Growing a Moustache: Choosing the Shape and Keeping It Neat

From chevron to Cossack: matching the shape to your face

A moustache sits in the middle of your face, under the nose, so it changes your proportions more than any beard does. The classic chevron is thick, covers the upper lip and stops at the corners of the mouth. It suits a wide face and a strong nose, because it gives the lower half of the face enough weight to hold its own. The pencil moustache is a thin line above the lip that needs the trimmer every two days, and it works on narrow faces with fine features. The horseshoe runs from the corners of the mouth down to the jaw and needs a square chin plus dense growth at the corners, which many men lack. The handlebar and the English moustache grow long at the sides, and you train the ends with wax. Ukraine has one more shape with a long history: the Cossack moustache, long and drooping past the corners of the mouth, the one Ukrainians know from the late portraits of Taras Shevchenko, the national poet. Two measurements matter more than fashion. The first is the height of your upper lip: a tall gap between nose and lip carries a heavy chevron, and a short one looks crowded under it. The second is width. On a narrow face keep the moustache inside the corners of the mouth; on a wide face let it reach a little beyond them. A moustache on a clean-shaven face makes a bold statement, so for a first try keep a few days of stubble on the cheeks to soften it.

The first six weeks: the itch and the urge to shave it off

Facial hair grows about a centimetre a month, and that sets the calendar. After two weeks you have a visible line, after four to six weeks a chevron reaches the lip, and a handlebar needs three months or more before the ends are long enough to twist. The hardest stretch falls between the second and the fourth week. The hairs reach the lip, tickle every time you speak and end up in your mouth when you eat, and the fresh cut ends make the skin itch. Many men give up here: they take the scissors, trim the line over the lip and lose a month. Comb the hairs to the sides instead and fix them with a tiny amount of wax, and for the itch wash the area with a gentle cleanser and rub in a drop of beard oil. For a first moustache, the best tactic we know is to grow everything, cheeks and chin included, for three or four weeks and then come to the barber. By then the barber sees where your growth is dense and where it is patchy, and shapes the moustache your face can support. Many men have a gap in the centre under the nose. It usually closes at four to five weeks, once the hairs from both sides grow long enough to cover it. Patchy corners are a harder case: they rule out the horseshoe, and the honest choice there is a chevron.

Trimming at home and living with a moustache every day

Trim your moustache dry. Wet hair stretches and looks longer, then springs back as it dries, so a cut that looked careful in the bathroom ends up a few millimetres too short. You need a fine comb, small straight scissors and a trimmer with a narrow head. For a chevron, comb the hairs straight down and cut along the edge of the upper lip, from the centre to one corner and then to the other, a millimetre at a time. For a handlebar or an English moustache, leave the centre alone: part the hair in the middle, comb it to the sides and trim only the stray hairs that fall onto the lip. Wax holds the shape. Take a piece the size of a match head, warm it between your fingers, work it in from the centre outwards and twist the ends. When you shave your cheeks, stop the razor a few millimetres short of the moustache and finish the edge with the trimmer. One slip of the razor there leaves a gap that takes weeks to fill in. The moustache sits under your nose and holds on to every smell, so rinse it every day and wash it with a mild shampoo two or three times a week, then press it dry with a towel. Beer foam and cappuccino come with the territory, and a napkin pressed from top to bottom deals with them in a second. In a Kyiv winter your breath freezes on the hairs at minus ten, and a drop of oil in the morning keeps them soft. Visit the barber every three to four weeks: with a sharp outline and clean cheeks, the moustache reads as a deliberate choice.