Hairstyle
style of hair, usually on the human scalp
A hairstyle, hairdo, haircut, or coiffure refers to the styling of hair, usually on the human head but sometimes on the face or body. The fashioning of hair can be considered an aspect of personal grooming, fashion, and cosmetics, although practical, cultural, and popular considerations also influence some hairstyles. Hairstyles may involve altering the length, texture, shape, or arrangement of hair through various styling methods.
The oldest known depiction of hair styling is hair braiding, which dates back about 30,000 years. Women's hair was often elaborately and carefully dressed in special ways, though it was also frequently kept covered outside the home, especially for married women.
Prehistory and history
People's hairstyles are largely determined by the fashions of the culture they live in. Hairstyles have played an important role in human culture for centuries, serving not only as a form of personal appearance but also as a way to represent cultural traditions, social roles, identity, and changing fashion trends. Hairstyles are markers and signifiers of social class, age, marital status, racial identification, political beliefs, and attitudes about gender.
Some people may cover their hair totally or partially for cultural or religious reasons. Notable examples of head covering include women in Islam who wear the hijab, married women in Haredi Judaism who wear the sheitel or tichel, married Himba men who cover their hair except when in mourning, Tuareg men who wear a veil, and men and women in Sikhism who wear the dastar, whether baptized or not, as a symbol of their faith and cultural identity.
The public source identifies “Hairstyle” as style of hair, usually on the human scalp. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hairstyle, style and hair.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Hairstyle”, the useful work is to connect “style of hair, usually on the human scalp” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q327496. The Library of Congress control number is sh86006365. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hairstyle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.