I will confess to being a bit elusive so far, concerning the
product that we sold at SlipNot.
Obviously, we were in the wholesale business and our wares were the
various bits and pieces that make up the modern hair replacement. But to say that all that we sold were
toupees, or weaves, or hairpieces would be to ignore so much of what went on in
the industry. You have to look back at
the history of people wearing hair to begin to understand just how far reaching
this whole enterprise was, and still is.
We all know that the Founding Fathers of the United States wore wigs and
that the tradition of covering the scalp dates much further back in history
than that. Julius Caesar wore a
trademark wreath on his head. Was this
because he thought that wreaths were unusually attractive? Probably not.
It is far more likely that he did so to take attention away from his
very bald head. There is some evidence
that he also wore something like a rudimentary toupee, but the fact that he
tried to cover up at all indicates that his hair loss disturbed him. Going back quite a bit more still, the
ancient Egyptian pharaohs were known to wear false beards as a symbol of their
power. What is somewhat confusing though
was that they also liked to shave their faces, so as to establish that they
were of the upper class and therefore able to afford to groom themselves. Only the rich and powerful had the resources
(or time) to take it all off and then carefully put it back on. Queen Hatshepsut,
who ruled Egypt in the 1500 century BC, distinguished herself by dressing as a
man quite often and wearing the ceremonial beard to convey to all whom she met
the magnitude of her great power. So,
for much of history, while pattern baldness was a condition shared by the
masses, it was the elite who were most apt to do anything about it.
In the last 60 years, the acceptance of head coverings to
conceal pattern baldness has become significantly more commonplace. For openers, plenty of music and movie stars
have made use of various methods to keep their fans from noticing that things
were getting thin on top. Notably, Frank
Sinatra, William Shatner and Sean Connery all made use of hair replacement
systems, although Connery often went without, particularly when making public
appearances when he wasn’t on the set.
Elton John has worn hair for many years and at one point, it was
reported that his was among the most expensive custom replacements of all
time. Good hair costs a lot of money and
that’s because the unit itself has to look right. The big money is in maintenance.
Consider that a hair replacement system, or what might once
have gone by the name of “toupee” a generation or two ago is now a very
sophisticated item. It begins with a
fine mesh made from a synthetic material, which is cut to fit the outline of
the top of the head. Human hairs are
inserted into the mesh until the whole thing begins to bear the unfortunate
resemblance to a small furry animal.
When taken out of its packing box, a hair replacement is a strange sight
to behold. It doesn’t look like a head
of hair really and this can be somewhat off putting. I once derisively called a case of hairpieces
that I saw in the SlipNot warehouse at “nest of rodents” and for a while that
stuck. It’s somewhat self-defeating to
have salespeople referring to their product in this manner, as in “That’s a
fine looking rat you have strapped to the top of your head.” As such, the hair replacement itself is not
what makes the sale. The unit itself is
quite useless, unless it is properly cared for.
Maybe 40 years ago, one of the most popular ways of attaching
the unit to a client’s head was by use of tape.
The tape had two adhesive sides, so that it could be placed on the scalp
and then the unit could be attached to the other side of the tape. This was a pretty good arrangement, except
that excessive moisture could easily compromise the whole operation. An old client of Frank Rotella’s had gone to
the Miami on vacation during the late 1980s, blithely jumped into the gentle
surf and came up, his head as devoid of hair as a baby’s bottom. He found his hairpiece floating nearby in the
water, grabbed it and hastily retreated to his hotel room to reattach it. As you might expect, he spent the remainder
of his vacation on dry land. While this was
not a unique occurrence, it would be some time before the industry came up with
a solution.
The next innovation was something called “the weave”. The idea behind it was quite simple. A client would come into a hair studio to
purchase a replacement system and the new hair was woven into the client’s
hair, right along the edge of the client’s healthy hairline. The result was that the system sat tightly on
top of the head and could not be removed by wind, rain, or even ocean
waves. For a time then, it seemed to be
the answer. However, there were two
problems. The first was that the tightly
woven hair could be a bit painful. The other difficulty was that, as the
client’s own hair grew, the replacement system on top began to ride looser and
looser, until it began to awkwardly slide around. Nothing screams out for attention more than a
moving hairline and that’s exactly what would happen. If the goal of hair replacement is discrete
concealment, then the appearance of wearing a moving fur ball can be detrimental
to that mission.
Hair has been and still is a symbol of vitality and if
necessity is indeed the mother of innovation, then the quest to keep hair on
people’s heads has been the great motherfucker for the industry. The next breakthrough was in what eventually
became marketed as a “non-surgical hair replacement”. While surgical hair transplantation does
indeed move living follicles to the balding area on the scalp, this procedure
can be quite expensive. In the
mid-1990s, when I first worked with Bosco, transplants were charge by the
follicle, often at the rate of between $5-$10 per. Given that a standard surgery involved just
shy of 1,000 follicles, this could mean that the client (or patient, if you will)
would be expected to shell out between $5,000-$10,000 for a procedure. Health insurance would not cover this most
elective of surgeries, so patients had to pay in full.
The “non-surgical hair transplant” was part marketing scheme,
part new technology. The technology was
actually pretty simple. SlipNot made a
much sheerer membrane than it had in the past, one that was less obvious to the
naked eye. The unit was then attached to
the scalp by means of a bonding agent, or to use a more common term, glue. The client was then able to wash his new
hair, swim with it, or have his lover playfully tug on it (if that’s what
floated your boat). In short, you could
treat it almost as if it was your own hair, except that it didn’t grow. It also would tend to fall out. This of course was the key to the whole
marketing plan. Each unit would
gradually lose hair, as the user merrily washed and swam and tugged his way
through his days and nights. Usually, by
the end of 6 weeks, the hairpiece would begin to look a little, well,
“ratty”. This was why each unit was sold
with a maintenance plan that allowed the client to return to the studio, have
the hairpiece removed and have it either cleaned and repaired, or
replaced. During the 1990s, repair was
the accepted course of action, mostly because the units cost the client about
$400 each. Given this initial
investment, studio owners were under enormous pressure to do what they could to
salvage the units they sold. But time
and normal use took a terrible toll on the hairpieces and ultimately, the only
reasonable avenue left was to throw the old one away and sell the client a new
one.
The next episode of SlipNot will be published on April 7th.
If you'd like to read SlipNot in its entirety, GO
HERE.
No comments:
Post a Comment