If you thought the plastic surgery trend was slowing down a bit as women go to injectables such as Botox and Restalyne, think again. The hottest new procedure is to have eyelash transplants in order to have long, lush eyelashes and reduce the need for mascara.
Using procedures pioneered by the hair loss industry for balding men, surgeons are using "plug and sew" techniques to give women long, sweeping lashes once achieved only by glued on extensions and thick lashings of mascara.
And just like human hair -- for that is the origin -- these lashes just keep on growing.
"Longer, thicker lashes are an ubiquitous sign of beauty. Eyelash transplantation does for the eyes what breast augmentation does for the figure," said Dr Alan Bauman, a leading proponent of eyelash transplants.
"This is a brand new procedure for the general public (and) it is going to explode," Bauman told Reuters during what was billed as the world's first live eyelash surgery workshop for about 40 surgeons from around the world.
Under the procedure, a small incision is made at the back of the scalp to remove 30 or 40 hair follicles which are carefully sewn one by one onto the patient's eyelids. Only light sedation and local anesthetics are used and the cost is around $3,000 an eye.
The technique was first confined to patients who had suffered burns or congenital malformations of the eye. But word spread and about 80 percent are now done for cosmetic reasons.
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The surgery is not for everyone. The transplanted eyelashes grow just like head hair and need to be trimmed regularly and sometimes curled. Very curly head hair makes for eyelashes with too much kink.
We think eyelash transplants are wonderful and certainly worth it for burn patients, chemo survivors whose eyelashes don't grow back and for alopecia sufferers. But the idea of having surgery just because our eyelashes require some good lengthening mascara to look great is just too much for us. There are plenty of other procedures we'd consider before we went that route.
Can you imagine having to cut your eyelashes because they grow half an inch a month, just like your hair? And having to curl them so they don't droop down onto your cheeks? The mind boggles.
When the need for extreme eyelash length strikes us, we'll go for these lovely Shu Uemura False Eyelashes #1, which retail for $15 at Shu Uemura. And if you're feeling a bit more fashion-forward, you can see Shu Uemura's dramatic new Tokyo Lash Bar Collection of wild eyelashes that look like feathers, wings and everything in between here.
If you thought the plastic surgery trend was slowing down a bit as women go to injectables such as Botox and Restalyne, think again. The hottest new procedure is to have 
