RED CARPET REVIVAL: The Side Part's Triumphant Return

The history of glamour, told in three partings. Some things don't go out of style. They just wait.

In every great Oscar look, the most powerful accessory isn't sewn into the gown. It's styled at the roots. Hair frames the face, sets the mood, and extends the designer's story in ways no jeweler can.

We have known this since the beginning.

The early Academy Awards understood it instinctively. Bias cut gowns demanded something architectural up top, and Hollywood delivered. Blunt bobs, deep side parts, pin curl waves that caught the klieg lights and held them. The hair wasn't an afterthought. It was the punctuation.

Then came Bardot. Then the beehive. Then the precise pixies of the 1960s that telegraphed more rebellion per inch than any hemline could manage. Red carpet hair was doing real work in those decades, saying things about women that the gowns alone couldn't say.

Long, side swept, and completely unbothered. Old Hollywood knew something the center part forgot.

The Middle Part Takes Over

By the 1990s the language shifted toward polish. Glossy blowouts. Chignons engineered to survive four hours of after parties and still look intentional at midnight. The 2000s brought loose beachy waves that were anything but beachy. As hairstylist Guido Palau once observed, when it's done right you notice the woman before the hairstyle. But you remember the hair forever.

Then came the center part. Somewhere in the early 2010s symmetry became the dominant aesthetic. Flat ironed, precise, deeply committed to looking like you hadn't tried. By 2020 the center part was shorthand for a certain kind of cool. The side part became a generational marker. Something your mother did.

Guess Who's Back

The 2026 Oscars settled that argument quietly and decisively.

Deep side parts swept across the red carpet. Bobs, lobs, mermaid lengths, all parted to one side with a confidence that felt less like trend and more like correction. InStyle noted the notable absence of center parts among top billed nominees and presenters and called it a millennial side part revival with a straight face and meant every word.

Celebrity hairstylist Mara Roszak said what everyone was thinking. The side part is the quickest way to build instant drama into a look without adding a single extra accessory.

She is right. And that is the thing about hair on a red carpet. The diamonds are borrowed. The gown goes back Monday morning. But a great side part swept just so, catching the light at exactly the right angle as someone turns to wave at a camera they pretended not to see coming?

That belongs to the woman wearing it. Every time.