SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Obnoxious holiday sweaters are popular again - right? Nope. Sorry. We're already past those five minutes. Grey, the fancy London ad agency, says the time has arrived for Beard Baubles - men hanging little, tiny ornaments in their beards. I don't know if any other spot on the body's permitted - ears, nose - come on, use your imagination now.But the Grey people sent along a digital portrait of a couple of swarthy guys who have beards that could be out of a pirate movie, except they have tiny red and green ornaments hanging from their curly beards. It's not a look you'd expect to see on, say, Colin Firth. A site called BEARD BAUBLES - capital letters - says they are already sold out of beard baubles - lowercase - but says they'll have more soon.
Moses, Lincoln and Ernest Hemingway all had beards. But so far as we know, they never bedecked them with baubles - at least in public. Imagine Moses coming down from the mountain with 10 Commandments but people counted his beard baubles, or Lincoln at Gettysburg - fourscore he'd begin, and people might ask, is he counting his beard baubles? I have yet to see a single human being who is not in a press release that is wearing beard baubles, but maybe I'm sheltered in the studio. Proceeds from the sales of beard baubles will go to Beard Season, an Australia group that encourages men to grow beards to make people more aware of melanoma. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.