Moustair is a single-topic Tumblr blog that posts photos of men edited so a second, smaller face sits below the mustache and the whiskers act as that face's hair.

Where did Moustair come from?

The Moustair Tumblr was created on August 31st, 2011, with a first post showing a man with a handlebar mustache and a white turtleneck.

What does Moustair mean?

The name is a portmanteau of 'moustache' and 'hair', pointing to the edit that turns mustaches into hairlines for a tiny composited face.

How do you use Moustair?

The format is a photo edit: paste a scaled-down face into the space just under a mustache in a portrait, so the whiskers read as that small face's hairstyle.

Is Moustair still popular?

Moustair peaked in November 2011 after coverage on BuzzFeed, UpRoxx, Metafilter and The Daily What, and is now remembered mainly as a classic of the early-2010s single-topic Tumblr wave.

Moustair

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Published September 6, 2026

Moustair is a single-topic Tumblr blog started in August 2011 that pastes a second, smaller face directly below a man's mustache, treating the whiskers as if they were the tiny person's hairstyle. The site drew same-day coverage from BuzzFeed, UpRoxx, Metafilter and The Daily What in November 2011 and became a small classic of the early-2010s Tumblr single-serving-site era.

single serving site memes tumblr memes photoshop memes face swap memes early 2010s memes

Overview

Moustair works from a simple visual trick: an editor takes a photo of a mustachioed man and grafts a miniature second face onto the strip of skin just under the mustache, so the whiskers read as the small person's hairstyle1. Results range from careful photorealistic composites to obvious cut-and-paste jobs, and the humor depends on how well the added face matches the source portrait's lighting and angle3. The blog stays strictly on-format, with no captions or commentary beyond the images themselves4.

The men featured are usually pulled from stock photography, vintage portraits and celebrity shots, giving the edits a mix of retro and contemporary looks2. Handlebar mustaches, walrus mustaches and bushy 1970s styles show up most often, because a bigger mustache gives more convincing 'hair' to frame the smaller face below1.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Tumblr (origin) / Reddit (viral spread)

Date

2011

The Moustair Tumblr was created on August 31st, 20115. The first post featured a man with a brown ponytail and a handlebar mustache wearing a white turtleneck, with a second, smaller face composited into the space beneath the mustache8. That inaugural image had accumulated 18 notes by early November 20118. The blog's creator has never been publicly identified4.

How It Spread

The site stayed obscure for roughly two months after launch. On November 6th, 2011, Reddit user djtogi posted a link to the Tumblr on r/woahdude, the subreddit built around trippy visuals6. Within three days the blog jumped from that thread onto the wider link-blog circuit8.

On November 9th, 2011, UpRoxx ran a short write-up calling it their new favorite site2, BuzzFeed published a post titled 'Where Mustache Meets Hair Meets Moustair'1, Metafilter linked to it3, and The Daily What included it in their Lunchtime Links roundup7. That single-day cluster of coverage is what pushed Moustair from a niche Tumblr to a widely shared curiosity in the single-serving-site wave of 20118.

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How to Use This Meme

The template is straightforward: find a portrait of a man with a substantial mustache, then paste a scaled-down face into the strip of skin between the mustache and the upper lip so the whiskers frame the smaller face like a hairstyle. Common conventions include matching the added face's lighting and skin tone to the base photo, and picking mustaches thick enough to convincingly stand in for a hairline. Thicker, symmetrical mustaches such as handlebars and walruses tend to give the cleanest results1.