Beauty and the Beast
You’re so vain. You probably think this story’s about you. We’re talking to you, Pretty Boy. You, who exfoliated in the shower this morning, slathered your face with “blue reflector” skin cream to hide crow’s feet and frown lines and dabbed a skin-smoothing gel under your puffy eyes. You, who topped it all off with an oil-control, no-shine lotion and a bronzer that plays so well with the chunky golden highlights in your hair.
You’ve really got it going on, with your scrubbing grains, eye balms, diffusing powders and rejuvenating mud masks.
For every man who adheres to an austere soap and after-shave routine, here’s an update from the 21st century: The male grooming ritual is undergoing a radical transformation. Men, particularly aging boomers and members of generations Y and X, have embraced an arsenal of products--hair color, skin moisturizers, toning lotions, anti-aging creams, even makeup--to support a $3.5-billion annual market in stuff. It’s a paltry sum compared with the $46 billion spent annually by women on beauty supplies. And it’s a trend about which many men are blissfully ignorant. Nonetheless, the men’s market continues to attract new manufacturers with visions of wrinkle-free, airbrushed faces and profits. In the last two years alone, several brands and companies, including Aramis, Nivea, Clear Essence, Jack Black, Davidoff Cool Water and Anthony Logistics for Men, have introduced skin-care lines for men.
Ask “why” and the voices of those who work in the industry--and analyze it--seem to speak in unison: What it means to be a man has changed. Says Roger Selbert, a Santa Monica-based trend analyst, “Men today are concerned about their appearance out of necessity: for work, for relationships and for self-esteem. This has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. Men have to look better at work. It’s a competitive environment, with younger guys coming up all the time. There still is age discrimination.”
Selbert, editor and publisher of Growth Strategies, a monthly that tracks trends, analyzed data from a survey of 501 men, 70% of whom said they were concerned with their appearance and were actively trying to improve their looks. The survey, conducted 19 months ago by New York-based Roper Starch Worldwide, a marketing research and consulting firm, was commissioned by Just For Men hair color products. Among the other findings: Almost two-thirds of the men surveyed spend 20 to 60 minutes per day on personal grooming; about one in five men spend more than an hour. Forty-five percent admitted to getting or considering manicures and 36% said they colored or considered coloring their hair. In a study conducted earlier this year by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 83% of men said they follow “some type of beauty regimen to maintain their appearance,” including facial moisturizing, using sunscreen and dyeing their hair.
The discerning consumer could argue that organizations sponsored by plastic surgeons and cosmetics companies have a great stake in promoting the male grooming industry. But he could not dispute the increase in products; men’s toiletries sales are growing at a rate of 11% a year, twice the rate for women’s products. Someone is buying--and it’s not just the guys who are participating in industry surveys.
The male market has come a long way from the days--and nights--when a man could get away with slapping on some Aqua Velva (1931), Old Spice (1937), Brut by Faberge (1964) or Hai Karate (1967). The 1970s saw the growth of a mass market for men’s fragrances, such as Paco Rabanne pour Homme and Jovan Musk for Men. That growth, in turn, paved the way for cosmetics companies such as Estee Lauder, which introduced Clinique Skin Supplies for Men in the mid-1970s. Ten years later, Lauder launched its second men’s skincare collection, Lab Series, under the company’s Aramis Inc. division, and through the ‘90s reported a 5% to 10% annual sales growth, says Terry Darland, former vice president of marketing for Aramis. “The boom has been in the last two years,” she says, with sales of men’s grooming products (excluding fragrances) in department stores such as Nordstrom, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s now a $50-million business.
Products are increasingly easier to find. Walk into the drugstore, the nearest discount store--even Trader Joe’s--and shelves beckon with lotions and potions and dyes. Check out department stores where skin-care products are competing for space with after-shave and cologne, especially in major cities such as Los Angeles and New York.
David Wolfe, creative director of the Doneger Group, a New York-based consulting firm that analyzes fashion and trends for retailers and designers, emphasizes the symbiotic nature of manufacturer and retailer: “From a retailer’s point of view, it’s an easy business--the companies own the inventory and hire the sales people and the store rings up sales.” (Manufacturers and retailers are hesitant to reveal profit margins, but Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard’s Retail Trend Report, a New Jersey firm specializing in consumer spending patterns and retail trends, says “both parties make a very decent profit.”)
Men who wouldn’t be caught dead perusing the counters at their local mall can shop the Internet. Ronni Heyman, style director for San Francisco-based eluxury.com, an Internet shopping service that is barely a year old, reports the Web site jumped on the male grooming bandwagon several months ago with moisturizers and creams from Bulgari, Santa Maria Novella and Guerlain, as well as shavers, brushes and grooming kits. Several other brands and companies--Nivea (a drugstore staple that introduced Nivea for Men in May), Clear Essence, Clinique Supplies for Men and Anthony Logistics for Men--have Web sites that offer a combination of online shopping, product information, skin-care advice, style tips and etiquette.
Anthony Logistics for Men is among the newest entries in the vanity field. Founded last October by Anthony Sosnick, 31, a former real estate developer, the company has already met its goal of placing its 45-product line in 150 stores--with Fred Segal, Sephora and Barneys New York among them--and expects to exceed its first-year sales projection.
Ontario-based Clear Essence Cosmetics Inc., founded in Upland and known for its skin-care products developed for women of color, introduced a four-item men’s line, Clear Essence for Men, less than two years ago. Products are available primarily in beauty supply stores and barbershops. “We’re dealing with skin-care concerns that are peculiar to men of color, such as dark spots, razor bumps and uneven skin tones,” says company president K.C. Obioha, adding that the men’s ethnic skin-care market rang up sales of $35 million last year. Next year he hopes to double sales of the line for men ($500,000 since it was introduced).
M.A.C, the makeup and cosmetics company founded in Canada and now based in New York (its slogan is “All Races, All Sexes, All Ages”), isn’t saying how much revenue its products generate. But director of global communications Julie Leong says, “More men are coming to the counter” to talk about a grooming program, from a bronzer to an eyebrow gel. “They need help sorting it all out,” especially when it comes to makeup for covering up brown spots or spider veins. Gregory Arlt, a M.A.C senior makeup artist, has experienced firsthand how men, “especially executives, will ask in a hushed whisper, ‘Do you guys have any concealer or tinted moisturizer?’ ”
Is there makeup marketed exclusively to men? (Yes, but please refer to it as “complexion enhancers.”) Last year, Aramis launched a line called Surface, which includes gels that are supposed to smooth wrinkles and lines and shrink pores, erase oily spots on the face and give skin a healthy glow. Color concealers come in neutral, light and dark shades for covering under-eye circles, age spots or even the dreaded 5 o’clock shadow.
David Wolfe of The Doneger Group isn’t surprised. He’s seen it all, from the return and relapse of androgyny every 10 years to men in skirts. “Right now, right here in New York, all over Chelsea, there’s a chest- and back-waxing price war for male clients,” he says. “The offers are getting cheaper and cheaper. A guy can get a waxing for as little as $13. “If you’re a guy who’s Brad Pitt’s age, you can be cool and scruffy. But if you’re 50, that doesn’t work. You have to be better groomed, and that becomes painfully obvious to boomers whose skin, like their bodies, is falling apart.”
That means going to spas and salons, and sitting alongside women. “Most men and women are cool with that,” Wolfe says, “The dividing line between the genders is blurring.” After all, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports that last year more than 1 million men, an all-time high recorded by the group (as well as medical specialists such as dermatologists), had cosmetic surgery: 380,000 had surgical cosmetic procedures and 648,000 had nonsurgical procedures, such as chemical peels. Topping last year’s list of the most popular operations among men, as performed by surgeons certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery: eyelid surgeries (27,783 in 2000, more than triple the number in 1992), liposuction (26,632, about four times the 1992 figure), and nose reshaping and breast reductions (10,741 and 9,199, respectively).
Physicians are cashing in on the growth industry. But the products “are a small niche because they are used to supplement the prescriptions that are the real workhorses,” says Darren Casey, a spokesman for the American Academy of Dermatology. A dermatologic surgeon in Atlanta, Casey says dermatologists as well as plastic surgeons have “kind of marketed their own products, especially those difficult to get in this country that are imported. The products, he says, are “mostly a matter of trying to provide patients with either a superior or less expensive or convenient product. But we primarily still treat with prescription medicine.”
At his practice, Casey says men splurge on sunscreens and moisturizers. Like others in the profession, he’s seen an increase in male clients. “Five years ago we may have seen 20% men here. Now it’s at about 45% men who want the procedures and the products that can delay or minimize the signs of aging.”
Howard Murad, a dermatologist, is founder and CEO of El Segundo-based Murad Inc., which operates a skin-care company, day spa and medical practice for procedures such as chemical peels and micro hair transplants. Men’s spa attendance and use of procedures has grown from 15% last year to 25% this year, fueled, Murad says, by techniques that don’t involve major surgery. Among them are Botox injections, which are supposed to make frown and forehead wrinkles and crow’s feet disappear temporarily, and collagen injections, used primarily to erase lines around the mouth or acne scars.
Check out any newsstand and you’ll find ample evidence that men, like women, are bombarded with the promise of improvement, if not downright perfection. Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, Men’s Fitness and (reportedly coming in October) Vogue Man will entice with headlines about better diets, better abs, better biceps and better sex.
Someone--tens of thousands of someones--seems to be paying attention.
Jonathan Poe, a 31-year-old Beverly Hills graphic artist, says he’s noticed “more of my guy friends catching on with all the stuff that girls do to make themselves feel better. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.”
Poe uses moisturizers, a green tea-perfumed body milk, sun block, a green gel cleanser and a liquid body soap enriched with cucumber extract, and he has dabbled with concealers and powders to hide the shine on his face “out of curiosity and vanity.”
“Sure, it’s about your appearance,” he concedes, “but it’s also self-pampering, another way to take care of yourself, like drinking another glass of water.”
Ron Oliver, a 41-year-old director who recently completed an MTV pilot called “The New Girl,” grew up with good grooming habits. “My mom drilled this in my head: ‘You moisturize after you get out of the shower.’ So my whole life is all about that.”
He’s used them all: facial scrubs, gels, cleansers and anti-shine oils. A gay man who lives in West Hollywood, he credits the recent boom in grooming and cosmetic procedures to the gay culture. “The gay culture, in my opinion, has heavily influenced the trend. Same thing as always, the gay culture is 15 years ahead of everything else,” he says, adding that 15 years ago many a straight man “wouldn’t be caught dead doing this.”
Dean May, 25, has been coloring his hair for the last five years, first in shades and patterns, such as red leopard chunks. In the last two years, the dance club promoter has opted for a more sophisticated, professional look: a dark chocolate-brown dye job with blond highlights.
Sitting in a chair at Vidal Sassoon in Beverly Hills, May sports 48 foil packets tightly wound around locks of hair. “If the girls didn’t like it, I wouldn’t do it,” May says. “Besides, people aren’t as judgmental anymore about guys pampering themselves. It’s OK. It’s in the magazines.”
Phil Powers, the father of two boys, 4 and 7, used to believe “that real men don’t use moisturizers or take care of their skin or dye their hair. I came from the school of when you got up in the morning, you just washed your face. For a long time there’s been that stigma out there that grooming beyond soap and water was supposed to be something men didn’t do.”
But Powers, who is 52 and lives in Fountain Valley, recently quit his dot.com job and had to start looking for work. He underwent a make-over “because, in the marketing world, I need to appear younger. There’s a lot of young guys I’m competing with.” He cut his silver-gray hair short and had his wife, Pam, dye it medium brown, his original color, “and immediately I looked 15 years younger.”
Taking further cues from his wife, he has begun exfoliating and moisturizing every morning and night.
What’s next? Earlier this year, at a beauty and cosmetics fair in Bologna, Italy, the INCI S.P.A. company, based near Milan, introduced a makeup line for men called Dynamico that included a mascara gel (in transparent and black), a colored cream, concealer, lipstick and a pen for redesigning eyebrows and sideburns. Coming soon, possibly, to a mall near you.
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Styled by Alejandro Peraza/Beauty & Photo; hair: Colleen Conway/Celestine L.A.; makeup: Laura Mohlberg/Artists; model Jordan Ryan/Wilhelmina L.A.
