Beard implants boom with facial fuzz trend

Fashion designer and brand manager Benny Castles showcases his beard. Photo / Babiche Martens

Heads up, hipsters: Your brethren in Brooklyn are getting facial hair transplants to fill in the bald spots on their trendy beards. Yes, it can be done.

New York media report that men are paying as much as US$8500 (up to NZ$10,000) to have plastic surgeons add hair to their faces.

Apparently patchy whiskers just won't do in the hipster world.

Fashion designer and brand manager Benny Castles showcases his beard. Photo / Babiche Martens

The procedure is straightforward: A plastic surgeon removes hair from another part of the body - head, chest, wherever - and implants it in the face.

A website that follows neighborhood news in New York - www.dnainfo.com/new-york/ - appears to have spotted the trend. The procedures range from filling in bare patches to whole beard construction.

"Brooklyn is probably the nucleus of the trend, it's the hipster 'look' guys want. If you have a spotty beard, and you let it grow out, it looks sloppy," Jeffrey Epstein, a Midtown-based plastic surgeon, told The New York Post.

He's performing two or three beard transplants a week, he said. A couple of years ago he did maybe a handful.

Sometimes, customers bring in pictures of celebrities and male models they want to look like. George Clooney, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt are most popular. Some guys want the Tom Selleck moustache, too.

One transplant patient told the Post that he was happy that he didn't have to fill in his scrawny beard with an eyebrow pencil anymore. Bless his happy little hipster heart.

- MCT