'70s Heartthrobs Loved The Feathered Haircut—and It's Time For A Comeback

Before there was a "Rachel," and before the advent of the man-bun, or the curtain cut, or whatever was trendy last month on TikTok, there was the one hairdo to rule them all — the feather cut. It made you look like you were about to star in something. It was devastating and cool at the same time. And the men of the 1970s, oh, they wore it like a crown.

The technique was also simple to apply. You take hair that is straight or wavy, you put a hairdryer to it on max settings, and lift the strands away from your face until gravity loses the battle and you begin to look like you're standing in a permanent breeze, or until your hair looks like the wings of something magnificent, hence the name "feather cut."

The '70s produced a concentration of feathered-hair heartthrobs. Whether it's Mark Hamill's boyish wings during the "Star Wars" years or John Travolta's swooping locks at premieres, what made the cut so iconic was that it looked simultaneously deliberate yet effortless. And now, because fashion has no memory, no shame, and certainly no interest whatsoever in leaving anything dead, the style is making a comeback. The feather cut isturning up on red carpets and blazing through the zeitgeist like it never left. To give you an idea of how people used to do it, here's a list of men who made a generation weak in the knees by being carelessly gorgeous, or gorgeously careless, whichever read you prefer.

There's a scene in "Saturday Night Fever" where Tony Manero (played by John Travolta) turns to his father — after he repeatedly hits him — and says with a straight face: "Would ya just watch the hair? Ya know, I work on my hair a long time and you hit it. He hits my hair." Knowing about the kind of hairstyle he rocked back then, the monologue is actually very self-aware in hindsight. In this image of his feathered locks, taken in 1980, you can probably spot how much it contributed to his overall status as one of the decade's most handsome men. Not that Travolta isn't good looking, but the hair was doing a lot of work here.

"Star Wars" may have turned Mark Hamill into one of the most recognizable faces in cinema history, but before and after his debut as Luke Skywalker, the man was doing the rounds in teen magazines, appearing on the cover of Tiger Beat alongside the David Cassidys of the world. That should tell you everything you need to know about where the feathered hair placed him on the heartthrob spectrum. Even his character, Luke Skywalker, often sported that hairstyle, helping turn Hamill into the object of affection for an entire generation. This photo, taken circa 1978 at the peak of his Star Wars fame, reveals why the feather cut is among the most attractive hairstyles for men.

Whether you could put Mick Jagger in the heartthrob category is a whole discourse on its own, but the Rolling Stones vocalist was definitely one of the most charming and enigmatic men of his era. Hi influence included everything from fashion to sexuality to what it meant to be a rock star. And whenever he stepped into a room, his iconic tangle of hair preceded him. It was always tousled. It was dark and feathered with the enchanting quality of being neither fully tamed nor fully wild. The cut was much like the man himself. Jagger was once described by English musicologist Sheila Whiteley (per American Songwriter) as someone who "opened up definitions of gendered masculinity." In that ambitious definition, the hair was always the most visible element and did most of the work.

David Cassidy was so famous and so beloved that when he had his gallbladder removed in 1971 at the age of 21, his fans asked for his internal organs to be preserved as memorabilia, and his hair clippings sold in plastic bags. Sure, his character on "The Partridge Family" and his singing career overseas helped cement that popularity, but he owed a lot of that success to what the feathered hair was doing for him. In fact, when he passed away in 2017, several outlets cited his feathered hair as one of his most enduring legacies. This photo, taken outside Buckingham Palace in London in 1975, captures exactly why he would be the most looked-at person on any street he walked down.

By the time this photo was taken in 1979, Leif Garrett had already made it to the Billboard Hot 100 with his single "I Was Made for Dancing.'" According to his 2019 memoir "Idol Truth," the fascination with Garrett began way earlier, and for reasons that probably had nothing to do with his acting career — modest though it was — or his music. Teenage girls across the country had simply decided that face and that hair were worth pinning to a wall. Garrett's blond, feathered hair was iconic both on and off stage, and this photo, while depicting it a bit tousled due to being mid-performance, captures exactly why.

There's a version of the feathered cut out there that feels forced, put together with considerable effort and the sheer force of a powerful hairdryer and even product. Robert Redford's take was never like that, and his hair always appeared to have settled into place of its own accord. This photo, taken in 1975 on the streets of New York while he was filming "Three Days of the Condor" proves that quality. For a lot of other people, the feathered cut is supposed to come off as unplanned, but on Redford, every inch looked deliberate and just right for his face frame.

All Gibb brothers sported varying iterations of the feathered cut at some point in their careers, but Andy Gibb, of the Bee Gees, weaponized it most effectively. Gibb had the record for the first male singer whose first three singles hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and his handsome face, complete with that tousled hair, might have had something to do with him becoming a bona fide teen idol of that era. Just look at this photo from 1978 and try to argue otherwise. Andy Gibb was 30 years old when he tragically passed away in 1988 of myocarditis, but his hair remains timeless to this day, a testament to the power he once held over an entire generation — brief though it was.

Even when he was playing guitar in the British pop band The Herd at the age of 16, Peter Frampton was singled out as a potential handsome idol. In an attempt to be taken more seriously and move toward hard rock, he would found Humble Pie with Steve Marriott in 1969. Then "Frampton Comes Alive!" arrived in January 1976 and spent a whopping 10 weeks at number one on the Billboard 200. It became the best-selling album of that year — a phenomenon that presumably had at least as much to do with his good looks and magnificent hair as it did with the music.