Twenty-one years ago this month, a 19-year-old David Beckham made his first full appearance for Manchester United. You can rewatch the highlights on YouTube, but before you do, I should warn you, Beckham’s presence feels remarkably inconsequential. He probably played fine, but if there was anything exciting about his first full game, it was overshadowed by fellow teenager Paul Scholes, who scored two goals in the game to secure the win.
Today, though, it’s Beckham we remember for his merger-marriage to a pop superstar; Beckham who’s both baffled and beguiled the world media with his ever-changing appearance; and Beckham who, two years after he retired, is still one of the most recognizable sports personalities in the world. (Scholes, who retired in 2013, not so much.)
"Before Beckham, soccer players were liked by 40-year-old men who alsoliked greyhound-racing and Rugby League."
—Men in Blazers’ Roger Bennett
Nowhere is Beckham’s legacy more apparent than on the heads of the players who have since followed in his footsteps—his famous hair is even credited with galvanizing love of the game. “Before Beckham, soccer players were liked by 40-year-old men who also liked greyhound-racing and Rugby League,” says Roger Bennett, co-host of the popular English Premier League soccer show Men in Blazers. “He timed his career unbelievably well. In the ’80s, English football was kind of like a troglodyte, medieval, hooligan culture based on parochial rivalries. In the 1990s, it started to rise with the birth of the Premier League, and it became a global juggernaut. The league needed a face, and that face had to be English. [David] was one of a number of stars. He was not the best out of them, but the best-looking star.”
So how did a 19-year-old with a greasy center part become grooming inspiration for an entire generation? We called up some of his former hairstylists, as well as menswear critics and football writers of that time, to find out.
David Beckham training with England in 1997, shortly before meeting Victoria "Posh" Adams.
Getty ImagesApril 1995After spending five games on loan at third-division club Preston North End, London-born David Beckham, the son of a hairdresser, makes his debut in the Premier League for Manchester United.
ROGER BENNETT (co-host of the Men in Blazers podcast and TV show on NBCSN): His time at Preston North End, which was the equivalent of playing triple-A baseball, was remarkable. He just trotted on amongst a series of no-hopers like Yehudi Menuhin showing up to play violin at a fourth-grade music recital. You saw immediately how exquisite he could be. Still, his hair was just standard-issue English-football haircut. It was curtains, what Americans call a center part. There was nothing remarkable about him from a star perspective.
CHARLIE PORTER (menswear writer and fashion critic): It was the haircut before he started playing with it. That was just what men’s hair looked like at that time. It didn’t necessarily follow that if you play football that you have a sense of style. In fact, it was probably the opposite.
May 1997At 22, David Beckham is best known for two things: his 1996 wondergoal against Wimbledon, which he scored from inside Manchester United’s own half, and being the new boyfriend of Victoria “Posh” Adams, one fifth of the Spice Girls.
BEN COOKE (hairdresser who cut both Victoria and David Beckham’s hair between 1999 and 2006): The first time I met [David], we were at Top of the Pops when the Spice Girls were performing “Goodbye.” I was with the girls, and Victoria said, “Can you do my boyfriend's hair?” because he’d had a cap on and he had cap hair. I remember thinking, I’m not really here to do boyfriends—but we had a few minutes, so I said yes. I’m not a football fan, so I just did his hair. He obviously wasn’t who he is now. He potentially wasn’t quite as good-looking as he is now. He was just a nice guy with a good head of hair.
Then a couple of people started asking for autographs, and it got quite full-on, and I remember thinking, Oh, he’s someone.
Beckham attends the Walt Disney Channel “Children Awards” in June 1998.
Getty ImagesBENNETT: He and Victoria were like the English Hart to Hart. Through their relationship they both kind of transcended to become much, much bigger. She became more than just a candy pop star, and he became more than just a footballer. His hair, until he met her, wasn’t very special. She introduced him to blond streaks, and endorsements soon followed.
COOKE: I used to go to random hotels where the England team were training and do highlights in his hotel room during his downtime. It wasn’t a secret, but I don’t remember meeting any of the other players.
July 1997With newly dyed blond hair, more boy-band heartthrob than a footballer, David Beckham signs an endorsement deal with struggling British pomade company Brylcreem, which is attempting to rebrand its image and appeal to a younger audience. The Bristol Post reports that Beckham will receive £1 million for the deal, which will involve a television and newspaper campaign. Speaking to The Guardian, football agent Jon Holmes says Beckham could go on to earn as much as “£50 million over a 15-year career.” That will end up being a gross underestimate.†
TOM WATT (ghostwriter of Beckham’s 2004 autobiography, Both Feet on the Ground): Brylcreem was probably the first thing away from football that he did, or at least the first big contract. Brylcreem had an ongoing relationship with football going back to the late 1940s. There was the cricketer and footballer Denis Compton, who was what you’d call the first “Brylcreem boy.”
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A still from David Beckham's first fashion shoot in Sky Magazine, 1997.
©Peter Marlow / Magnum PhotosPETER MARLOW (photographed Beckham for his first fashion shoot, an editorial in Sky Magazine that was shot to coincide with the Brylcreem adverts): It was the PR company trying to push the relaunch of Brylcreem. Certainly at that time [Brylcreem] wasn’t something everyone was aware of. It was a very sort of working-class, tacky, greasy hair product. It was more a thing of the past. I guess they were trying to make it appeal to younger men.
His hair was long over the ears and swept back, and he was always playing with it. He had this thing about Prada suits and Prada shoes. He never wore socks, so I got a picture of him without socks. I remember I later showed [Beckham’s former Manchester United teammate] Rio Ferdinand that picture, and I asked him, “What does this say to you?” and he said, “Twat.”
†According to Forbes, Beckham would later earn that much in 2014 alone.
June 1998While playing with England in the quarter final of the World Cup in France, Beckham is fouled by Argentina’s captain, Diego Simeone. In a moment of frustration, he kicks Simeone in retaliation and is red-carded straight away. England goes on to lose the game 4–3 on penalties, and Beckham is instantly vilified.
WATT: Where it all sprang from, and I know David certainly feels this way, is an interview England’s manager, Glenn Hoddle, gave after the game. Without exactly using those words, he blamed David for them going out of the World Cup.
The Daily Mirror, one of England’s largest tabloids, runs a dartboard (right) with Beckham’s face at the center and invites readers to “hurl away” at Beckham, who they say “earns £8 million a year, dates Posh Spice, wears sarongs and dyes his hair.” Suddenly Beckham’s hair, the thing that had won him endorsement deals and made him the most recognizable sportsman in the country, was being used to paint him as a pretty boy.
Most PopularWATT: When things go wrong, we always want one person to blame, and David was the person to blame in ’98. It wasn’t necessarily that he was a bad guy, it was that he was a spoilt, stupid little boy. There were effigies hung from lampposts. He was absolutely abused by the media and by the general public.
BENNETT: Beyond being a moment of foolhardiness, it was a moment where we realized our true mediocrity as a nation itself. English fans still believed in the rational logic that we invented the game in the 1880s and therefore we deserved the World Cup by right. It hadn’t dawned on us yet that England weren’t a very good football team. Suddenly we realized just how crap we were. It was pinpointed on him, and to some degree he brought it on himself. His mistake was to make us believe.
March 2000Beckham’s career seems like it’s bouncing back from the upset at the 1998 World Cup. He received plaudits for his performance during the 1999 Champions League Final, and in November he will be named captain of the England national team. Before a Carling Cup match against Leicester City, however, Beckham reveals he has shaved off his trademark blond locks (below). The Daily Mirror splashes a picture of his shaved head on its front page with the headline “SKINHEAD BECKHAM”; other newspapers begin referring to the reportedly £470 haircut as the “Short Becks and Sides.”
WATT: He was just trying something. He was married and a father. In fact, he found out Victoria was pregnant the night he got sent off against Argentina. I don’t think he cared what the public were going to make of it—it was probably more what Victoria was going to make of it. I think there is a good chance Victoria decided it all, to be honest. [David and I] never talked about haircuts. We talked about tattoos, but not hair.
“Any haircut he got at that time would have become the one everyone wanted. He probably could have made the Perry Como massive.” —Beckham's ghostwriter, Tom Watt
BENNETT: He and Victoria had seemed like they were going through a period of matching haircuts. They were like a pair of overly manicured poodles for a time. The shaved head was seen as him breaking out on his own. Once he did that, every haircut was like a movie release for an A-list Hollywood actor. It was like Tess of the d'Urbervilles when she shaved off her eyebrows and said, “I’m going to try and hide my beauty”—but in taking off everything, we revered him, for he became even more beautiful.
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Beckham sports a second Mohawk in May 2001 after being forced to shave the first one.
Getty ImagesAugust 2000Beckham arrives for Manchester United’s Charity Shield game against Chelsea—the unofficial start to the English football season—with a Mohawk. The Daily Mail quotes Beckham as saying it was inspired by the movie Taxi Driver: “I watched the film the other night and thought, ‘That’s wicked,’ so I got Tyler [Johnston, Beckham’s hairdresser] ’round to do it.” It is branded as “controversial” by much of the press, and word spreads that Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson is not happy with the look—rumors Beckham himself would later confirm.
DAVID BECKHAM (speaking in 2015 on The Graham Norton Show): When I first did it, I was [sitting] in the changing room and I had a hat on at the time because Sir Alex Ferguson hadn’t seen it. Obviously that was interesting when I took my hat off. We had an hour before the kickoff, and he said, “Go and shave it off.” I said no at first, and then I saw his face change very quickly, so I went and shaved it off in the toilet.
October 2001England had yet to secure a place in the 2002 World Cup. In the final seconds of a qualifying game against Greece, the team is awarded a free kick, and Beckham, playing on his home turf at Old Trafford and sporting his now trademark shaved head and asymmetrical forehead slit, puts it home with seconds to spare.
Most PopularWATT: That was the circle being complete. He went from being the man who got us out of the World Cup in 1998 to the man who got us into one. By then he was pretty much everyone’s hero. Any haircut he got at that time would have become the one everyone wanted. He probably could have made the Perry Como massive in 2002.
Beckham sports his trademark shaved head and asymmetrical forehead slit, August 2001.
Getty ImagesCOOKE: I’m sure there are many straight men who were having bromances in their heads with him before they’d even invented bromances, and his hair is one of the things they could mimic. They couldn’t afford the Cavalli and the Gucci and the Dolce, but if you’ve got a good head of hair you could attempt to copy it.
BENNETT: You have to remember, we used to have an empire. We used to be able to win wars on our own without America’s help. After 2001 we had Golden Balls, and no one would be able to take him away.
February 2002In the lead-up to the 2002 World Cup, Beckham starts appearing in more ads for his endorsements. He also hires a new hairdresser, Leeds-based Adee Phelan, who is still struggling to establish himself.
ADEE PHELAN (Beckham’s former hairdresser): When I first met David and Victoria I was living in Leeds. I was earning £70 a week. I met Victoria’s best friend and makeup artist at a hairdressing event. She said she loved my pictures and that Dave was looking for a hairdresser. My first job was a massive campaign for Adidas and the World Cup (below). As a hairdresser you have to do something different or you won’t get rebooked, so I did the haircut where it was sort of shaved around the front with tramlines. He said, “I absolutely love it,” and then Victoria said, “I absolutely love it,” and they both said, “Get your diary out.”
From left: Phelan’s first time working with Beckham in a commercial for Adidas; Beckham launches the new line of Police sunglasses in another commercial from around the same time.
Getty ImagesMost PopularPORTER: Those years when it was mullets and tramlines were an interesting time in the young British male’s psyche. It was as if he was encouraging others to try new stuff. I remember talking to brands at the time and they would say he had such a big impact on what men felt they were allowed to do. He gave them permission because he enjoyed it. I think that is then his biggest effect. Especially on British style.
WATT: If you’re out in clubs in London and moving in high-end fashion circles, those looks aren’t new. What’s memorable is he’s bringing something in from the vanguard and bringing it into the mainstream.
May 2002As the country continues to hold its breath for news of Beckham’s broken foot, he appears on the cover of a special World Cup issue of British GQ. In an unprecedented move, British GQ runs two cover images, both of which feature Beckham shirtless and with a short, spiked faux-hawk by Phelan that is pushed up in the middle with a dyed-blond streak down the center.
“My business went up 3,000 percent. I started charging £300 a haircut and you could not get a haircut in my salon for six months.” —Beckham’s former hairdresser on how his career took off after he worked with Beckham
PHELAN: I’d love to be able to take all the credit, but it was actually David and Victoria who came up with the color concept. They are the ones who said, Why don’t we do some color down the middle? Then, as soon as the shoot finished, I had to take it out because they wanted to keep it exclusive for GQ. Literally two or three days after that shoot came out, I was walking down the street and that little bit of blond was everywhere. [David] had previously had the really aggressive Taxi Driver Mohawk, but that never really took off because it wasn’t mainstream. The one I did wasn’t too aggressive, and so everyone—men, women, and children—were having some variation of that haircut. Even [bankers] in the city were having it.
A spread from Beckham's story in British GQ, June 2002.
Up until that point I wasn’t allowed to say I did David’s hair, and I was always very private. When that magazine came out, my name was obviously over the credits, and overnight my business went up 3,000 percent. I started charging £300 a haircut and you could not get a haircut in my salon for six months.
Most PopularCOOKE: Everyone loved it at the time, but it’s not something I would have done. My work is a little softer than that. [Adee] just struck at the right time. It was huge.
June 2002
His foot healed, Beckham flies to Japan for the World Cup and scores the only goal in England’s 1–0 win against Argentina. Although they are no longer working together, Beckham sports the same dyed faux-hawk (left) Phelan helped create for the cover of British GQ.
COOKE: Unfortunately [Phelan] was a bit of a liability, so he didn’t stick around for very long. I think he told the press he was going to Japan to do David’s hair, which obviously was never going to happen. They never really liked anyone talking about who did what; they were quite closed book.
PHELAN: A lot of people don’t know this—David and Victoria actually colored it [themselves] before he flew out to Japan. I actually think he did it better, because he didn’t put it all the way to the root. He just put on the tips. I was meant to fly out [with them to do his hair] on a particular day, but then all the media was saying he was focusing more on his hair than his football. I got the call that, no, it’s not going to happen. So I didn’t fly out, but I was going to.
October 2002
Beckham is photographed walking through the streets of Manchester in a zigzag headband, or Alice band (right). The Sun reports that people “openly giggled as he walked past.”
COOKE: I used to wear an Alice band, so that’s where that came from. I had this rickety Alice band that came everywhere with me; it was disgusting. I know when he was playing he had an elastic one he used to tuck his fringe under. I think half of it was practicality, half of it was trying to push a bit of a look.
May 2003As rumors circulate about his future at Manchester United, Beckham is seen at the Cannes Film Festival wearing cornrows. Later that week he flies to South Africa with the England team and is photographed meeting Nelson Mandela. When asked by reporters to comment on Beckham’s hair, the former president says, “I am too old to express an opinion.”
Beckham would later say the cornrows were “maybe a bad decision.”
Getty ImagesMost PopularCOOKE: The cornrows were nothing to do with me, thank the Lord. I think Elton John’s hairdresser did it for him. That’s when he’s obviously got a bit of length, and he was playing around with it and trying different things. When your hair has got to that stage you can move it around, tie it back. He was just being experimental.
BENNETT: That was the only haircut that failed. Look at the photos.
July 2003
David and Victoria Beckham are photographed in New York, May 2003.
Getty ImagesReal Madrid’s deal to buy Beckham for €35 million from Manchester United goes through, and he is paraded for the first time in front of the Spanish press with a new topknot—his fifth hairstyle in just over eighteen months.
WATT: It was a very eventful period in his life. When we started the book in late 2002, we imagined the end would be him signing a contract that would tie him down [at Manchester United] for the end of his career. By the time we finished we were talking about him signing the contract that would take him to Real Madrid.
COOKE: I was back and forward to Madrid a lot. Probably monthly. It was around the time he started growing it long. He’d had the Mohawk and the faux-hawk, and once you’ve been that short, there is nowhere you can go unless you start growing it. He was probably just ready to move on and take it to the next level. Also, a lot of people had copied the faux-hawk, and he was probably just ready to move away from the fact that a lot of people were doing it as well.
April 2004
David Beckham’s former personal assistant Rebecca Loos claims that she and Beckham had an affair while she was working for him in Madrid. Amid a media firestorm, and shortly after Loos gives a high-profile TV interview that is watched by millions, Beckham shows up to an event at London’s Royal Albert Hall with a shaved head (left), leading the press to suggest it was due to stress.
Most PopularCARY COOPER (then psychology professor at Lancaster University, speaking in 2004 to Deutsche Presse-Agentur): I think he’s saying, ‘I want a clean break from what’s just happened.’ Whether the claims are true or not true—and we still do not know—he has had a stressful and unpleasant time. I think it’s totally unconscious, but he’s saying, ‘I’m fed up, I need a change, I’m going to do it in my hairstyle.’ ”
July 2005
Beckham sports a mullet while helping London secure its bid to host the 2012 Olympics (above).
March 2007
With his contract at Real Madrid having come to an end, and having been sidelined by new England manager Steve McLaren, Beckham announces he will be joining Major League Soccer club the Los Angeles Galaxy in July on a five-year contract. But before he goes, he receives an award honoring his outstanding achievement in British sport at the 2007 Sports Industry Awards in London. He uses the opportunity to debut a new brushed-forward hairstyle (right). The cut, which The Express reports cost £1,000, lasts precisely one hour. At some point after the ceremony Beckham spikes it up and is seen later giving interviews with a more familiar faux-hawk. “Changing my hair is just something that I do,” he jokes with reporters.
May 2007Ahead of their move to Los Angeles, David and Victoria Beckham both sport bright-blond peroxide hairdos. Two weeks after Beckham’s Real Madrid teammates are reportedly seen teasing him about his new hair during training, he is seen with a shaved head...again.
From left: David and Victoria sport matching blond hair at David’s 32nd birthday party; David is seen with a shaved head a few weeks later.
FilmMagicMarch 2011Nine months before his contract is due to expire at the L.A. Galaxy, David Beckham appears on the cover of influential menswear journal Fantastic Man with a side parting styled by hairdresser Alain Pichon. It will be his go-to haircut for the foreseeable future and the longest he has kept one haircut since the beginning of his career.
David Beckham with his mother, Sandra, at Wimbledon, June 2015.
Karwai Tang / Getty ImagesPORTER (then deputy editor, Fantastic Man): It does change, but the changes are subtler now. Sometimes it’s shorter on the sides, sometimes it’s quiff-ier. So many men have it. You can joke about the rest, but they’re experimentations. This is the one that has had the most serious impact on the way that men have their hair. [It’s] what it means to be him post-football: Now he’s in control of what he does. He’s not in conflict with any manager, or any team, and he hadn’t got to prove himself. He’s done that. It’s a much steadier narrative, and I think the haircut suits that.
Most PopularCOOKE: As most sensible men reach a certain age and realize what suits them, they kind of need to start sticking to that. I’d like to say he’s had his experimental time, and now he’s going with more of a classic look that can continue to grow with him as he matures. David has probably reached that stage now where that’s his haircut for life.
WATT: You look at a lot of young English players, and they all have David’s hair now. And, to be fair, it’s not just footballers. It’s sort of a kind of vaguely hipsterish, boy-next-door look. It’s quite old-fashioned.
David Beckham in L.A., June 2013.
Photo: Getty ImagesBENNETT: If you break down the haircuts and the conveyor belt of makeovers he went through, you can only marvel retrospectively at the notes he and his stylists hit. There is a taste of punk, a taste of World War II British infantryman, a note of ’60s English footballing superstar. All these great moments of English culture woven, tweaked, remodernized. It’s an incredibly complex pastiche of the high notes of English cultural history—all remade into haircuts. It speaks to the rebirth of English self-confidence in music, culture, and style that he kind of became a poster boy for. He was one of the major forces that drew the English male away from what you would laughingly call “sports casual,” and to embrace with what I guess is now modern male style.
One of the things I loved about David Beckham was the day he retired, maybe during his final press conference, he said he wants to be remembered as a hard-working footballer. It’s like me saying I want to be remembered as a supermodel. You can will something to happen, but it is utterly not what he will be remembered for.
We reached out, but both David Beckham and David Beckham’s hair politely declined to be interviewed for this story.
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