Maine men have the N.Y. look

It would be an understatement to say that rural Maine has never been known as a hotbed of men’s fashion.

For decades, those familiar woodsy men with long hair, full beards and flannel shirts who still abound in the Maine countryside would have been considered as nothing less than throwbacks, in a fashion sense, people hopelessly stuck in the hippie counterculture era.

But all that has finally changed, it seems.

Unlikely as it sounds, those same shaggy-headed Maine guys are right now on the cutting edge of the men’s fashion world. Strolling the streets of New York, they would be gazed upon as sexy trendsetters, as models of taste and refinement.

I never could have imagined such a thing had I not read about it recently in the Style section of The New York Times, which keeps me abreast of all the latest appallingly chic styles that I’d never be caught dead wearing.

Sharing the cover with an article that told of the joys of unisex perfumes was a story that ran under the eye-catching headline: “Paul Bunyan, Modern-Day Sex Symbol.”

Below it was a photograph of a thick-bearded, long-haired young male runway model. Except for the Ralph Lauren suit and Brad Pitt handsomeness, he looked just like a million college yearbook pictures from the 1960s and ’70s, mine included, and a bit like Johnny Damon, too, before the ballplayer went over to the dark side and became a clean-cut Yankee.

Beards, it turns out, are all the rage at the moment. No, not those silly near-beards that look as if a guy hasn’t shaved for three days, and certainly not goatees, which are so yesterday, but big bushy beards that would have made Benjamin Harrison and Ulysses S. Grant feel right at home.

At New York Fashion Week in April, the Times reported, “at least a half-dozen designers showed up with furry faces.”

A few fashionable beard enthusiasts suggested in the story that this curious new hirsuteness is a backlash to the metrosexual stylings of recent years, when men eagerly joined women in plucking, waxing and shaving every hair from their faces. Men, both straight and gay, the story said, suddenly want to feel “rough and manly.”

Many celebrities are sporting the wooly-whiskered look, which means that the trend will eventually catch on in mainstream America. George Clooney recently grew a face full of fur, as did his fellow actors Heath Ledger, Mel Gibson and a famous film star I’ve never heard of named Hugo Weaving.

As the editor of the style magazine Cargo explained to the Times, he and his male partner “both like that aesthetic of New England cabins with antlers on the wall, plaid shirts and a beard.”

Rusticator chic hits the Big Apple. Who could have guessed? Perhaps GQ magazine will show up at the Common Ground Fair this summer to do a fashion spread.

Several years ago, during a performance I attended at the University of Maine, the blues-balladeer Bonnie Raitt stopped her band in the middle of a song and asked that the house lights be turned up. Shielding her eyes, she then scanned the audience, which was filled with long-haired men, beards and lots of flannel.

“I’ve always wondered where all the hippies went,” she joked to loud applause. “I guess you’re all up here in Maine.”

Just waiting to be discovered by the world of high fashion, as it turns out.