Justin Bieber, king of shorts, has a 2018 style that cannot be described in terms of fashion or grooming. It's not grunge when his hair looks greasy, nor is it athleisure when he's wearing board shorts and disposable hotel slides, because all of these terms connote some kind of sartorial agency. What Bieber is doing is not anti-choice, anti-trend, anti-style. It's a complete absence of all of these things. It does not reject conventional grooming and fashion, but instead marches on blithely unaware of it. I am currently workshopping names for it. Trailercore seems offensive to those who live in mobile home communities, but you get the gist of what I'm saying. Dirtcore? I am just drafting.
I don't even want to talk about the slides, which are funny, or the Supreme armband, which I hate. I only want to talk about the hair. I want to talk about Justin Bieber's incredible dirtbag hair forever, or at least until the Sun turns our soil to magma, swallowing me whole.
Did Bieber ever intend for it to actually look good? Maybe he is aware of it in a general sense, but I am not so sure. Is it bad service journalism to write about one man's accidental haircut simply because the man is famous? Please stop asking questions. Justin Bieber's dirtcore haircut is perfect. It is peak effortlessness—not only because it lacks effort, but because it also lacks upkeep. It is a commitment to non-grooming: slightly overgrown, brassy, matted with grease. Bieber's hair shows us that effortlessness is not a look, but a lifestyle.
Behold the magic of dirtcore hair.
Gotham
See how the sun flashes off those thick, magnificently uncared for locks?
Josiah KamauBut since we civilians lack Bieber’s casual quasi-Christian laissez-faire attitude, it will have to be achieved with maintenance. At least according to Joseph Maine, a hairstylist in residence at Manhattan's very tony Serge Normant salon. All you need is a little bit of cash and the bare minimum of discipline.
First: Go to a salonNot to a barbershop. This kind of mid-length, grown-out cut requires a technical precision you might not find wherever you normally go. “Giving somebody a shag or taking weight out of hair, i recommend going to a salon,” says Maine, “where I would take a lot of weight out of the ends and give it that grown hair cut look. I feel like Bieber hasn’t gotten his cut in a long time, so you really just want to shred the ends.”
Then: Consider colorRemember when Bieber committed to being a blonde boy? Now his hair has lapsed into a dishwater mixture of flaxen brown, the de facto hair color of a between-projects pop star. This is peak no-color hair color, and if you want something similar, Maine recommends balayage, a highlighting treatment that results in a natural gradation. This tends to be outrageously expensive, but there is a hack: Ask your hairstylist post-haircut to run some bleach into your hair, let it sit for five minutes (instead of the usual hour-plus to go full blond) and rinse.
Next: Use product for a product-less lookBecause salt sprays and pomades would look far too fussy, but you still need something to give your hair texture: Maine recommends a dollop of Jergen’s sunblock or whatever else is on hand. “Because his ends look unwashed, a little chunkier, something like sunblock dirties up the hair but dries somewhat matte," ” Maine says. "You just apply a little out of the shower while your hair’s still wet.”
Definitely Don’t: Grow a tiny moustache...unless you’re fully committing to the holistic dirtcore lifestyle, which you aren’t, because you’re reading GQ. May God and Bieber bless your path.
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