It Looks Like Jennifer Aniston Is Bringing Back the Rachel Haircut

The hairstyle that took over the 90s is back.

Jennifer Aniston
(Image credit: Getty Images)

At tonight's 81st annual Golden Globes, a number of stars showed out with stunning beauty looks, including stylish hair bows, subdued peach-colored makeup, and bright red hair. While everyone else seemed to be focused on the new and trendy, though, Jennifer Aniston brought back an old, tried-and-true look close to the hearts of many Friends fans worldwide: The popular Rachel haircut.

The Rachel was a layered lob (AKA long bob) that Jennifer Aniston wore during her time playing Rachel Green on Friends—particularly during the show's early seasons. Although Aniston has referred to the haircut as "not my best look" and even called her hairstylist at the time "the bane of [her] existence" for creating it, the style quickly became a global phenomenon, with women everywhere asking their hair stylists to cut and blow out their hair to look exactly like Aniston's choppy, feathery style.

Jennifer Aniston

(Image credit: Getty Images)

And now, in perhaps the most unexpected beauty news of the night, considering Aniston's open resentment of the look, the notorious Rachel seems to be back. Aniston walked the red carpet with an updated version of the famously layered look at the Golden Globes, eschewing the longer, straighter look she's adopted in her post-Friends years. Even the color is similar to that which she wore at the time, down to the golden highlights and light brown lowlights.

Considering the hold that this style had on the public during the 1990s, it's tempting to predict (or even hope) that this hairstyle will be taking over the mid 2020s. The prediction isn't too far off considering other hair trends that have dominated the early years of the decade, from the mullet to the lob to the bob, all of which may culminate in a choppy cut like the Rachel, which seems to bring these styles together.

Gabrielle Ulubay
Beauty Writer

Gabrielle Ulubay is a Beauty Writer at Marie Claire. She has also written about sexual wellness, politics, culture, and fashion at Marie Claire and at publications including The New York Times, HuffPost Personal, Bustle, Alma, Muskrat Magazine, O'Bheal, and elsewhere. Her personal essay in The New York Times' Modern Love column kickstarted her professional writing career in 2018, and that piece has since been printed in the 2019 revised edition of the Modern Love book. Having studied history, international relations, and film, she has made films on politics and gender equity in addition to writing about cinema for Film Ireland, University College Cork, and on her personal blog, gabrielleulubay.medium.com. Before working with Marie Claire, Gabrielle worked in local government, higher education, and sales, and has resided in four countries and counting. She has worked extensively in the e-commerce and sales spaces since 2020, and spent two years at Drizly, where she developed an expertise in finding the best, highest quality goods and experiences money can buy.

Deeply political, she believes that skincare, haircare, and sexual wellness are central tenets to one's overall health and fights for them to be taken seriously, especially for people of color. She also loves studying makeup as a means of artistic expression, drawing on her experience as an artist in her analysis of beauty trends. She's based in New York City, where she can be found watching movies or running her art business when she isn't writing. Find her on Twitter at @GabrielleUlubay or on Instagram at @gabrielle.ulubay, or follow her art at @suburban.graffiti.art