DONALD TRUMP.
The man, the myth, the haircut.
The Iowa Caucus that will kick off the race for the Republican nomination is now just a week away, the media’s focus has been on a field of candidates determined to outdo each other for right-wing rhetoric.
While it has been easy to find out where Trump – who is placing just behind Ted Cruz in the polls – stands on on immigration, Muslims or his fellow Republican candidates, question marks remain over what exactly is going on with his hair.
His signature style has long been the focus of speculation and mockery, and while the man himself has always been quick to state that it’s his own – not everyone is convinced.
“It is a combover,” says Keith Fraher, owner of The Barber’s Room in Dublin, “he’d take it from the back around across the front. He has one very long section and he covers in the top with it.”
This isn’t the first time that these accusations have been leveled at him, and Trump has never been shy about pulling back his hair to show off his hairline.
What does Fraher make of that?
“There are all sorts of products you can get,” he explains.
You can get fibres and they’ll bond to your hair. It’ll make it look like you have quite a lot of hair until you wash your hair… you would use the keratin fibres. It’s like a dust that you stick on to dry hair and it really, really thickens it up.
Yinka Martin, the owner Hairweavon, a hair replacement and hair extension surgery in Dublin, takes a more generous view.
“I believe it’s actually his own hair not a hair replacement,” she says.
Rather it is just that the property tycoon has gone for an outdated style.
“He has the top section grown very long and brushed forward to cover his thinning hair,” she explains.
“In my opinion, with no evidence of a scar from a hair transplant operation combined with the thinning at the front, it’s a fair assessment to say it’s his hair.
It’s just a very bad and outdated cut which I believe he has started wearing to disguise his thinning hair and a cowlick.
And – jest as you may – the man has his defenders.
In a Quartz article last December, hairstylist Caroline Mitgang dismissed theories that the presidential hopeful is rocking either a toupee or a comb over.
She stated that his hair-do is the result of “an aggressive cowlick with a forward-aiming growth pattern” and that rather than trying to hide anything, he simply has a “dated style that nobody likes”.
So there you go.
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