Salad praise: how ice hockey’s ‘lettuce’ hair is winning over Hollywood

Hair cut ideas are typically drummed up in the salon, but recently a more unconventional source of inspiration has appeared: the vegetable aisle.“Lettuce hair” is trending. A gentler take on a traditional mullet, the new salad style consists of more subtle differences in the length between the back, sides and top of the hair. Lettuce hair features a loose and often wavy top, softly tapered sides and a feathery tail that skims the back of the neck, resembling leafy greens.For the Wuthering Heights press tour, Jacob Elordi toned down his on-screen regency cut, tapering the sides but keeping the windswept top and tail, bringing to mind a head of romaine lettuce. The wavy locks of Heated Rivalry’s Connor Storrie could be mistaken for a curled endive, while the figure skater Ilia Malinin’s butter-lettuce locks add extra drama to the Quad God’s dizzying axels.Sportspeople such as the US skater Ilia Malinin have leaned hard into the lettuce. Photograph: Andy Cheung/Getty ImagesThe salad style stems from the world of ice hockey, where players widely embraced the mullet during the 70s and 80s. Despite the mullet’s demise in the 90s, hockey players were slow to ditch “the party at the back” and instead toned it down, resulting in more modern lettuce locks.“The classic sign of proper hockey hair is that you can clearly see it flowing out at the back while wearing a helmet,” says Markus Ekroth, who is a right-winger for Sweden’s Nackarockers. The team have amassed hundreds of thousands of views of their TikTok videos that showcase the team’s best lettuce hair.“I have naturally wavy hair, so I usually ask my hairdresser to keep some length at the back, especially around the neck, and enough length on top so I can tuck it behind my ears,” Ekroth says. “If you have good lettuce, people will definitely notice. It’s seen as a bonus and part of the hockey identity.”The Heated Rivalry star Connor Storrie’s wavy locks. Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty ImagesHockey players refer to the longer tufts of hair fluttering out from under their helmets as they skate as “flow” or “flow state”.During the men’s gold-medal ice hockey game at the Winter Olympics on Sunday, some of the finest examples of flow will be on display. Ekroth describes the US player William Nylander, Sweden’s Mika Zibanejad and Germany’s Moritz Seider as having “great lettuce” and representing “the classic modern hockey look”.However, the look is not limited to hockey. John King, the editor-in-chief of Pulltab Sports, compares Malinin’s pirouetting mane to the US ice hockey star Jake Guentzel’s whirling hair, and points to the US freestyle skier Mac Forehand’s “awesome hair” as a strong example of the style. “A mullet is hockey hair, but not all hockey hair is a mullet,” King says.Since 2011, King has been compiling an annual “All Hockey Hair Team” YouTube video where he ranks the lettuce of the Minnesota high school hockey team in his home town. It has subscribers from all over the world, many of whom have never watched a hockey game.The Swedish ice hockey player Mika Zibanejad represents ‘the classic modern hockey look’. Photograph: Amber Searls/Imagn Images/ReutersNow the trend is whizzing its way from the rink to the red carpet. Barry Keoghan’s new hair, as he prepares to play Ringo Starr, is heavily lettuce coded. As are Harry Styles’s tufty tresses in promotional photos for his new album, Aperture. Glen Powell, Brad Pitt, Paul Mescal and Austin Butler have also recently succumbed to the salad.Ekroth says part of the appeal is that the style can boost confidence. “It doesn’t physically add anything to your performance, but the saying ‘look good, play good’ definitely applies.”King says some players have recently begun to get perms to ensure a consistent curly lettuce look, while others bleach it for extra impact. Only time will tell if Hollywood will follow suit and go with the flow.