Hype Stories · fashion
How The Rachel Took Over America
A sitcom hairstyle became a national obsession. The Rachel turned a fictional character’s layered haircut into a name millions of women carried into salons.
The look appears
Friends debuted in 1994, and Jennifer Aniston’s character, Rachel Green, quickly became one of the show’s breakout figures. Hairstylist Chris McMillan created the cut. He later said he had been growing out her bangs and trying something different.
The result was a voluminous, shoulder-length cut with layers framing the face and turning outward. Aniston debuted it in “The One With the Evil Orthodontist,” which aired on April 6, 1995.
The picture becomes the order
Within months, women were walking into salons asking for the hairstyle. They brought pictures instead of trying to describe it.
When the Friends cast appeared on the cover of People in April, one Los Angeles-area stylist said about every other client came in carrying the magazine and asking for the look. The picture had become the order form.
Everyone knows the name
By the summer of 1995, McMillan was booked four to six weeks ahead, with more than half of his clients asking for the same style. At another Beverly Hills salon, a representative said about 40 percent of the people who came in asked for it.
McMillan said women were flying in from New York, Chicago and Dallas to sit in his chair. NBC was getting up to ten calls a day from women trying to find out who had cut Jennifer Aniston’s hair.
A familiar style, made famous
The haircut itself wasn’t revolutionary. A Hollywood salon owner told the Los Angeles Times that similar layered styles had already been worn by Angie Dickinson and Goldie Hawn.
Friends gave the look something it hadn’t had before: a face, a character, a name, and a weekly audience in the tens of millions. By the third season, published Nielsen averages put the show at about 26 million viewers.
Effortless on screen
The haircut looked natural and effortless. It was not. In a 2015 Glamour interview, Aniston said that even at the time she couldn’t do it on her own, and that she needed Chris McMillan “attached to my hip.”
In the February 2011 issue of Allure, she was blunter: “How do I say this? I think it was the ugliest haircut I’ve ever seen.”