Haircuts are a bit like bespoke suits (stay with me on this one). Just like a bespoke suit, a good haircut is very personal and individual. Just like a bespoke suit, it depends on communication and developing a relationship. And just like a bespoke suit, it makes the wearer look good without anyone necessarily being able to say why, or at least how.
I was having a conversation with Lucas recently about his hairdresser Tom Bushnell (above, top) and these parallels kept coming up. I thought it was an interesting topic, because men I know struggle with it just as much as they do with commissioning a suit.
Of course I know nothing about hair. I started going bald at 19, and it was cut short soon after. But Lucas is blessed with flowing locks, a veritable mane. And it didn’t always look this way; he didn’t always like his hair or know what to do about it.
“For a while I went to classic places like Trumper’s, because they have the history and tradition. But they weren’t really interested in any of my views or what I wanted. It wasn’t great, but it took me a long time to realise it,” he told me.
“Then for a while I went to local Turkish barbers. They do a job, but frankly I was always a little scared what I was going to come out with. My attitude back then (this was my late twenties) was basically to get a short back and sides and let it grow out for as long as possible – get value for money.”
Eventually, about five years ago, Lucas started going to Tom based off the recommendation of some menswear friends. “Initially I was doing the same thing, just having it short, but Tom gradually drew out of me what I wanted to look like, kind of what my references were.”
The reference Lucas brings up most is Robert Redford, with his long blond locks, wispy over the ears. But while that’s accurate to an extent – you can see from the pictures that Lucas’s hair is now longer than it was – the haircut is also different. Lucas doesn’t have a fringe for example, and there’s more weight on the back.
This is where comparisons with a tailor are also relevant. Because bespoke customers often bring in pictures of suits they like, in order to demonstrate a style. They’re not going to look like the person in the picture – but the tailor’s skill is understanding from those pictures what the customer wants, and then making a version of it that works for them.
And, one that suits not just their body but their style too. Go into any Savile Row tailor and they’ll cut you a navy suit that flatters you – they’ll adjust lapels, length, buttoning point, drape and pitch to perfection. But is a sharp, structured suit really what you want? Is it what you’ll get most use out of?
“This is an area I really enjoy – understanding someone’s personality and what expresses it,” Tom told me when we met. “I’m a big fan of art, architecture, fashion, so I like talking to clients about what they like as a way into that discussion.”
As with tailors, Tom finds a lot of first-time customers come in with pictures: “They won’t have the vocabulary to talk about what they want, so they’ll bring photos. But they’re always apologetic about it, slightly embarrassed, saying something along the lines of ‘I know you can’t actually make me look like him, but…’ They shouldn’t be embarrassed, it’s a great place to start.”
Lucas is a pretty laidback person, and one issue he had with his hair was that he wasn’t coming back after the recommended six weeks; it was more like 10. “When it got long enough on top it would sort of collapse and lie really flat,” he says. “Tom and I talked about it and we started cutting it a little shorter on top, so it never quite got to that point.”
I know I’m looking for these connections now, but this is just the kind of conversation a good tailor has about lifestyle. He might recommend stronger cloths, for example, because you wear your clothes hard and rarely get around to pressing them. “It’s all relevant,” Tom says. “A guy in the City will usually err towards a cleaner and neater hairstyle; a guy with young kids won’t be able to spend much time with products, and so on.”
Tom’s salon is a nice space, on the fourth floor of an Art Deco building in Bloomsbury. There’s a very relaxed vibe – somewhere you actually wouldn’t mind sitting for quarter of an hour and having a cup of tea.
He works on fashion shoots for brands as well as private clients, so there’s more of an art and design angle than most hairdressers. There’s also more of a particular menswear angle than I realised – clients include Thom Sweeney, Anglo-Italian, LEJ and P Johnson.
Still, it feels like a lot of these points apply to working with any hairdresser, and there are lots of parallels with tailoring. I’ll be interested to hear what readers have found over the years, and what parallels they see.
