From the founding fathers' full beards to Tom Selleck's moustache, facial hair has been part of the great American story for centuries.
From the founding fathers' full beards to Tom Selleck's moustache, facial hair has been part of the great American story for centuries.
Now a Norfolk grooming specialist is hoping to go against the grain after cutting a deal with a stateside retail giant.
F&M Cosmetics, based in Hethersett, has shipped nearly 20,000 of its Percy Nobleman brand gift sets to the US.
Founder Freddy Furber said: 'We have sold gift sets into Walgreens, across 2,500 stores, for this Christmas. That is our trial with the retailer, with the hope of potentially getting in there full-time.'
The American male grooming market was estimated last year to be worth $6bn annually, by Euromonitor, with products such as beard oils seeing a 4% rise, while growth in shaving equipment slowed.
'The US is the biggest single market available to us because of the common language,' Mr Furber said. 'America is enormous and full of beardy guys, particularly the younger demographic. It is a huge opportunity for us and we want to make sure we take the right steps.
'Arguably it is where the recent trend stemmed from and for an English company to be considered part of that is fantastic.'
Mr Furber said he thought the quintessentially British charm of the eponymous Percy Nobleman brand, which tells the story of a fictional English gentleman, could work well on the east and west coasts.
He was less sure how the brand would be received in American heartlands – where homegrown goods, which president Donald Trump has vowed to protect, tend to be favoured.
The brand is marketed through a series of comic strips, devised by Mr Furber, which tell Percy's adventures which aim to build the vintage image of the firm.
Percy Nobleman, which has a turnover of £1.5m, is also expanding its reach in Europe with the brand being rolled out across all 500 stores of the Douglas chain in Germany.
Mr Furber said there had also been an increase in sales in the UK, with his products now taking up 10 lines in more than 400 Boots stores, seeing growth of 20% for the last year. He added the firm was working on a collaboration with a global beard trimmer maker and with new markets was expecting to see the team of nine people rise to 12.
All American whiskers
The American fashion for facial hair dates back to the years leading up to the civil war when, as racial tension grew, white Americans began to avoid the predominantly black barbershops.
With the high risk of tetanus from a cut, whiskers became fashionable, giving rise to the style of bear sported by the likes of Abraham Lincoln.
Since then, styles have changed from the mutton chops of Ambrose Burnside to the toothbrush moustache of Charlie Chaplin and the morning stubble of the 2000s.
Poet Walt Whitman wore a full beard as facial hair made a comeback in the mid-19th century, after falling out of favour in the 1700s. Styles in the 1900s included handlebar moustaches and goatees. Magnum PI actor Tom Selleck made the chevron moustache popular in the 1980s, while wrestler Hulk Hogan has modelled a bleached horseshoe moustache.
More recently, stars such as Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt have also put down the razor.
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