Proper Toppers

The latest thing at Sears, Roebuck is hair mail. Out from Sears in discreetly unmarked white envelopes all this month went 30,000 catalogues devoted wholly to its new line of men's "career-winning toupees." They ranged from the close-cropped Ivy League crew cut to the long-haired Hollywood model. Balding buyers measure their crowns with a tape sent by Sears, outline their open spaces on paper, pay $109.95 to $224.95 for a toupee--20% down, the rest in six installments. With proper care, which means alternating it with a second wig and sending it back to Sears every month or two for a dry cleaning (price: $5.50 to $7), the toupee should last for two years. Furthermore, boasts Sears: "It is as indistinguishable from the real thing as a falsie."

Sears estimates that 350,000 U.S. men wear hair pieces (also known as rugs, mats, doilies, divots), and that 15 million could use them. Sales were short until makers started advertising hair pieces in major magazines and newspapers five years ago. Since then, annual sales of such bigwigs as Hollywood's Max Factor & Co., Manhattan's House of Louis Feder Inc., and Joseph-Fleischer & Co. (Fleischer will make the Sears toupees from imported hair) have climbed close to $1,000,000 each. Total U.S. sales are estimated at $15 million a year. Says Louis Feder, a wigger himself: "We have put across the idea that a man is not completely dressed unless he has hair, too."

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