A Man and His Colorist

There has been little to celebrate in men's hair innovation during the past 300 years: the powdered wig, the Mohawk, the ducktail--not proud moments. So we should probably not be surprised at the latest expression of men's vanity: tipping, in which guys bleach or dye just the tops of their short, spiky strands, leaving their roots long and exposed. Imagine Heather Locklear if her hair were attacked by a razor.

Men--men with jobs, men who aren't graying, men who like to go bowling--are dyeing their hair more than ever. With gels and waxes and moisturizers being marketed to males, and magazines singularly dedicated to stories about tighter abs, men are rapidly closing the vanity gap with women. Men's home hair-color sales reached $113.5 million last year, a 50% increase in just five years. Rock stars (Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath), actors (George Clooney) and athletes (nearly the entire Anaheim Angels baseball team) are tipping their hair blond or going completely Chrissy Snow platinum. In February L'Oreal launched a line of its Feria home dye for men, with colors ranging from goth black to platinum blond (the most popular shade). "Most of us still want to watch baseball and drink beer, but we do wear Armani suits," says Joseph Campinell, president of L'Oreal Retail in the U.S. "There's been so much of an attitude about looking good and feeling good. Men are starting to use more personal-care products." To Campinell, this is a good thing.

The hair color they're choosing is defiantly punky--even people fooled by Pam Anderson aren't going to think these guys are natural blonds. And it's spreading from trend-conscious Manhattan and Beverly Hills to middle American towns like Madison, Wis. Michael Nowland, a stylist at Madison's Vogue Hair Co., says a third of his male clients have tips, a look he has seen on a legislator at the state capitol as well as Mark Koehn, a 43-year-old local-news anchor. "You're seeing it in offices, and I don't really think this is a fad," Nowland says. "It's men evolving into the same degree of fashion rights that women have had."

Justin Cichowski, a 16-year-old on the football team at Jacobs High School in Algonquin, Ill., is proud of his new tips, though he admits to "feeling a little weird when they made me wear the little red hat inside the beauty salon." In nearby South Barrington, Pete Castillo, 31, a warehouse manager, just got his tips last month. "I guess I was looking for something different to start the summer," he says.

In contrast to the old days, when the goal of coloring your hair was to make sure nobody could tell, the new wave grows out of a peacock-like desire to make sure everyone within a 10-mile radius notices. Chris Landry, 25, sits on a chair at Urban Renewal in Denver while Yvonne tips his platinum hair blue with a mascara wand. Landry, who has had his hair tipped for 14 years and may in fact be in a fashion rut, is here after making a mess with store-bought blue dye. "Yvonne told me she could fix this," he says, "and I was pretty much, 'Whatever.'" Stylists say dyeing men's hair is easier than women's: if they mess up, the guys usually just tell them to shave it all off.

"Dyeing your hair and caring about the way you look aren't sissy anymore," says Robert Bullock, 28, walking out of Denver's Urban Renewal after a touch-up. "I'm a high-maintenance kind of guy. It takes me a good 15 minutes in the morning. I even bought a hair dryer, and I never thought I'd own one."

At least the powdered wig was less trouble.