A beard says a great deal about a man. Worn well, it structures the face and sharpens the whole look; left neglected, it ages and tires the features. And beneath the hair lies a skin that is almost always forgotten. Here are the essentials, from the sun to the silhouette.
Does it really protect against the sun?
Yes, in part. Measurements from the University of Queensland show that a beard blocks fifty to ninety-five percent of UV rays*, depending on its thickness, its length and the angle of the sun. The effect is real but uneven: the exposed areas, from the cheekbones to the nose and on to the forehead and the area around the eyes, remain unprotected, and a thin beard lets the rays through. On the uncovered skin, then, you apply a facial SPF, like the men's options we covered in our SPF issue. And to protect the beard and the hair from the sun, a hair mist such as the René Furterer Fluide d'Été Protecteur SPF50 does the job, in a light spray, never a greasy cream on the hair. The beard helps, but it does not replace protection.
Caring for it day to day
A fine beard is washed and nourished, just like the hair. You cleanse it with a beard shampoo, since shower gel dries it out, two to three times a week. You nourish it with a beard oil or balm, which softens the hair, calms the itching and tames the unruly ones, like the beard oil from Horace, natural and affordable. You then keep it in line with a boar-bristle brush, such as those from Plisson 1808, a French house, handmade and shipped within France. There remains the point everyone forgets: the skin underneath. Deprived of care, it itches, flakes and produces that notorious beard dandruff. The fix is to cleanse and hydrate it like the rest of the face, and a good beard oil, rich in jojoba and argan, in fact nourishes the hair as much as the skin. It is the skin that makes a beard healthy.
The shape: the outline is everything
A full beard that is poorly defined looks untidy. Everything comes down to two lines: that of the neck, at the height of the Adam's apple, neither too high nor too low, and that of the cheeks, clean, following the natural growth. You maintain them every two or three days, and for the first shaping, nothing beats a good barber. In Paris, there is no shortage of high-end names, from Le Cercle Delacre to La Barbière de Paris and Gentlemen 1919. One visit sets the line, which you then keep up at home.
Filling the gaps: transplant and dermopigmentation
For a sparse or uneven beard, two medical options exist. The beard transplant, by the FUE technique, implants real hairs to add lasting density, with specialists such as Dr Ralph Abbou or the Centre Racine Carrée. Dermopigmentation, for its part, recreates the look of density without surgery, through micro-pigmentation, offered notably at CMCC Paris. These are serious procedures, to be weighed carefully and entrusted to expert hands: you do your research, you compare, and you do not rush.
A beard is seen, while the skin beneath is neglected. In sixty minutes, I care for the skin of the whole face, beard included: clear, soothed, free of itching and redness.
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* Parisi AV et al., "Dosimetric investigation of the solar erythemal UV radiation protection provided by beards and moustaches", Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 2012.