Your hair grows between ½in and 1in a month, but during the summer, that rate of growth speeds up, so you may need to get it chopped more often. The most important skill for any hairstylist is layering – cutting the hair at different lengths diagonally, horizontally or even vertically to give your do shape and texture. And Italian men are much more vain than English men, “but the English are definitely starting to catch up”.
These are just a few of the pearls gleaned during 90 minutes parked in the chair of Angelo Seminara, seeking out the secret formula for getting a good haircut. If anyone can deliver that cut it’s Angelo, an Italian barber who came to London and is now international creative director at Trevor Sorbie – and a former British Hairdresser of the Year.
My last cut cost £7 in a one-man barbershop, but this session would cost north of £100. The £7 cut wasn’t at all bad, said Angelo. It certainly bore no comparison with my worst ever cuts, including the bowl-on-head technique favoured by my mother, or the teenage near-shear that prompted one classmate to say, “Nice haircut. Where did you get it – the council?”
I’d asked Angelo for a foolproof guide to help men wrangle a good cut out of their barber, rather than just sitting there lumpenly and bearing the consequences. Yet, despite all our time together, he couldn’t quite articulate one. What he did give me, though, was a damn fine do. Which probably answers the question: find someone good and trust them.
