iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Bold brows are back. The classic Audrey Hepburn look is now framing the faces of Hollywood A-listers such as Jennifer Connelly, the Olsen Twins and Cara Delevingne.
For some women, though, years of overplucking mean it’s nearly impossible to achieve those thicker brows, so they’re turning to eyebrow transplants.
Ashley Wilkins, 26, began plucking her eyebrows when she was 12. Eventually, they stopped regrowing, she said.
“The more I would pluck and then the more I would try to grow them out and all I would get was just a few stray hairs,” she added.
It’s the same story for Grace Lee, 23, who overplucked and shaved her eyebrows for years until they stopped regrowing. The lack of brow hair affected her confidence, Lee said.
“I always needed to, like, draw my eyebrows, which took about 15 or 20 minutes. And just in general the shape and, like, how thin it was and how fake it looked just drawing it on just really …,” she said.
Lee and Wilkins both turned to Dr. Marc Dauer, a Los Angeles surgeon who specializes in hair restoration.
Last year, each woman underwent a procedure lasting between six and eight hours. During the procedure, a small strip of each woman’s scalp was carefully transferred onto her brow area — one follicle at a time — to create a new set of brows.
“We create the desired shape of the eyebrows,” Dauer said, explaining the process. “I use a needle that’s roughly a half a millimeter in diameter…It’s very, very small, and one by one we place the hairs exactly the way we want them to grow.”
The procedure costs around $7,000 and, Dauer says, it can take about a year to get full results.
After the procedure, both women can be seen with fuller-looking brows.
Lee is happy with the change. “It just looks awesome,” she said. “It just looks beautiful. Like, it just really boosts my confidence level.”
Wilkins was equally happy. “It really helped me,” she said, “and I hope that anyone out there who is looking to have the transplants done just thinks that it’s a great decision and moves forward with it because they’ll never look back.”
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