Category: Featured

THE MOST FAMOUS, the most distinctive mustaches of the twentieth century, I suggest, belong to Adolf Hitler, Salvador Dali, Joseph Stalin and Groucho Marx. So distinctive are they that, like the Cheshire Cat’s grin, these mustaches remain hovering in the mind’s eye long after the faces to which they are attached have disappeared. A scrubbing-brush, wacky waxed spikes, two conjoined dead rodents and a paint job. You could add any one of them to a portrait of the Mona Lisa and everyone would immediately know whose mustache she had on—though in Groucho’s case you would give her his round glasses too for absolute certainty. It is interesting to note that these mustaches divide neatly into two distinct camps: monster-tyrants on the one hand and creativesubversives on the other.