It was on a windy day back in May that Lily Bling, London’s foremost fashion and cosmetic surgery socialite, realised he needed a hair transplant. “A gust of cold air forced itself towards my visage, and I caught a mirrored image of my widow’s peak within the Prada Bond Street window,” he tells Dazed Beauty, looking back on that crucial moment in his journey. “And with that, I made a decision: enough was enough.” One £7000 bank transfer from his father later, and Lily was on the surgery tables of Harley Street, starting his own journey to a fuller head of hair.

Lily isn’t alone: even men which might be shy of the knife, or wouldn’t consider themselves vain, are actually contemplating hair transplant surgery to present themselves an entire latest head of hair. Recent statistics from the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery show that, in Europe alone, nearly 80,000 procedures related to hair restoration were accomplished in 2016; an unlimited increase from the 29,800 accomplished a decade earlier. The one constant though? 85% of those opting to undergo with the arduous process are men.

It’s not necessarily a latest trend. In reality, so far as back because the Forties, Japanese doctors were using what we consider to be pretty modern processes to graft hair follicles on to people’s brows and lashes after various war injuries from World War Two. It will take twenty years for similar techniques to finally reach the US, where an abundance of cosmetic surgery research led to the procedure becoming way more common in men hoping to combat early onset male pattern baldness.

Dr Raghu Reddy is a hair transplant surgeon at The Private Clinic of Harley Street. “Lately there was a gradual increase within the variety of men coming to me for hair transplants, and I don’t see this slowing down in 2019,” he tells us, saying their first surge in bookings got here from “a growing variety of clients, including celebrities, openly admitting to having had a hair transplant” and subsequently referring their friends. An advancement in techniques plays an enormous part in it too; the slick end results today are a far cry from the drab toupee looks of the past.

There are two common forms of procedure to resolve hair loss: Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE), and Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT). While lately the previous is more popular, because of less intense scarring as individual hairs are removed and placed elsewhere, many surgeons still prefer FUT, which involves a strip of skin being faraway from the back of the pinnacle and individually harvesting as many hair follicles as needed, before replacing them in the specified places. It’s more practical for certain patients, however the aftercare is a bit tougher to cope with.

Over time, there’s been a sizeable stigma attached to men losing their hair at a younger age, with the notion of naturally going bald being treated prefer it’s something to fear. Just take a look at all of the memes dedicated to mercilessly mocking HRH Prince William. But on the flip side, those that are experiencing male pattern baldness and are literally doing something about it – undergoing surgery, for instance – are also stigmatised for indulging in a moment of vanity.

In consequence, many famous faces have undergone the surgery up to now without telling the general public, leaving the rumour mill to churn out ‘has he or hasn’t he?’ stories. It was, funnily enough, a famous British footballer who managed to vary the conversation barely: Wayne Rooney. The British press and football fans ridiculed the player, then in his early 20s, for having a receding hairline, and so in 2011, he underwent a £13,500 procedure to revive it. And he let everybody know too, tweeting about how happy he was with the outcomes. From that moment forward, the likelihood of men – particularly heterosexual men – being ridiculed for going under the knife to repair it dropped barely. “From Premier League footballers to Hollywood actors, increasingly more stars are going public with their treatment,” Dr Reddy concurs. “With hair transplants becoming mainstream medicine, we’re operating on men who up to now may not have had the boldness to go ahead with the treatment.”

One in all them is Ross: a 25-year-old creative from Peckham who, despite still having a full head of hair, is fully aware of the indisputable fact that becoming bald is on the horizon. “I’ve all the time been super conscious of losing my hair, taking a great deal of care to be sure that that doesn’t occur. But when it did go? 100%, I’d get a transplant.” We wondered if that was because people still considered baldness a terrifying thing to come across. “It’s definitely still a bit taboo,” he claims. “We still associate age as an indication of weakness in our society, and baldness is associated as a symptom of ageing – despite the fact that it’s something that may occur irrespective of how old you’re.”

Charlie, a trainee lawyer from Glasgow, has been faced with the same fate with regards to his hairline. The social stigma surrounding surgery doesn’t trouble him a lot. “I reckon celebrities getting it done helps others who wish to go down that route,” he tells us. “There’s more acceptance towards men who take care of themselves. Now, it’s nothing greater than personal preference. I’d consider it if it was secure and the value was decent.”

That’s, perhaps, the most important obstruction for anyone contemplating a transplant: cost. To undergo a non-public clinic – the one reliable option to undergo the procedure for cosmetic purposes because it’s seldom covered by the NHS – FUE would cost anywhere from £3,000 to £30,000. It’s no surprise that the super wealthy are those going through with it.

That cost also cuts out the very demographic that’s showing an interest in undergoing surgery too: cash-strapped millennials of their 20s and 30s. Nowadays, studies conducted in China show that men are going balder faster than any generation that came before them. Some think it could be all the way down to stress; others, like Dr Emily L Guo who studied the trend, think it could be all the way down to a lack of proper nutrients in our increasingly common vegan and vegetarian diet.

There are cheaper alternatives for that group, though. Minoxidil is a chemical present in the over-the-counter treatments that, when massaged into the scalp, helps blood flow to shrinking hair follicles. There’s also a pill available on prescription called Propecia that blocks testosterone breakdown, which is primarily used to combat male pattern baldness. But there’s plenty of aspects, based in your skin type and the way in which that you simply’re losing your hair, which means none of those – including transplants – might be considered reliable ways of rescuing your balding head.

But for individuals who can, perhaps that deep-rooted stigma attached to men proudly gracing a full head of surgically-enhanced hair after being spotted balding just a few months prior is finally reaching its end; a phenomenal embrace of the Blings and the Rooneys of the world, the gays and the straights coming together to advertise a world of stunning, zhuzhed up hairdos with not a bald spot in sight. “All of us have a fear of ageing, hence our current obsession with quick solutions like botox and fillers,” Lily says. “But why have a head that resembles an egg, when it might be fertilised with long luscious locks that flow just like the Ganges, hiding your jowls and nasolabial folds?”

Lily has a degree: suddenly resembling Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus after weeping over strands of hair within the shower plug is nothing to be ashamed of. In reality, it’s a glow-up that men should embrace like no other. So if someone approaches you, asking in case your hair is of course that full, well-formed and iconic, don’t be afraid to inform them the reality. That is 2019, and sometimes giving a middle finger to nature’s path for you may be more empowering than you could possibly ever imagine.