Flanagan, William G.; Stix, David The bald truth: there really is a drug that grows hair. Toupees really can be undetectable.
Transplants do work, once and forever. But the shiny pate is a power statement. (Upjohn's drug Rogaine, the hairpiece industry, and hair transplants)
Forbes v148, n2 (July 22, 1991):309 (2 pages). COPYRIGHT Forbes Inc. 1991 FOR THE 60 million Americans with significant hair loss, here's the latest news from the
baldness front.
Drugs. It won't sprout locks on a billiard ball, but Upjohn's Rogaine, on the market since 1988, actually does stimulate significant hair growth about
15% to 25% of the time, after at least six months of use. It works best on young men in the early stages of male pattern baldness (androgenetic alopecia), especially in the crown area,
before hair regresses seriously.
In addition, over half the time Rogaine stems additional hair loss, and not only for younger men. (The drug is not yet cleared for use
by women.) The drug is available only through doctor's prescription and has to be rubbed on twice a day--forever--or hair loss will resume.
More than 2 million men
worldwide have used Rogaine, and Upjohn reports sales topped $140 million in 1990. Analysts expect sales of $210 million in 1992. Average cost to the user: about $50 to $60 per month,
up to $125 if used in high concentrations,or if mixed with other drugs like Retin-A.
Warren Waters, 33, president and owner of Palm Beach Development, a New Jersey-based real
estate and construction firm, is one satisfied customer. He started using it six years ago in tests. "I had substantial hair loss in front and a half-dollar-size bald spot on my
crown. The bald spot was completely gone after several months, and the front is pretty full. It was miraculous."
But there were no miracles for Hugh
Zurkuhlen, 33, a director at Salomon Brothers in New York. He was also in an original test group in the 1980s, and used Rogaine (minoxidil) twice a day for one year. "It grew
fuzzy stuff, but wasn't worth the bother. I quit using it."
Rugs. "You'd think with all his money he'd have a decent rug," is the oft-made remark
about men with ill-fitting hairpieces. But cost has less to do with a good-looking hairpiece than do the selection of the maker and the grooming and care given it by the wearer. An
attractive hairpiece requires careful color matching, fitting and styling, as well as subsequent grooming and replacement--which too many wearers neglect.
"One bad
hairpiece wipes out a thousand good ones," notes Sy Sperling, chief executive officer of Hair Club for Men.
Hairpieces can be made from real human hair or from synthetic
materials, usually nylon. The cost of real hair: Small filler pieces could go for as little as $325; a full wig, $2,000 and up. The typical man's hairpiece runs from $1,000 up to
$3,500. Both Paul Huntley Ltd. and Ira Senz, top New York specialists who cater to the theater and show-biz set, use real, European hair. (European hair has more variety of color
without dyeing. But hair from India and Korea is used by other hairpiece makers.)
Human hair reacts to sun and chlorine and needs more care. Huntley says you need
a professional hair stylist for maintenance; many of his customers come in every two to four weeks for cleaning and styling ($40). Dyeing runs another $75.
Hairpieces
made from human hair last no more than a year. The biggest problem is the color of the hair, which fades over time.
Top Priority of New York uses primarily synthetic
hair, made in France. The company claims it looks more natural than real hair, is water-resistant, holds its shape better, requires less maintenance and lasts longer--up to two years if you
don't sleep in it. Cost: $1,800 to $2,500. Most of Top Priority's 2,000 clients come in for maintenance ($35 to $50) about as often as they would for normal haircuts and trims.
How are hairpieces held on? Commonly with spirit gum, or a clear, double-faced tape which adheres to both hairpiece and scalp.
Most wearers of
hairpieces remove them at night. But some prefer the method used by the likes of Hair Club for Men, which anchors the hairpiece to the user's own hair, using either a polymer adhesive or a
braid that is woven into the hair.
These hairpieces need be to removed only every six to eight weeks, when the wearer has a reset, which takes about 90 minutes.
Popularity: Hairpieces of all types are by far the most popular way men treat baldness; over 2 million Americans wear them, spending some $350 million annually.
Plugs. Hair transplants are living, costly proof of just how sensitive some men are to baldness--and the lengths they will go to treat it.
The painstaking replanting of
individual hair grafts--from the back of the neck to the scalp--can take many months, eight or more operations, and easily cost upwards of $10,000. And it still may not leave the patient
with anything like a full head of hair. Yet some 30,000 patients spend about $250 million a year on such treatments.
Take the 50-year-old New York sales manager of a
computer company who, over a two-year period, spent almost $30,000 to undergo eight transplant treatments and four scalp reductions. (Scalp reduction is another gruesome surgical procedure,
wherein bare skin on the scalp is stripped away.)
The sales manager missed an average of three days of work after each treatment, waiting for the resultant swelling and
bleeding to subside. Once, he got a minor infection.
Though injections of anesthetics made the operations themselves relatively painless, he dreaded the shots.
He started out without much hair left at all, and when it was all over, wound up with "enough hair to comb," but hardly a full hairline. "I didn't expect
to look like John Travolta," he says.
Yet the hair is his own, and it does regenerate, and he's glad he did it: "It was important for my own sense of well-being, as
well as for professional reasons. I feel better about myself."
Says another patient: "I figured that, well, I could have a fancy sports car or I could get my hair fixed."
Dermatologists say that transplants work best on
people with perceivable baldness, who have: a) a good match between hair color and skin color--red hair with ruddy skin, for example; b) remaining hair that is soft and wavy, rather than coarse;
c) baldness limited to 40% or less of scalp.
Fighting baldness clearly takes a lot of money, time, patience and vanity.
But then there are men like
Chicago Bulls basketball star Michael Jordan and adman Jerry Della Femina. Flaunting their baldness, they've shown that going topless has quite a bit going for it.
