It was destined to happen. After years of non-descript lengths (each wrapped around a hot barrel and left in unexciting, all-too-girlish waves), the haircut returned to the fore in 2013.

And just how deeply it took hold is something that cannot be underestimated: this was no ‘oh, just a couple of inches please’ set of cuts. This was a resounding adherence to those sort of cuts that make you re-examine who you are really are. And powerfully so.

First, it was the turn of the posh girls, the demographic for whom a mane of long, unchemically-treated hair is often a trophy of sorts. Charlotte Casiraghi led the way with a chin-grazing, chopping bob.

Then things took an unprecedented turn with the fashion mullet, which had been gathering pace since the spring shows wherein Jean Paul Gaultier and Marc Jacobs pledged their allegiance to the most controversial cut of the modern age. Edie Campbell inadvertently raised her modelling game by doing the raven-hued fashion mullet for real and we all sat back, a bit confused but also undeniably impressed.

By then, the haircut was riding the crest of a very large wave: we watched in raptures as Beyonce, Rihanna, Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Lawrence revealed, one by one, their new shorn lengths – each radiating with an inner fizz that had seemed just a bit duller before the scissors got involved.

I went for my own chop in October and became evangelical about its revitalising, ‘yeah, I’m a new person with new feeling and thoughts’ effects.

There is an appealing sort of finality to a cut that styling alone simply cannot compete with:  especially one which leaves shoe-lace long lengths all over the salon floor. Long may it reign.

Click the gallery for our edit of the haircuts that defined 2013.