Beard Liberation Front
press release 21st January
Contact Keith flett @keithbeard.bsky.social
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THE CUT THROAT RAZOR MEANT ROBBIE BURNS WAS AT CUTTING EDGE OF DESIGNER FACIAL HAIR
Burns cut throat razor
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that portraits of Robbie Burns as clean shaven represent an idealised perspective of what he was likely to have looked like on a day to day basis.
By the late eighteenth-century the cut-throat razor was widely available and hence regular shaving was a possibility. Indeed some of Burns shaving implements have survived.
In his job as an Exciseman and in order to secure patronage for his poetry Burns would almost certainly have had to appear as respectably clean shaven. However a lack of light and the complexity of using a cut throat razor to shave means that Burns probably did not do so on a particularly regular basis.
Rather the poet was much more likely to have worn stubble and from time to time a beard.
In this, although for strictly practical rather than reasons of fashion, Burns resembled nothing less than the facial hair trends of the designer beards of 2025
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said we think that Burns may well have facial hair from time to time but he did not feel able to come out as fully hirsute in late eighteenth century Scottish society. Nowadays his occasionally hirsute or semi-bearded appearance would be the height of male facial fashion.
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