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The Los Angeles Times Magazine
September 8, 2004
THE CUTTING EDGE
Around the Hipster Hair Universe in Seven Shops (and One Living Room)
By Andrew John Ignatius Vontz
Not long ago hipster guys in Los Angeles could either throw down big bucks at a high-end salon for a styling ’do or spend $10 at the local Greatcutz and brave a stylist with the fashion sense of a Flowbee vac-cut technician. Mercifully for the young and trendy, the “street” styles of a multiethnic megalopolis have been mingling with the taste-making influences of the music, film and television industries like nowhere else in the world, and a new generation of salons has emerged.
From Venice to the Los Feliz/Silver Lake/Echo Park fertile crescent of cool and beyond, L.A. is buzzing with curve-setting hipster salons and barbershops for guys. Like Target, some bring designer chic to the masses at prices anyone can afford. Just as teenagers use the local Hot Topic as a coolness barometer that keeps them equipped with just the right wristbands and dog collars, hipster guys turn to these salons for the cutting edge.
Somewhat perplexingly, the shaggy ‘70s man ‘do with eyebrow-brushing bangs, a collar-tickling back, and lots of razor-cut, bed-head texture that Ashton Kutcher rocked for years has become a hipster hair touchstone. While no hipster in his right mind would acknowledge Kutcher—the man who single-handedly destroyed the beloved hipster trucker cap trend—as the hair icon nonpareil of his age, that is exactly what he has become. It’s a phenomenon that has nothing to do with hipsters loving Kutcher and everything to do with loving the ‘70s and the hair of that era. This summer Kutcher chopped his magical locks in favor of a tight, clean, and short look, but his old cut still looms large in hipster land and the phrase “Kutcher cut” serves as shorthand for his former ‘do.
But just how is a hipster hairstyle born?
Do-It-Yourself and Dye
When Derek Martin walks into an Echo Park party shaking his mulloch there’s no mistaking him for the mop heads partying like it’s 1983. Martin might be wearing a tie-dyed, acid-washed shirt, but it’s his one-of-a-kind hair that turns heads. Scissor-cut short on the top and sides, it gets longer toward the back and extends down his neck. “I call it the mulloch, because it’s part mullet and part mohawk,” says the handsome crafter of leather bags and cuffs for his Legend label. Martin’s ’do is accentuated by blond stripes that run down the middle and sides of his brown hair. For the last 10 years he has cut his own hair or had friends, such as roommate Geneva Jacuzzi, the bassist for the Bubonic Plague, give him a hand.
“I never considered myself a hipster,” he says. He conceived the mulloch as a tribute to Native American culture, black magic and Sta-Hi, his favorite character in the Software series of sci-fi books. And although Martin may be representative of a whole posse of men who realize their visions in the creative control of their living rooms, there are many more who let their salons and barbershops lead them in bold new directions.
Hot Hair on a Budget
Located inside a converted auto garage on West Sunset Boulevard, Rudy’s is a temple of hipness replete with a foosball table and a wall covered in pics of hot people torn from trendy magazines. The stylists are attractive young men and women who embody the coolness in L.A.’s music and fashion scenes. Since the Seattle-based chain opened its Silver Lake store three years ago, its 12 chairs have banged out about 1,700 cuts a week, at $19 a pop, bringing cheap, cool haircuts to the masses.
At Rudy’s, the shaggy, ’70s Ashton Kutcher ’do is a hipster staple. “That was our bread and butter for two or three years. And it still is,” says James Petersen, the chain’s co-owner and founder. The fauxhawk is hot too, the cut of choice for client Carlos Plazola, a graphic designer. Rudy’s stylists say many of their Latino customers ask for the Kutcher cuts, fauxhawks—a short cut with a pronounced but graduated mohawk-like ridge down the center that’s often accentuated with product—and other so-called white hipster styles—part of the giant melting pot of pop culture. As for what’s next in hair, Rudy’s stylist Michelle Mann, 20, suggests men look farther afield than Silver Lake: “Something to follow with hair trends is definitely Japanese street fashion magazines.”
Choki Choki
A bookcase at Taka Salon on Sawtelle Boulevard is crammed with Japanese street fashion magazines such as Choki Choki, a publication that borrows its onomatopoetic name from the sound a pair of scissors makes as it cuts hair. A display case in front is filled with Knotty Boy Dread Wax with Hemp Seed for the many Asian men who do dreadlocks and Afros, says Naoko Tamada, Taka’s owner and a stylist, whose short hair sports a single braided extension that lies on her shoulder. On a bulletin board next to a row of Day-Glo braid extensions, Polaroids of white guys and dolls with multicolored mohawks are interspersed with pictures of Japanese guys in dreads.
That pan-hipster phenomenon, the Kutcher shag, is big here too. Taka Tamada, 28, an androgynous rocker with tattoo-covered arms, is getting a modified Kutcher, while his band mate, Ari Baron, 30, is getting a dye job and a shag. Baron is proof of that hipster cross-pollination. “These guys put me in dreadlocks when I had long hair,” he says. “And it would get in my soup.”
Surf’s Up, Have a Nice Hair Day
Japan might be the leading edge of the cutting edge, but Hollywood’s influence on hot hair is visible everywhere. A salon and photo studio housed in a chic white loft in trendy Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, Frank.Studio caters to the hipster who gets a bikini wax or eyebrow dye to complement his $130 haircut. The Studio is the creation of Frank Galasso, who has cut celeb hair aplenty, including Kutcher’s locks. A fashionista with tribal tats on his hands, shoulders and back, Galasso shapes the mop of Blake Ellis, 20, into long, choppy surfer hair with sun-kissed highlights. “Guys want to look like they’ve been in the sun,” Galasso says.
Perhaps inspired by nostalgia for the old-school surf culture in flicks such as “Dogtown and Z-Boys,” “Riding Giants” and “Step Into Liquid,” wave-worn locks are all the rage here. Galasso has even developed a line of hair products to create the beach look and smell.
After cutting and highlighting Ellis’ hair, Galasso applies Frank.Studio gel, which smells like coconut suntan lotion and contains ground bamboo to simulate the texture of sand. “He could literally have a little bit of tan on his skin, tell everybody he went to Hawaii and no one would question him,” Galasso says. If Ellis wants to catch the next Westside hair wave, though, he’ll need to go short. “Straight after Brad Pitt buzzed his hair,” Galasso says, “lot of guys with long hair came in and wanted that.”
Short Style Ahoy
When singer-songwriter Rob Grad, 35, walks under the Jolly Roger hanging outside the nautically themed Old Glory barbershop a block from the beach in Venice, it’s not Brad Pitt’s look that’s got him saying, “I want a buzz.” As Grad marches over the red-and-white tiles to a classic red barber chair, Remo the pit bull, the shop’s mascot, pokes his head over the counter and drools. “I’ve been hating how my hair looked every day,” says Grad as the shop’s soon-to-be-married tattooed owners, Sarah Kufahl, 25, and Josh Stanton, 30, nod in agreement. Kufahl, a former Rudy’s stylist, and Stanton saw a need for some funk at the beach and a business was born. “Venice has an old-school vibe about it and it’s been overrun by a lot of chichi-ness. We wanted to open something really neighborhoodish for locals,” says the buzz-wearing Stanton.
Grad smiles as his amorphous mushroom of hair drops to the floor. “Every day was like a bad hair day for months,” he says. “So I was like, clean slate!” Sometimes being cool is about starting over. And sometimes it’s about literally being cool. “Everybody just wants their hair buzzed off because it’s so hot outside,” says Mickey Koll, Grad’s stylist. But Kutcher fans fear not. His presence is being felt even at the beach. “We see a lot of Ashton Kutcher hair,” Stanton says.
Light and Long in Koreatown
Kutcher hair is hot in Koreatown where male stylists at Kim Sun Young on Western Avenue are decked out in the Diesel jeans and Paul Frank shirts popular with hipsters across the city. Salon manager Hun Lee wears a modified Kutcher shag, albeit with the Korean hipster touch of white-blond tips. It’s a popular style influenced by Korean pop stars, boy bands and—Kutcher.
“Very short hair is only popular among office people, but Korean guys who are more fashionable keep longer hair with light color,” Lee says of the clientele at the salon, which has locations in New York, Chicago, Australia, and Seoul.
Look Ma, No Ashton
Two Kutcher-free hipster hair spots are A Different Vibe on West 3rd Street, a new-school African American salon, and In the Cut, a classic African American barbershop in Inglewood. On a Wednesday afternoon in the back of A Different Vibe, past the faux marble countertops and through a golden curtain, playwright and novelist Dave Talbert is relaxing post-beard trim while stylist Jacki Brown applies toner and a hot towel to his face. Out front, hip-hop and R&B producer Irving Carter, 29, waits for a trim on his Caesar, a popular shaved cut. “You can take clothes on and off, but your hair stays with you,” says Talbert, who has short, skinny twists. “What’s hot right now for black men is the natural look and not being so detailed and perfect and neat.”
It’s a quick trip down the 405 to In the Cut, where clean cut rules. “There aren’t really any exotic styles going on now. Everything is pretty basic,” says Marc Ford, 25, a barber in a classic white smock. Because he cuts everyone from $15 walk-ins to hip-hop stars Ludacris and Kanye West, he should know. Pictures of African American styles of yesteryear are on a poster at the back of the long, narrow barbershop but Caesars and fades rule the day. Short is hot because, just as in Venice, short keeps cool heads cool.
Andrew John Ignatius Vontz has short, clean, but slightly messy hair.
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