Men who wore toupees were once as few and far between as the strands of their own hair. To the wearer it was all a matter of secrecy and shame, and to onlookers a cause for thunderous hilarity; the next best thing to seeing a man slip on a banana peel was watching the wind lift the wig off his glittering skull. Neither disgraceful nor comic any more, toupees are big business in the U.S. today. They are worn not only by matinee idols whose afternoons are fast fading into dusk, but also by many a man who lost his comb and never noticed, or whose wife was mistaken—once is enough—for his daughter.
Traces of the oldtime embarrassment remain. Many appointments for fittings are made after dark, the exact number of toupee wearers cannot be fixed,* and the acceptable word is now "hairpiece." But vanity has overcome reticence, and sales have risen consistently over the past ten years.
Also in Bed. The most obvious explanation for the boom lies within the structure of the modern hairpiece itself. Where rough edges and crude foundations once made a man's deceit discernible to his snickering friends, the new wigs (made exclusively of imported hair, often from the peasant women of Italy) are fashioned on delicately tinted, skin-colored fabric or fiber-glass base, and are carefully matched in color and texture to the customer's remaining locks. The whole thing is generally affixed to the scalp by a couple of pieces of centrally stationed tape plus a smattering of adhesive cement around the edges. The new hairpieces are so firmly anchored that they can be worn in the shower and even to bed, although neither practice is recommended. "But then I wouldn't sleep in a $300 suit either," noted one salesman.
Hair fashions that eliminate the part (an extra area of detectability) are most popular, the favorites being 1) the crew cut. 2) the "Madison Avenue" or Cary Grant look, 3) the "youthful tousled" or Tony Curtis look, and 4) the pompadour. Coming up fast: the JFK look. Prices range from $75 to $350.
Maury Mandel, co-owner of Jerry Rothschild's barbershop in Beverly Hills, says his hairpiece trade has gone up at least 200% in just the past year. "It used to be men of 50 or 60 who would come in," says Mandel. "Now it is men of 30 or 35. It's part ego and part it's just annoying to be bald." Though show biz types like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra are still leaders in the wiggy set, "ordinary people are going in for the same routine," says Mandel. In San Antonio, whose wig merchants claim the sale of more hairpieces per capita than anywhere in the U.S., most of the buyers are men in the 20 to 45 age bracket. A local salesman, newly toupeed, reported to his operator that the hairpiece had won him a raise; another customer insisted that his crew-cut hairpiece had made him look young enough to "feel at home again" with his grown sons.