Cutting Edge

Beautifully designed barbershops are giving men’s grooming a boost

- Jared Paul Stern

It had all the earmarks of being a passing fad – surely after all the hipsters shaved their beards off the new breed of “cool" barbershops would also be consigned to the rubbish bin. But the design acumen of these bastions of elegant grooming, now to be found everywhere from the famed Hôtel de Crillon in Paris to Bangkok’s Black Amber Social Club, is only getting better as they pop up in all corners of the globe. In fact they are now defining a new kind of luxury for men, elevating a personal ritual that might have once been a chore to a sybaritic experience worth anticipating with excitement.

With some dispensing single malt Scotch, other haircuts costing hundreds of dollars, and most offering various customized feel-good treatments as well, these are places that you want to spend as much time in as possible. Straight razor shaves with artisanally-crafted Damascus steel blades are now par for the course, as are perfectly packaged in-house grooming products like the ones found at the posh Pankhurst London, which has leather barber chairs upholstered by Bentley Motors and whose owner Brent Pankhurst has cut the hair of Daniel Craig, aka James Bond himself.