PROFILE | Cuts Hairdressers
The Cuts team today: Andrew Daniel, Moses Quiquine, Pete Dowland, Georgia Clarks, Devan Brodie, Hayley Rothwell, Conrad Johnson, Ashanti Bedeaux, Quango and Emil Torrens-White Location We Are Cuts, 33 Dean Street, London W1 wearecuts.com Portrait Ross Trevail
there. So I got Pete to cut the fringe right off so it would be short back, sides and front and you’d just grow it on the crown area.” Alex Turnbull “James was my best mate and he was always this larger than life character. Him and his brother Mark were just really cool. And what was great about James was he had this way of making you feel really at ease. That was one of the very special things about him, because a lot of people who are really cool can be kind of arsey.” Isaac Julien “It wasn’t just about the haircut it was about the whole ambience and who you would meet there and all of that.” Andrew Daniel “It was massively influential. You look at Fish and all those people, they are like carbon copies of what we do. You can walk around Soho and see loads of places that are like we were 25 years ago. They might have taken it somewhere else but you can see where the template came from.” 62
Johnnie Sapong “When the trajectory went from Kensington to Soho it just spawned a whole new beast. It became this meeting place and hub and you had a real vibe to it. You were doing clients that were in the music world, then after you’d done them in the salon you’d go and do a fashion shoot with them.”
‘THEY WERE POUNDING OUT MUSIC I’D ONLY EVER HEARD IN A NIGHTCLUB’ Pete Dowland “Bringing through the junior staff is one of the really important elements to the shop and always has been. That is one of the things I am really proud of. We’ve really turned some kids around. It’s usually very transient, hairdressing.
But Cuts is like family. We’ve been there for 30 years and even some of the people we think of as newbies have actually been there for over 10 years.” Isaac Julien “I’ve been going to Cuts for as long as I can remember. I knew of it when it was at Kensington Market and Church Street but it was only when they moved to Soho that I got acquainted with them. That would have been around 1984. I think Cuts becomes even more important with the commercialisation and corporatisation of Soho into a bland space.” Johnnie Sapong “Stores and people come and go but through all these years Cuts has managed to be an institution. And that’s a big thing. In simple terms, Cuts has played such a significant part for so many of us. It has always been family.” Cuts: The Movie is currently in production cutsthemovie.com We Are Cuts, 33 Dean Street, London W1 wearecuts.com