The mullet's star has been rising for the last year, but as of April the ultimate white trash haircut officially went fashion supernova: Vogue declared it the hairstyle of the moment and began offering its deluded readers mullet-primping tip. ("The only way to wear the mullet is with plenty of attitude. And don't blow-dry it back!") Models at Givenchy and Ungaro have been sent down the runways with mulletesque hairstyles, choppy and short in front, long and full down the back of the neck. And the mullet is all over the movies, from Hilary Swank's trailer trash do in "The Gift" to David Spade's bona fide rocker mullet in "Joe Dirt" (opening this week at the multiplex next door to your local 7-Eleven).

And then there's my East Village fashionista friend, Eugene, who recently visited from New York sporting a genuine mullet, thick with hair spray and sticky product. He wore it with a Rolling Stones sweat shirt (featuring those snarling red Jagger lips) and a pair of skintight, acid-washed Vivienne Westwood jeans, looking, no joke, like an outtake from the "Joe Dirt" movie poster. Very trashy, very '80s, very now and very, very hideous.

The cardinal rule of the do is that the more fashionable you are, the more unfashionable your hair must be. How else to explain the sudden revival of mullets and Afros and feathered hair, some of the most unflattering hairstyles of the past few decades? When your hairdresser suddenly starts sporting a ducktail, when the trendy new club is packed wall to wall with what would appear to be hair "don'ts," when John Galliano is sending the trailer trash look down Dior runways, it's time to reassess your safe locks. Much as avant-garde fashion is often the ugliest, most unflattering and therefore most stylish clothing you could wear, intentionally bad hair makes a statement: I'm so cool, I'm uncool.

For example: The last place you might expect to see a mullet hairstyle is at a swanky San Francisco club on a Sunday night, but there it is, lounging right near the bar. Granted, it's not a hideous mullet -- as far as mullets go, it's rather innocuous and somewhat chic -- but it's at least a close cousin to a mullet. The hair at the back is long, kind of flippy at the ends, brushing the guy's collar; and the sides and top are shorter and fall forward into his face. In the world of STLB (short top, long back) haircuts, this one qualifies.

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