What a great barbershop actually is
A haircut is one of the few things a man buys every month for his entire adult life, and most men treat it as a chore. Same chair, same twelve minutes, same slightly wrong result. I have never understood it. You would not buy the same bad shirt every month for forty years.
The ten shops below are the opposite of a chore. Each is a place I would build a day around, and in several cases I have. What they share is not a look. Some are panelled and hushed, some are loud and tattooed. What they share is a barber who has done ten thousand of the cut you are asking for, a room that makes you want to stay past the haircut, and a door that takes the trade seriously enough to make you book.
The test of a great barbershop is whether you leave looking like yourself, only more so.
I have listed them roughly by how far I would fly for them. Prices are the ones the shops publish at the time of writing, and every one of these takes an appointment online, which is the single most useful thing to know before a trip.
The ten
1. Truefitt & Hill, London
71 St James’s Street · truefittandhill.co.uk
The oldest barbershop in the world, established in 1805, and the holder of a Royal Warrant that has been renewed by every sovereign since Queen Victoria. That sounds like a museum. It is not. The chairs on St James’s Street are busy all day with men who work in the surrounding clubs and offices and have been coming for decades.
The wet shave is the thing to book. It is done with hot towels, a badger brush, and the sort of unhurried attention that has mostly vanished from the trade, and it takes the better part of an hour. Ask for the Traditional Shave with a haircut, then walk across the road to Lock & Co for a hat. It is the most civilised ninety minutes in London.
2. Antica Barbieria Colla, Milan
Via Gerolamo Morone 3 · anticabarbieriacolla.com
Dino Colla opened his shop in 1904 and it became, almost immediately, a gentleman’s club with scissors. It sits a few steps from La Scala, and the atmosphere is exactly what you hope Milan will be and rarely is: marble, brass, faded photographs of everyone who has ever mattered in the city, and barbers who trained for years before they were allowed to touch a customer.
Franco Bompieri has run it since 1960, which tells you the kind of continuity you are buying. The shave is the finest in Italy and the house line of creams and colognes is worth carrying home. Closed Sundays and Mondays, and book well ahead during fashion week.
3. Schorem, Rotterdam
Nieuwe Binnenweg 104 · schorembarbier.nl
The most influential barbershop of the last twenty years, and the reason half the shops on this list look the way they do. Leen and Bertus opened Schorem in a working class street in Rotterdam and turned classic cuts, the pompadour, the flattop, the executive contour, into something men under forty wanted again. Their haircut posters hang in barbershops on every continent, and Reuzel, the pomade they created, is now in every good shop’s cabinet.
It is loud, tattooed, unapologetically male, and technically the best classic barbering in Europe. A cut is 48 euros, a cut and shave 81, and the Old School Barber Academy they run from the shop is where serious barbers from around the world go to learn.
4. The Mandarin Barber, Hong Kong
Mandarin Oriental, 5 Connaught Road Central · mandarinoriental.com
Open since 1963 on the second floor of the Mandarin Oriental, and built to look like 1930s Shanghai: dark wood, red leather, brass fittings, and coffee or tea brought to you before anyone picks up a comb. Several of the barbers have more than forty years at the chair, and the master barbers hold British Barber Association certification.
Two things make it the best hotel barber in the world. The first is the Shanghainese pedicure, a scalpel technique passed down through families and now almost impossible to find elsewhere. The second is speed without hurry. You can be in and out in thirty minutes and feel as though you had the whole morning.
5. Paul Molé, New York
1034A Lexington Avenue, second floor · paulmole.com
The oldest barbershop in New York, open on the Upper East Side since 1913 and still using the three chairs Joseph Molé inherited from his uncle. Paul Molé himself became the most famous barber in America in the 1960s, and the shop that carries his name has never chased a trend since.
You walk up a flight of stairs, you are handed a cappuccino, and you sit among autographed photographs of men who have been coming here for half a century. The straight razor shave is done properly and the gentleman’s haircut is the platonic version of what a New York haircut should be. Closed Sundays.
6. Mr. Brothers Cut Club, Tokyo
2-31-8 Jingumae, Harajuku · mr-brothers-cutclub.com
Founded in Harajuku in 2015 by men who loved American barbershop culture and then rebuilt it through a Tokyo filter. The result is the most precise barbering on this list. Japanese scissor work is a discipline of its own, and watching one of these barbers taper a neckline is like watching a tailor finish a buttonhole.
The Harajuku shop is the original and the busiest, with a second Harajuku branch and outposts in Naka-Meguro, Osaka, Fukuoka, Singapore and Los Angeles. Book by web or LINE, and ask for a classic cut with a hot towel. It is open until ten most nights, which makes it the rare great barbershop you can visit after dinner.
7. Sultans of Shave, Singapore
27B Circular Road, Boat Quay · sultansofshave.com
Lewis Lim opened the first Sultans of Shave in a shophouse near Boat Quay in 2013, modelled on the British barbershops of the last century, and it became the shop that made Singapore take barbering seriously. Navy walls, dark wood, gold trim, and a bar at reception that does double duty after your appointment.
The Sultan’s Shave, which adds a facial scrub and hot and cold scented towels to the wet shave, is the reason to go. There are branches at Orchard Road, Palais Renaissance, and elsewhere across the island, but the Boat Quay original is where the atmosphere is. If you are reading my Singapore guide, put this on the same day as Takashimaya.
8. Chaps & Co, Dubai
Bloomingdale’s, Dubai Mall, and across the Emirates · chapsandco.com
Jordan Davies could not find a reliable barber as an expat in Dubai, so in 2015 he built one, and Chaps & Co is now the highest rated barbershop in the Middle East. The Bloomingdale’s shop on the men’s floor of Dubai Mall is the flagship, five chairs and the only private barber room in the group, and there are outposts in the Marina, Design District and the Edition in Abu Dhabi.
What it does better than any luxury chain is consistency. Every branch, every barber, the same standard, and a classic cut starts at 135 dirhams, which is a fraction of what the hotels charge. The traditional hot towel shave is the one to book after a long flight in.
9. Baxter Finley, Los Angeles
515 North La Cienega Boulevard · baxterfinley.com
Baxter of California made the grooming products; Baxter Finley is the barbershop the brand built to show how they should be used. It is the most Los Angeles room on this list, sunlit and calm, with concrete floors and leather chairs, and it draws men from the studios and the agencies who cannot afford a bad haircut.
The barbers are excellent at the modern American cut, short sides and a natural top, and the shave uses the house cream that started the whole company. Book the cut and shave together and leave time for the retail wall on the way out.
10. Pankhurst, London
10 Newburgh Street, Soho · pankhurstlondon.com
Brendan Murdock’s shop a few streets from Savile Row is what a London barbershop looks like when it is designed rather than inherited. Chesterfield chairs, subway tile, a whisky at the end of the cut, and a level of finish that makes it the shop I send tailoring clients to when they want to look sharp for a fitting.
The cut is modern British at its best, more structured than the American version and less severe than the Dutch. The Pankhurst shave cream and the moustache wax in the little tin are two of the best products in the category and both travel well.
How to get the most out of any of them
Book the shave, not just the cut. The haircut is what you came for. The shave is what you will remember. Every shop above does it properly, and at the older houses it is the reason they exist.
Arrive with your hair as you wear it. A good barber cuts what he sees. If you show up with product in it and your hair pushed back, he will cut for that. If you show up fresh from the shower, he is guessing.
Bring a photograph of yourself, not of someone else. Nobody wants a picture of an actor. A barber wants to know what your hair looked like the last time you were happy with it.
And tip like you want to come back. In the cities where it is customary, be generous. In the cities where it is not, buy something from the shelf. The best barbers remember faces, and they remember who took the trade seriously.
Get up, dress up, show up. It starts at the neckline.
Whatever Suits You · Style. Sound. Substance.