How did a hairstyle that once signified “off to the garage for some milk” become a fashion phenomenon? Because that’s where we are at with the high bun – or topknot – a hairstyle that is popping up everywhere.

The ’do is fast becoming a red-carpet staple, seen on stars from Jennifer Lopez to Katy Perry to Rihanna. At the People’s Choice awards on Sunday, Zendaya wore an unstructured version, while her 16-year-old Euphoria co-star Storm Reid wore a towering bun topped with a star-shaped pin. Last month, when the British women’s team competed at the World Artistic Gymnastics championships in Stuttgart, all six wore the hairstyle.

Storm Reid … towering bun. Photograph: John Salangsang/Rex/Shutterstock

Like its embarrassing cousin, the man bun, it has developed vague wellnessy connotations. It’s the style of choice for Hollywood types doing yoga or posting sweaty but flattering post-gym pictures. For such an easy style, there are countless online tutorials on how to achieve it, such as the one on motherandbaby.co.uk, which promises a “no-wash topknot for busy mornings”.

On the catwalk, the style projects an effortless vibe. Last year, 77 of the 81 Chanel models at one show wore a bun, which the hairstylist Sam McKnight said was “inspired by the models themselves – when they grab their hair after a show and shove it up in a messy topknot tied with elastic”. In September, at London fashion week, Victoria Beckham took her bow in hard-working designer mode, wearing a messy topknot; the tonsorial equivalent of rolling her sleeves up.

Ursula Stephen – Zendaya’s hairdresser and the mastermind of many red-carpet topknots – described it as “one of those Coachella kind of things. Kind of like no-makeup makeup.”

Chanel’s autumn/winter show. Photograph: Dominique Charriau/WireImage

Some of the topknot’s biggest proponents are those who live their private moments in public. On Instagram, it is perfect for casually hanging out in the bath while telling your followers how great your new shampoo is with the tagline: #ad #sponcontent. The Kardashians are big fans, obviously.

And, really, it is internet hair. Unlike the ballerina bun, or the chignon at the nape of the neck, it is fully visible from the front. Marni Senofonte – a one-woman social-media trend machine who is best known as “Beyoncé’s Instagram stylist” – wears a 3in-high topknot. Her hair is instantly recognisable, the smartphone era equivalent of Anna Wintour’s bob.

The topknot also, of course, has a deep significance in many religions, including Sikhism and Buddhism. Indeed, when you delve into the history of the topknot, it is difficult to interpret its western rise as anything but a borrowing – subconsciously or otherwise – from eastern cultures.

Russell Brand arriving for a Hollywood yoga class. Photograph: WENN Rights Ltd/Alamy

This is most clearly demonstrated by the version seen on celebrities, such as Miley Cyrus, or off-duty models doing chakrasanas on Instagram. In kundalini yoga, wearing a knot on top of the head, for energetic effect, is part of the practice. Photographs of celebrity fans, including Russell Brand, wearing topknots while meditating, may well have seeped into the western zeitgeist. Like the man bun, which tends to be worn a little lower down the crown, this version of the topknot seems to bring with it a hazy sense of enlightenment and urban creativity. It’s popular in Hollywood.

For Susie Lau, a fashion writer and street-style star who has been wearing her topknot for about a decade, adopting the style did not feel hugely groundbreaking because in Japan and Hong Kong, where she has family and frequently travels, “it feels less of a style statement and more like an everyday hairstyle”. Lau points out that the hairstyle looks similar to that worn by men in China during the Ming dynasty.

Yet in the UK, it was not really fashionable until fairly recently, according to Rachael Gibson who runs an Instagram account dedicated to the history of hair. Historically, western up-dos, such as the apollo knot of the 1800s, were intricate and extravagant, a straight-up sign of “conspicuous consumption”, indicating their wearer as “lady of leisure”. On the contrary, she says, the modern topknot ties into a different modern aspiration – the “dread of the salon blow-dry – people wanting to move away from looking ‘done’”.

Topknots are particularly popular among teenage girls and women in their early 20s. The hairdresser Charlotte Mensah agrees that the buns are getting higher. “It’s such a thing. My daughter, who is 18, loves wearing her hair like that. All her friends at uni do.”

Old school … a fashion image from the 1830s. Photograph: Chronicle/Alamy

For young fans the inspiration might be Zoella, the YouTube star who has very long, very thick hair, and whose “How to: Messy Bun” tutorial has been viewed more than 12m times. Or it could be the Love Island star Molly-Mae Hague, whose bun is “a celeb in its own right” according to Cosmopolitan.

A tutorial posted by Hague in the summer underlined the class issues inherent in the topknot. Without expensive extensions to twist into a luxuriant bun, some fans claimed that the slick-sided ’do made them “look like Miss Trunchbull”.

Gibson warns against classifying the style as democratic. “It is always clean, thick hair, artfully done on Instagram. You wonder if people would have a different opinion if they saw a normal working-class woman wearing a topknot. If I put my hair up like that with no makeup on to take the bins out, people are not going to say: ‘She looks incredible.’”

For some hair types, though, it is genuinely easy – and cheap – to achieve. Lau, for one, advocates it for difficult weather. “I remember the first time I did it. I was in Stockholm in the winter and it was snowing really hard and super windy – it was more a practical thing.” Mensah says it can save women a lot of time. It works well on hair that is “lived in”, perhaps because it hasn’t been washed for a couple of days. “The knottier and more mussed the hair the better.” For afro hair, it is “a great look for second- or third-day twist out”.

Stephen even believes it gives “an instant facelift”. No wonder it is popular. It is likely to stay that way, too, because its silhouette so perfectly suits the lens of a front-facing camera. Because, in 2019, if you can’t see your bun on social media, did it even happen?