Gawker May Have Just Solved the Mystery of Trump's Hair

It involves metal clamps, donor hair, a shadowy expert, and lots of money
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted May 24, 2016 7:04 PM CDT
Gawker May Have Just Solved the Mystery of Trump's Hair
Donald Trump speaks at the National Rifle Association convention earlier this month in Kentucky.   (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

"Remember the $500 haircut?" quips Gawker's John Cook? That's nothing. Gawker just went all Woodward and Bernstein on Donald Trump's "inscrutable hairdo." A tipster, French patents, multiple lawsuits, an archived website, and more have led the Ashley Feinberg to pen a 3,479-word piece that is "perhaps the first plausible" answer "to the riddle of Donald Trump's hair." That answer is, essentially, a $60,000 weave. The trail starts with a customer (that tipster) of Ivari International telling Gawker that Trump was also a client. Ivari International specializes in "microcylinder intervention." These microcylinders are made of strands of donor hair that "mingle with your own hair" after being attached with thread and small metal clamps. In 2007, the treatment cost $60,000 and required near-monthly maintenance for up to $3,000 a pop.

Strengthening the source's claims: In 1997, the Ivari International website listed Trump Tower as its New York City location. What's more, it claimed to be located on the 25th floor, home to Trump's offices and apparently nothing else. While Ivari International continues to exist, its only public location is in Paris, though it appears difficult to impossible to actually get an appointment. Gawker says it's possible the whole enterprise is kept afloat by "mega-client" Trump. Ivari International and its founder, Edward Ivari, have been the subject of multiple lawsuits. In one, a judge called the results of microcylinder intervention "exorbitantly priced hairpieces" and the "functional equivalent of wigs." Another suit alleged Ivari basically held a client's hair hostage while demanding loans between $250,000 and $1 million for "various highly suspicious and illegal operations." Read the entire hair-raising story here. (Trump wondered last year whether Hillary Clinton was wearing a wig.)

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