

Also sometimes called the reverse mullet, if that helps your search terms.
posted by kevinbelt at 2:23 PM on May 19, 2019

It was like the end-evolution of a more popular but more conservative cut from the mid to late 90s (Jane Pauley had a version of it, Suze Orman another). In the early 00s, chunkier highlights and lowlights came into fashion (you can kind of see the beginning of this trend in Jennifer Aniston’s famous “Rachel”) and then the “bump it” hair insert (that makes a pouf in the back) spread like wildfire in the late 00s. The Kate Gosselin hair is like a boulder rolling down a mountain that picks up all of these styles.
posted by sallybrown at 2:37 PM on May 19, 2019 [7 favorites]

For some reason my cursed brain remembers Kate Gosselin saying in an interview that she was just looking for a short non-fussy hairdo that wouldn't require a lot of time to make it look camera-ready or get messed up easily by running after the kids. And I think I remember that she said she was surprised by how much people cared about her hairdo.
posted by bleep at 3:40 PM on May 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

The style existed before Gosselin popularized it; the reverse mullet is called a tellum.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:07 PM on May 19, 2019 [3 favorites]

Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow both had that cut at the same time when they were together.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 5:20 PM on May 19, 2019 [4 favorites]

In the years just after the turn of the millennium, in South Florida, this haircut had an odd semiotical position: it was A Look for some of us youth (of many genders) who self-identified as: freaks, hardcore kids, punks, scene kids, and queer goths (hi!). The style was usually dyed red or black, or that distinctive Nineties Burgundy. Gel (to spike the back) was a necessity.

Yet this was simultaneously a flashy, nouveau-riche White Mom Hairstyle. (Processed to an ashen blond with shockingly chunky highlights, and styled with mousse and a blowout.)

Whatever the style's origins, I know that from the ages of 17-20, when I rocked some salon-done variation on this hair, I never got carded at shows. Perhaps because someone was afraid I'd ask for the manager.
posted by sunusku at 5:52 AM on November 6, 2019