Checking Out Cheek Chic

By Jay Cocks

Victor Kiam is steamed. Perhaps a certain sympathy is due. After all, this is a man who became a king of commerce and a television-commercial celebrity, even rated a profile on 60 Minutes, all by dedicating himself to a single proposition: the male face should be smooth, sheared of growth, preferably by the ministrations of a steady hand holding a Remington Micro Screen shaver. And now look what has happened. Stubble is sprouting on faces everywhere. Stubble is--even Kiam has to face it--in.

Look anywhere, in fact. Check out the models in GQ. Tune in Miami Vice and watch Don Johnson as Detective Crockett bag the bad guys. Catch Bob Geldof on the news shows; he must be so busy raising money for famine relief in Africa that he lacks the time and inclination to drag a blade across his jaw. Grab some rays at a tennis tournament and scrutinize the botanical shadow on Bjorn Borg's face. Take a trip down to the local triplex: Mickey Rourke, Timothy Hutton and Christopher Lambert are scruffing up the screen; Mel Gibson, as Mad Max, is atomizing his enemies; Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris are rounding up all those POWs and MIAs in Asia. It's a jungle out there, and when the enemy is lurking in the undergrowth, who's got time to worry about three days' growth?

Such spectacles as these, suggesting the start of a full-blown trend, just might put a tiny chink in the razor business and a serious crimp in Kiam's sunny sales pitch, not to mention his syntax. "Is Don Johnson of the prehistoric cavemen who didn't know how to start fires nor learned good grooming?" he spluttered recently. Indeed, a little perspective might be useful right now, although the historical foundation for this great stubble bubble stops somewhat short of the dawn of man.

Going without a shave for a few days used to be mostly an act of practical ritual (Jack Dempsey never shaved on the day of a fight) or of casual defiance, like the raggedness of the 1950s beats. Actors showed stubble in movies only when their characters had been through the wringer or on a bender; even rebels like Brando, Dean and Clift were smooth cheeked. But when Clint Eastwood rode through those Italian westerns in the '60s, a meaner, more maverick kind of frontier hero was born, an amusingly amoral gunslinger whose standard equipment was a Colt Peacemaker, a cheroot, a sarape and a five-day stubble. In 1975 when Italian Designer Giorgio Armani started to show clothes that would turn menswear inside out, his models sported jackets of wrinkled linen and cheeks shadowed by whiskers. Says the designer in retrospect: "It evokes something tender, rather than a polished, sharp look." It took almost ten years for the look to travel from Milan to Miami, but while Johnson and Vice flash thrive, stubble will surely survive.

"I feel more sexy, more virile, and it helps me get into character," says Ford Model Philip Sturgeon, who has appeared, whiskers bristling, in magazine layouts and ad campaigns for Levi's and Macy's California. In the words of Wilhelmina Artists' Agent Christopher Mertz, "Now it's a commodity, it's a look the clients can bank on." Says New York Casting Director Billy Serow: "A couple of years ago, it was the James Garner-Mariette Hartley look. Today, if you're dealing with anything hip, Miami Vice is the prototype."

Michael Bennett, director-choreographer of A Chorus Line and Dreamgirls, opted for the unshaven look because "I got bored looking in the mirror. I don't think it's interpreted as being sloppy any longer. It's part of the '80s." Actor David Keith (An Officer and a Gentleman, Gulag) has a specific practical reason for his stubble: "Zits. I'm 31 and I still break out when I shave." Ford Model Christopher Schwarz says, "It seems like women find stubble very sexy. They get the sense of kissing someone adventurous. They love to rub their faces in it."

Grooming just the right growth can be a problem. Keith knows his stubble is starting to turn into a beard "when it bothers me against my pillow and bends in every direction." He cuts the whiskers back with hair clippers. Patrice Serrani, grooming editor of GQ, suggests a somewhat more structured method: "Shave in downward strokes--with, rather than against, the beard. Do it at night, and in the morning you'll have the look." A ray of hope for Kiam here, however: Serrani recommends using an electric shaver. There are also encouraging words from Kitty Hawks, creative director for Perry Ellis: "One day Don Johnson is going to shave, and it'll be all over."

Come to think of it, there might be a Miami Vice subplot in all this. Hyped-up businessman arrives from out of town, hightails it around Miami trying to get the city's sleekest vice cop to drop his Bren 10 and try a Remington. Dialogue would not necessarily be a problem. "Go ahead, go ahead," the razor businessman could tell the cornered Crockett. "I tried it once, and I liked it so much I bought the company." --By Jay Cocks. Reported by Elizabeth Rudulph/New York

With reporting by Reported by Elizabeth Rudulph/New York