Hair, Time, and Why 2026 Feels Like the Clock Is Turning Back
Before football, before writing, before any of the things people associate with me now, I spent nearly fifteen years cutting hair.
That surprises people when they hear it. But it’s true. I started young, ran my own place as a teenager, built it up the hard way, one client at a time. Long days, Saturdays that never ended, learning very quickly that cutting hair wasn’t really about hair. It was about people. Confidence. Identity. Listening more than talking.
I trained my brother there as well. He still runs the shop in Lancaster today. That part matters to me more than people probably realise. When something carries on without you, it usually means it was built properly.
I stepped away when I built Hairbond. That was my exit from behind the chair. Hairbond didn’t come from a branding plan. It came from frustration. I couldn’t find products that worked the way real hair actually behaved. Everything was too stiff, too greasy, or designed to look good in advertising instead of working in real life.
That whole period feels like a past life now.
I’m 44 next month. You feel that, for better and for worse. You start noticing cycles. Things repeat. Trends come back dressed as something new. You stop chasing what’s fashionable and start paying attention to what actually lasts.
And looking at men’s hair in 2026, something familiar is happening again.
What Paris Fashion Week 2026 Is Really Showing
If you strip away the fashion language, the message is simple.
Hair is relaxing again.
The men’s looks coming out of Paris this year aren’t built around sharpness or perfection. They’re softer. Less forced. Hair moves again. Texture is visible. Even the cleaner styles avoid the aggressive, over-barbered finish that dominated the last decade.
You’re seeing soft crops instead of skin fades.
Mid-length texture instead of sculpted volume.
Controlled shine instead of heavy product.
Hair that grows out naturally instead of needing constant correction.
Technically, none of this is revolutionary.
Culturally, it is.
Because for years men’s hair became standardised. Social media rewarded perfection. The same fade everywhere. The same shape. The same finish designed for photos rather than real life.
Clean, but identical.
What Paris is showing now is individuality quietly returning.
Twenty Years Ago, This Was Normal
When I was cutting every day, hair came from culture.
Music. Football. Films. The way someone lived. You didn’t copy a picture exactly. You interpreted it. Adjusted it for the head shape, the personality, the confidence of the person sitting in front of you.
A good haircut didn’t look like effort. It looked natural.
Somewhere along the way, the industry chased perfection and forgot that part.
Now the pendulum is swinging back.
Younger guys especially don’t want to look styled anymore. They want to look right. Like themselves on a good day.
That’s harder to achieve than a perfect fade.
The Part I Still Miss
There are parts of it I still miss.
The barbershop wasn’t just work. It was people. Constant interaction. A flow of different personalities through the door every day. Football arguments, music on, someone always early, someone always late. It felt less like a workplace and more like running a club.
Saturday mornings had their own sound. Clippers buzzing. Football on the radio. The smell of product and coffee in the air. Lads arguing about last night’s result while waiting their turn. Someone always saying they only wanted “a little off” and meaning something completely different.
People didn’t just come in for a haircut. They came to talk. To switch off. To be around other people for a while. Saturdays had a rhythm to them. The shop would fill up, everyone catching up on the week, and more often than not we’d close up and end up out in town together afterwards.
I didn’t realise at the time how much that mattered.
It was during COVID that the penny really dropped for me, like it did for millions of others. When everything stopped and people disappeared overnight, you realised how much of life is just human interaction. Conversation. Energy. Being around other people.
I missed people.
I care about people. Always have. And that realisation is a big part of why I started Football Is For The Fans and the other social projects I’ve worked on since. At the core of it, they’re not really about football or business. They’re about bringing people together again. Creating environments where people feel connected instead of isolated.
And the truth is, if those things never happen the way I hope they will, I’d happily step back into running a shop again one day. People laugh when I say that, but I genuinely loved working in a salon. There’s something honest about it. You do a good job, you talk to people, and you make someone feel better when they walk out than when they walked in.
I can actually see myself going back to that in the future.
That never really stops being meaningful.
Why This Shift Is Happening
When everything becomes too polished, culture pushes back.
You see it in fashion. In music. In football. People eventually get tired of performing. They want authenticity again, even if they don’t call it that.
Hair is just reflecting the same change.
The best cuts now don’t scream for attention. They sit naturally. They move. They age well. They belong to the person wearing them.
That’s why the next trend isn’t a haircut.
It’s individuality.
Where Hairbond Fits Into This
Hairbond was designed around this idea before it became fashionable again.
The philosophy was simple. Product should support the haircut, not dominate it.
Hairbond Shaper gives structure but keeps movement, which works perfectly with the softer crops you’re seeing now.
Hairbond Distorter enhances texture and separation, especially in mid-length styles where the goal is life rather than control.
Hairbond Super gives hold and volume when you want direction without that heavy, dated finish.
All of it came from standing behind a chair every day and knowing that hair has to work at 8am, in the wind, after a long day, not just under studio lighting.
Rolling the Clock Back — Without Living in the Past
This isn’t nostalgia. Nobody wants to go backwards.
But sometimes you have to roll the clock back slightly to remember why things worked before everything became over-optimised.
The best era of men’s hair wasn’t defined by one trend. It was defined by freedom. People chose styles that suited them instead of chasing whatever was current that month.
Most of my writing recently has been serious. Heavy topics. Bigger systems. This felt like something lighter to talk about.
Because culture doesn’t only live in big ideas or battles.
Sometimes it lives in smaller things.
A busy Saturday in a shop. Football on in the background. People talking nonsense while waiting their turn. Someone walking out with a bit more confidence than when they walked in.
At 44, you realise that feeling never really goes out of fashion.
And maybe that’s why hair feels interesting again.