Framing the face with extended sideburns and a thick swath of facial hair covering the jawline, mutton chop beards characterise the style of Victorian-era gentlemen. To rock the mutton chops sideburn look, learn about the variations of mutton chop beard you can experiment with and understand more about this style, read on.
Growing & Maintaining Mutton Chops Beards in 4 Easy Steps
Step 1: Growing a full beard
The iconic mutton chops facial hairstyle gets its name from the resemblance between its big sideburns and a cut of meat. You should know this isn’t the kind of beard style that will materialise in a week, and the route to styling a mutton chops look starts with growing out a full beard.
Although the speed that your facial hair will grow is unique to you, it’s worth knowing the average rate of growth for hair is around half an inch a month. Getting the thick and full beard that’s required is a case of letting it grow out before any styling or trimming. We suggest you allow a month or more of growing it out to make sure you have the long beard needed.
Having a full beard is a must here as it’ll let you trim symmetrically. Want to know how to grow the perfect beard? Check out our guide on How to Grow and Trim a Beard.
Step 2: Creating the mutton chops
The mutton chops style requires both long sideburns and a long moustache as you’ll want the two to connect up before you come to trim or shape this beard style. Once your sideburns and beard reach the point of full growth you desire, it’s time to shape your new beard style. The mutton chops look stands out thanks to its unusual grooming style. Using your electric shaver, you should remove all hair from the chin and neck, leaving the mutton chops and moustache you’ve grown with pride of place.
Edging around your long sideburns and moustache is a delicate art as you want to keep the full growth that this style requires. For this job, check out the electric shavers that could help you achieve the perfect smooth clean shave. Braun shavers’ AutoSense technology will respond to your beard’s thickness and ensure any tidy up gives exceptional closeness.
Step 3: Trimming the mutton chops
To get the mutton chops beard look, you need to ensure you have full symmetrical growth on your beard sideburns. Once you’ve shaped a mutton chops look, the next grooming step is maintaining sideburn symmetry using trimming tools.
Using a fixed-length comb, such as the comb included with a Braun All in One Trimmer, will even out the growth of your mutton chop sideburns. At the highest point, you want your beard’s sideburns to reach, define the edges on your cheek, and tidy your neck. If you want to style this beard look you should find the ideal trimmers to achieve the precise shape of mutton chops beard style with Braun’s precision shaving technology.
Step 4: Maintaining the chops
With all beard styles, we suggest combing your beard and using beard oil daily to minimize irritation. Exfoliating regularly and drinking plenty of water to stay hydrated are also great tips for healthy beard growth. For more tips on this read the guide on how to take care of your beard.
Alongside daily beard care, we suggest you’ll want to trim your chin and neck every day. The mutton chop beard style is defined by the sharp lines between these areas and your classic beard style. When you shower, use a beard shampoo as this longer beard style in particular will look at its groomed best when your hair is at its healthiest.
The best mutton chop beard styles for you
Mutton chop beards have been sported in various styles across plenty of famous faces, including John Lennon's thicker mutton chops, Elvis' neatly groomed version and the original style from Ambrose Burnside. We’ll be reviewing some of the most popular mutton chop beard designs that have emerged across the decades.
Regular mutton chops
When most people refer to a mutton chops beard, they're describing the regular mutton chops facial hairstyle: a look where sideburns are actively grown out to cover both the side of the face and the jawline. Typically, the beard will also cover the bottom half of your face (aside from chin and soul patch areas), stopping just below your cheekbones.
Friendly mutton chops
Friendly mutton chops depict the classic mutton chop sideburns with the beard grown out right to the corner of your lips, plus a moustache included in the mix. The main difference of a moustache in a friendly mutton chop beard helps bridge the gap between each traditional mutton chop - hence the name, 'friendly' as the beard comes together to meet in the middle.
Friendly mutton chops are friendly for a variety of face shapes, including oval, long and round face shapes. The hair length can be cropped down to a short cut for a metropolitan look or grown long for a more outdoorsy, rural-inspired look.
Thin mutton chops
The skinner version of the traditional mutton chop beard is the thin mutton chop beard. Think 1970s-inspired Eddie Griffin's look in Undercover Brother. Similar in style to traditional mutton chops, thin mutton chop facial hair is characterised by thin a 45° degree triangular beards that start as a sideburn, finish a couple of centimetres below the earlobe and meet just a few millimetres away from the corners of the mouth.
With this style of mutton chop beard, the jawline is left completely clean shaven and facial hairs are shaved short - close to stubble length - unlike the regular bushy mutton chop beard style. Thin mutton chops work best with a moustache and are well suited to rounder faces that want to create the illusion of a squared off jawline.
Chin curtain mutton chops
A cousin of the regular mutton chop beard, chin curtain mutton chops have made their mark on modern facial hairstyling thanks to Wolverine among other well-groomed fictional characters. This look requires a long, fully grown and filled out beard that's trimmed close to the jawline whilst retaining the classic square cut edges that frame the lips, like all mutton chop beard styles.
What makes chin curtain mutton chops unique is their ability to frame the face as if your beard is literally a full weight curtain hanging off your chin.
Disconnected mutton chops
An extension of the friendly mutton chop beard, the main difference with disconnected mutton chop beards is that your moustache and beard hair never meet. Because of the style, your moustache stands out more than if it were connected to your beard, so if you're a fan of experimenting with moustache styles now's your time to mix it up. You could try the Tom Selleck chevron moustache, the handlebar, pencil or even the Salvador Dali if you dare.
Conclusion
Sporting bushy facial hair like the classic or Guajarati mutton chop beard is best suited to round and oval face shapes but can be cut and styled to work for almost anyone. Play around with what works best for you.
You might like to include or exclude chin and soul patch hair, raise or lower the beard height against your cheekbones, and combine the look with anything from a quiff to long hair to a bald shaven head. Whichever look you choose; this timeless imperial beard has been around since the 18th century so you can be confident it will stay in style for a long time.