Bearded bonces get a hair go

Beat that: Contestants in Germany’s Garmish-Partenkirchen beard contest.

Style mavens take note: The beard is back.

Gone are the days when beards were the preserve of tweed-jacketed academics, acid jazz fans or grungy students.

Thoroughly modern males are increasingly opting to wear beards, even in some stuffier office jobs.

“It is becoming more mainstream,” Evan Rolton, who owns the Rockit Barber Shop in Melbourne, agrees.

“Suits are usually quite clean-shaven guys but I’m seeing more and more beards creep into that whole area as well,” the owner of Sydney’s Grand Royal Barbers, Steve Salecich, says.

Those who opt to sport facial hair are taking fashion cues from the ilk of Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover, swimmer and style icon Ian Thorpe and Manly Sea Eagles player David Williams, rather than the more barefaced British singer Craig David.

“Goatees aren’t in any more, it’s more of the full-face beard,” Rolton says.

Despite their growing popularity among those in public and corporate life, beards remain relatively scarce. Some exceptions include Labor senator Kim Carr, Flight Centre chief executive Graham Turner and former NSW supreme court judge and composer George Palmer.

Former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery, now a visiting professorial fellow at the University of NSW, has worn a full beard since February 1971, when he was a public defender in Papua New Guinea.

He slept through an alarm, woke late for a plane to go on circuit to Mt Hagen and didn’t have time to shave.

“I decided to leave things that way and see how it went,” he says. “The judge had to endure a burgeoning beard throughout the circuit. The only suggestion to remove it came from that judge, who thought it just looked untidy [as it did as it grew].

“But even he got used to it after a couple of weeks.”

George Palmer says he has never been asked to remove his beard.

“I don’t think anyone in the workplace is at all interested in my facial adornments or lack thereof,” he says. “My performance in my job has been the only criterion in my career.

“In any event, judges have worn beards from time immemorial, in the fond hope that a beard will make you look as wise as Solomon. As a judge, you need all the help you can get.”

Palmer has had a beard since he was 20, shaving it off during holidays once or twice. Like many men, he first grew it to save time on shaving.

“Each extra second in bed was precious. And my father set a respectable precedent as he always had a beard, as did his father ... as does my son.

“Perhaps beards and early morning indolence run together as a genetic inheritance in our family.”

For those that choose to wear beards in a corporate environment, this association with laziness needs to be banished.

Beards, like suits, must look groomed and require regular attention.

“Normally it’s ... the two-day growth towards a three-week growth, but then it’s cleaned up,” Rolton says.

Men also need to know their limits. Try as they might, not everyone can grow luxuriant facial adornments like those of actors George Clooney or Brad Pitt.

“Obviously it depends on how they can grow a beard, if it’s full coverage,” Janelle Jefferies, head consultant at styling company Eye For A Guy, says.

Full grey beards, patchy beards, spiky beards – with hair that stands up on end rather than sitting softly and mottled, are all to be avoided, Jefferies decrees.

But for those who can grow a good beard, it offers the opportunity to alter their appearance and can be flattering to different facial types.

Do you have a weak chin, a round or long face? Barbers can sculpt beards to conjure up optical illusions, even accentuate your manliness.

“With beards we can really change the whole shape of the face,” Salecich says.

But although the times are changing for those who wear beards, they still remain a no no in some of the nation’s more conservative working environments.

In those cases, the cue is likely to come from a (clean-shaven) boss.

“Their bosses would say shave it off,” Salecich insists.

BRW

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