Harry Love Island Hair Transplant: The Full Story Behind His Transformation
Written by Pouya Raeesian
It’s funny how a seven-year-old YouTube video can send the internet into a complete frenzy. That’s exactly what happened when footage of Love Island 2025 contestant Harry Cooksley sitting in a Turkish hair clinic, looking almost unrecognisably different, started doing the rounds on TikTok and X. Within hours, people were deep in the rabbit hole. Before and afters. Zoomed-in screenshots. Comment sections going absolutely wild.
But here’s the thing: Harry never tried to hide it. He just got on with his life. And now, with millions watching, his story has sparked a conversation that’s long overdue.
What You Read
He Wasn't Always the Guy with the Mullet
Walk into the Love Island villa and Harry Cooksley commands attention. The mullet. The confidence. The easy grin. He looks like someone who has never once worried about his hair.
But wind the clock back to his early twenties, and it’s a very different picture. Harry started losing his hair in his late teens, which is genuinely quite early even by the standards of male pattern baldness. By the time he hit 20, he already had a noticeably receding hairline and thinning around the temples. For a young lad who played semi-professional football and was very much in the public eye of his local community, that wasn’t easy to deal with.
His workaround? Caps. Lots of them. It’s the oldest trick in the book, and one that millions of men quietly resort to without ever really talking about why. You just wear the cap. Every day. And hope nobody brings it up.
At 24, He Decided Enough Was Enough
There’s a particular kind of clarity that hits when you realise you’re done accommodating something that’s making you miserable. For Harry, that moment came at 24. Young by most people’s reckoning for a procedure like this, but when you’ve been watching your hairline retreat since your teens, waiting starts to feel pointless.
He didn’t mess around. He did his research, found a clinic in Istanbul he trusted, booked his flights, and went. The whole thing was documented on video, a remarkably candid and unfiltered look at the process from the moment he arrived in Turkey to the final result. He described it as “the perfect experience for something I really wanted to have done,” adding that he was “very glad” he found the clinic he chose.
No drama. No regret. Just a bloke who made a decision and got on with it.
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Here’s where things get a bit surreal. The YouTube video of Harry Cooksley’s hair transplant journey, posted by the Turkish clinic that carried out the procedure, had been sitting online largely unwatched for years. Then Love Island 2025 was announced, Harry’s face appeared on the cast list, and suddenly someone found it.
The clip spread like wildfire. Before-and-after compilations started appearing everywhere. His old football club, Farnham Town FC, started posting throwback videos on TikTok to celebrate his appearance on the show, which helpfully illustrated just how different he used to look. “Love Island Harry hair transplant” became one of the most searched terms associated with the show. People were genuinely fascinated.
And the reaction, for the most part, was overwhelmingly positive. Not mocking. Not sneering. Actually quite warm.
The Video That Broke the Internet
This is where it gets interesting from a clinical perspective. Harry didn’t just have a standard hair transplant. He had what’s known as a sapphire FUE, which stands for Follicular Unit Extraction, using sapphire-tipped blades rather than conventional steel.
The difference matters more than it might sound. Sapphire blades allow for larger, more precise incisions in the recipient area of the scalp. That means less tissue trauma, faster healing, reduced scarring, and a more natural distribution of the transplanted follicles. It’s one of the more advanced techniques available, and it goes a long way to explaining why Harry’s hair transplant results look so clean.
He had 3,000 grafts transplanted, targeting his hairline and the midscalp area where the thinning was most pronounced. Today, his temples are completely covered. His natural hair texture does the rest of the work. If you didn’t already know, you genuinely wouldn’t guess.
The Actual Procedure: What Harry Had Done
If you’ve ever looked into hair transplants, you’ll know that Turkey, and Istanbul specifically, keeps coming up. And there’s a good reason for that. The country has spent the better part of two decades building a genuine reputation for high-quality hair restoration at prices that are simply incomparable to what you’d pay in the UK. We’re talking about clinics with internationally trained surgeons, state-of-the-art equipment, and thousands of successful procedures under their belts.
Harry chose Clinic in Istanbul for his Love Island hair transplant, a clinic that has since leaned into its association with him quite enthusiastically. The procedure is estimated to have cost him somewhere in the region of £5,500 to £5,600. Either way, for the results he got, most people who know anything about the industry would consider that reasonable value.
Ready to change how you look and feel?
Get your consultation now — your new self is waiting.
Why Turkey? It's Not as Random as It Sounds
He Wasn't the Only One in the Villa
What made the whole thing even more of a talking point was that Harry wasn’t the only 2025 Islander who’d had a hair transplant. Ben Holbrough, 23, had also undergone the procedure, his done more recently around 18 months before entering the villa, at a UK-based hair clinic rather than abroad.
Ben documented his own growth journey, sharing updates at the six-month mark and noting his hair was about 80% of the way there. When his Love Island casting was announced, the clinic posted a message of support on social media, saying they were proud to have been part of his journey and couldn’t wait to watch him shine, with great hair of course, on national television.
Two contestants. Two clinics. One very big conversation.
The Reaction Said a Lot About Where We're At
The comment sections, for once, were largely a pleasure to read. People weren’t poking fun. They were applauding the honesty.
One viewer put it well: “I think it’s really important for men to be open about hair transplants as much as women are about extensions. Good on them for normalising it.” Others called it refreshing, said it was a great conversation starter, and praised the transparency around male hair loss treatment.
For a very long time, the conversation around cosmetic procedures on Love Island and in wider culture has been almost exclusively about women. What they’ve had done, whether they should admit it, whether it’s the right message to send. Men have largely existed outside that conversation, either because they weren’t having procedures or because, when they were, nobody talked about it.
That’s changing. Hair transplants for men have become far more mainstream than most people realise, and a lot of that is down to moments exactly like this one. A recognisable face saying plainly: yeah, I had a hair transplant, it was fine, here’s what it looked like.
What This Actually Means for Blokes Watching at Home
Let’s be honest about who this story really resonates with. It’s not the people already comfortable in their skin. It’s the 22-year-old who’s started noticing his hairline moving. The 26-year-old who’s been wearing hats to work. The 30-year-old who’s been Googling hair transplant clinics at midnight and then closing the tab out of embarrassment.
Harry was that person. He was hiding under caps, watching it get worse, feeling like there wasn’t really an acceptable way to address it without making a big deal out of it. And then he did something about it, quietly, at 24, and got on with the next decade of his life. The mullet. The villa. The runner-up finish. The girlfriend.
None of that means a hair transplant is right for everyone, or that it should be pursued lightly. It’s still surgery, still a significant decision, and still something that requires proper research and realistic expectations. But Harry’s willingness to be open about the whole thing, including the before, which is the part people are usually most reluctant to show, strips away a lot of the unnecessary shame that’s historically surrounded male hair loss.
The Bottom Line
Harry Cooksley didn’t go on Love Island to become anyone’s ambassador for male cosmetic procedures. He went on to find a connection, have a good time, and play some terrible villa games in the Majorcan sun.
But in an odd way, the resurfacing of that 2018 hair transplant video did something genuinely useful. It put a normal, likeable, unashamed face on a procedure that thousands of men consider every year in private, often without ever talking to anyone about it. It showed the before, the thinning, the receding, the thing he was hiding, and the after, without any of the embarrassment that usually surrounds that kind of disclosure.
Seven years on from that trip to Istanbul for his hair transplant, Harry Cooksley walked into one of the most-watched television programmes in Britain with 3,000 transplanted grafts and not a care in the world. That, more than anything, is probably the most persuasive advertisement for just getting on with it.
Ready to Start Your Own Hair Transplant Journey? Choose Novin Ariana
Harry’s story is proof of what the right clinic, the right technique, and the right timing can do for a man’s confidence. If his transformation has got you thinking about your own hairline, there’s one name worth knowing: Novin Ariana Health and Hair Transplant Clinic in Istanbul, Turkey.
With over 20 years in the industry and more than 25,000 successful procedures completed, Novin Ariana is one of the most trusted destinations for hair restoration in the world. The clinic is certified by the Turkish Ministry of Health for medical tourism and staffed by internationally trained surgeons with over 15 years of experience each. This is not a conveyor belt operation. Every patient receives a personalised treatment plan built around their specific pattern of hair loss, their donor density, and the result they’re looking to achieve.
The techniques on offer include Sapphire FUE, the same method Harry underwent, as well as DHI and the clinic’s own Micro Sapphire DHI approach, which delivers precise, natural-looking results with minimal recovery time. A reported 98% hair growth rate speaks for itself.
What sets Novin Ariana apart from the crowd, though, is the experience around the procedure. From the moment you make contact, you’re assigned a dedicated international patient coordinator who handles everything: consultations, scheduling, airport transfers, accommodation, and aftercare. Patients travelling from thousands of miles away consistently highlight how seamlessly the whole process runs. One patient, who flew in from nearly 10,000 kilometres away, described the quality of care as outstanding from the very first message, adding that the 24/7 post-procedure support line was “excellent and extremely useful.”
The clinic also offers full packages for international patients, making the entire trip to Istanbul straightforward and stress-free. You come for the procedure, and while you’re there, you get to experience one of the world’s great cities.
If you’ve been hiding under a cap, Googling clinics at midnight, or simply wondering whether now is the right time, the answer is probably yes. Book a free consultation with Novin Ariana today and take the first step towards the kind of transformation Harry Cooksley hasn’t stopped being glad he made.
