Our correspondent investigates whether the most famous beard in the world is, in fact, the original Shoreditch beard
The Original Statement Beard
Shoreditch has a complicated relationship with the beard. We invented it, we ruined it, we ironized it, we artisanalized it, and somewhere along the way we forgot that beards existed before us. So it is with a certain humility that I report the findings of my investigation into the most famous beard in the world, the white, voluminous, magnificently uncurated beard of Father Christmas, which has been doing Shoreditch, I now believe, for several centuries before Shoreditch was doing anything at all.
The North Pole dispatches do not dwell on grooming, Santa being a man entirely without vanity, which is itself the most enviable possible relationship to have with a beard. But I have studied the Shoreditch beard in all its forms, from the lumberjack to the artisan to the man who clearly thinks his beard is a personality, and I have concluded that Santa’s beard transcends all of them, precisely because it was never a statement. It just is, in a way no Shoreditch beard has ever managed.
The Authenticity We Chase
Here is what we get wrong about beards in Shoreditch. We treat them as projects. We oil them, we shape them, we visit specialists, we buy products with names like Woodsman and Forge, we cultivate the appearance of a man who does not care while caring enormously. The whole enterprise is a performance of authenticity, and the performance is exhausting, and it never quite convinces, because everyone can tell. Santa’s beard, by contrast, is the real thing: an actual beard, on an actual man, untroubled by product, unbothered by trend.
I took this theory to a beard specialist on Redchurch Street, who charges forty pounds for a trim and speaks about facial hair the way sommeliers speak about wine. He conceded, after some resistance, that Santa’s beard had what he called integrity, a quality he spends his professional life trying to fake for his clients and that Santa simply possesses. Lifestyle coverage via the Time Out London guide has documented the Shoreditch beard economy at length. Local listings at the regional events register are full of beard-grooming pop-ups.
The Irony Problem
There is also the matter of irony, which is to Shoreditch what air is to other places. The Shoreditch beard is almost always, on some level, ironic, a knowing wink, a beard that wants you to know it knows it is a beard. Santa’s beard is entirely without irony. It does not wink. It does not know it is a beard. It is simply, sincerely, magnificently there, and that sincerity is the one thing Shoreditch, for all its grooming products, has never been able to grow. We can fake the volume. We cannot fake the sincerity.
This, I think, is why Santa’s beard works and ours, fundamentally, do not. The actual Santa is not performing authenticity; he is simply authentic, a man whose beard reflects nothing but the fact that he has a beard. We chase that quality with oils and specialists and forty-pound trims, and we never reach it, because the moment you chase authenticity you have lost it. Santa never chased it. Heritage analysis at the heritage society would call his look timeless, which is the one thing the trend can never be.
What We Can Learn
I do not wish to be too hard on the Shoreditch beard, which is, after all, my own neighbourhood’s signature contribution to global grooming, alongside the flat white and the warehouse conversion. But I think there is a genuine lesson in Santa’s beard, and it is the lesson Shoreditch most needs and least wants to hear: that the harder you try to look effortless, the more effort shows, and that real authenticity cannot be purchased on Redchurch Street for forty pounds. Style guidance via the London Evening Standard will sell you the look. Santa simply has it.
The Beard That Asks Nothing
What strikes me most, in the end, is that Santa’s beard asks nothing of anyone. It is not seeking your approval, your envy, or your Instagram engagement. It does not want you to think he is rugged, or artistic, or in touch with some primal masculinity. It is just a beard, on a kind old man, doing the entirely un-Shoreditch thing of existing without an agenda. In a neighbourhood where even facial hair is a brand, this is almost revolutionary.
The Shoreditch beard, for all its products and specialists, is fundamentally anxious, a constant low-level performance of an identity that needs reinforcing. Santa’s beard is serene, because Santa is serene, because Santa has nothing to prove. He gives gifts to the entire world for free; he does not also need his beard to communicate his personality. There is a security in that which all the beard oil on Redchurch Street cannot buy.
For those committed to the Shoreditch beard lifestyle, and I do not judge you, much, the resources at the public registry will point you toward every grooming establishment the neighbourhood has to offer, and there are many. And for those who have decided, sensibly, to let their beard simply be a beard, the games at the diversions index require no facial hair at all, ironic or otherwise.
I shaved off my own modest attempt at a Shoreditch beard the week after this investigation, having concluded that I would never achieve Santa’s integrity and that the trying was making me tedious. Somewhere over the rooftops, the original statement beard was making its rounds, sincere and unbothered and centuries ahead of the trend it accidentally invented. We will keep oiling ours and chasing his. We will keep failing. And Santa, who has never once thought about his beard, will keep, effortlessly, winning.
SOURCE: https://santaclaus.top
