- As a victim of the ’90s pencil-thin brow trend, Brooke Marchand was tired of spending time filling in her eyebrows and dealing with fading microblading.
- At 42, an eyebrow transplant completely transformed her look and gave her the full, natural brows she had always wanted.
- Marchand talks with PEOPLE exclusively about the procedure and the unexpected upkeep.
The struggle to maintain full, youthful-looking eyebrows is often a daily frustration — one filled with pencils, gels, microblading appointments and constant upkeep. But what if there was a more permanent solution?
In 2022, one woman decided to take a different path. Frustrated with years of thinning brows, she flew to Miami for an eyebrow transplant and hasn’t looked back. Since the procedure, Brooke Marchand has experienced an increase in hair growth, making weekly brow trims a necessity.
“I was born in 1980. So around when I was like a late teen, early 20s. Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera, and really pencil-thin eyebrows, was the thing,” Brooke Marchand tells PEOPLE exclusively. “To achieve that, I would go and have my eyebrows waxed. And I don’t know how much you know about eyebrow hair, but if you over-wax or over-pluck, it stops growing.”
The trend left a lasting impact on Marchand and others in her generation who were left with sparse, barely-there brows.
Around 2017, she tried microblading to try and restore some fullness and shape, hoping to recreate the natural look she’d lost — but the results didn’t quite meet her expectations.
“Initially, they looked okay, but over time… they started to kind of blend together,” Marchand revealed. “So unfortunately, it just ended up looking basically like a stamp.”
The pigment eventually faded into an odd hue of pink, and when she sought a redo, Marchand was told she’d need removal first.
“I thought this isn’t gonna happen for me,” she recalls. “My fear was that whatever little hair was left would potentially be damaged from the removal.”
However, at age 42, Marchand decided to take control of the situation after discovering the option of an eyebrow transplant. “I saw Chrissy Teigen… she posted [her experience] on social media, and I thought, maybe this is something that I could do?” Marchand recalls. “Maybe this is like a very real possibility for me.”
The idea of a more permanent, natural-looking solution stuck with her, and she wasn’t alone in feeling that eyebrows could have an outsized impact on appearance.
“I know it’s such a weird, niche thing to think about, but eyebrows make such a huge difference,” Marchand emphasizes. “When you see someone with pencil-thin eyebrows, you’re like, ‘OK, they’re obviously in their 40s, because that’s my generation. My generation doesn’t have eyebrows.’”
She says it’s not about chasing youth, but about enhancing her natural look. “Not that I’m trying to turn back time, but one way to look a lot more youthful without doing a lot of plastic surgery to my face was just to simply get eyebrows,” she admits. “And I think it makes me look 10 years younger.”
The procedure itself, Marchand says, was “completely painless.” She found a doctor in Miami, Anthony Bared, M.D., F.A.C.S., who has specialized in hair restoration for the last 14 years.
After doing her research, the $5,500 price tag felt well worth it, especially compared to the $15,000–$20,000 charged by other clinics.
“Eyebrow restoration is arguably my favorite hair restoration procedure to perform because of the positive impact it makes on my patients,” Dr. Bared tells PEOPLE. “I typically achieve naturalness and very good to excellent regrowth percentage regardless of whether the eyebrows were always thin or if the lost hair is due to overplucking, scarring, or tattooing.”
Dr. Bared and his designated “eyebrow team” achieve natural-appearing results by using the smallest tools – typically 0.5mm custom-designed blades – to ensure the quickest healing, no scarring, and the ideal direction and flatness of hair growth.
“They numb the back of your head, they make an incision, and they take a strip of hair,” Marchand explains. “And then the doctor comes in… and places, individually, every single hair in your brow.”
According to an article Dr. Bared authored on facial hair transplantation, the donor hair usually comes from the scalp because it grows back well. Hair from other parts of the body can be used too, but it doesn’t grow back as reliably and isn’t always easy to get.
Post-procedure, Marchand experienced some bruising and swelling around the eyes, but says she was not in any pain or discomfort.
While the maintenance of her new brows may be minimal, it is not nonexistent. “They grow as quickly as the hair on your head. So I trim my eyebrows once a week, at least,” Marchand says. She also laminates them every 6–8 weeks, but notes that’s mostly due to her hair type. “I have very coarse hair,” she says. “I think other people with thinner, finer hair wouldn’t need that.”
The results, Marchand reveals, have been life-changing. “I have had to reshape them because … it was in abundance. I was able to kind of get in and make them the shape that I want,” she reveals. “I’m so thrilled with the outcome of my hair.”
Marchand regularly receives compliments on her eyebrows and admits that people are often surprised when she tells them they are transplanted. “I would do it again, and I would absolutely recommend it to other people,” she says. “It’s one of my favorite things that I’ve ever had done.”
For anyone tired of drawing on eyebrows each morning or disappointed by the long-term look of microblading, Marchand’s experience serves as proof: eyebrow transplants might just be an option more people should be talking about.
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