Ali’s Turkish Barbershop – 20A Aungier Street, Dublin 2
You come from a family with a barbering tradition. Could you describe your training?
I come from Ankara, the capital city of Turkey and I’m a third generation barber. I grew up in a barbershop and I am thirty-six now so what can I say? Maybe thirty years. Training starts at a young age especially with my generation in Turkey because the first education in Turkey is five years. So after five years you continue in school or go into a trade. Some families see their kid is not very interested in studies or due to an economic situation they can’t support the kid to study further so they go into a trade, barbering to carpentry. My generation started barbering quite young, after the 1990’s our education jumped up to eight years and now it’s twelve years. So it’s very difficult to find a young junior to start a barbershop.
It is very interesting why barbers are so good in Turkey – it is because they are teaching all the time. Some junior watches and wants to learn all the secrets, so the master must be really good. The barber shows the best way to do a haircut to the junior. So if the master makes any mistake, the junior sees that. All hand craft jobs in Turkey have this tradition, from the Ottoman Empire to the new democratic of Turkey, it is passed on from generations.
What Turkish techniques have you brought to this barbershop?
Well you see I was working in the barbershop back home, and what I was doing in Turkey I’m doing here. I didn’t change my techniques or my ways. The service provided to the customer is exactly the same. It’s my tradition. Small details make the difference, and that difference attracts the people. I wasn’t conscious of that before. Like singeing an ear is really a simple thing for us and is so regular in Turkey. But for someone who never heard of it before and coincidentally they are sitting in the chair, you [barber] are finishing the cut, trimming eyebrows and then coming with a small flame close to their head I wonder what they are thinking about… where is he going to stick that flame now?! They are questioning. But at the end of the whole process they feel well groomed and they look so good.
Is there a big market in Dublin for treatments like facial hair threading and a Turkish head massage?
In Dublin there is, but somehow in Cork there is maybe twenty barbers and eight or nine barbershops, and in Dublin there are only three Turkish Barbershops. There is a demand, this is the service business and people want to receive good service first. When they receive good service they want to pay decent money too. I shouldn’t criticise different hair cutting techniques, but when you get bad service that is enough evidence to…and then there is a crisis. Some [prices] are too high, some are too low, some are too high and they don’t care, some are too low and don’t care anyway and it’s a rushed job. Everybody is looking for a happy medium in the service industry.
Why do you think younger clientele are veering towards the more traditional barbershop format?
First of all the hairstyle. Second of all the new generation is connected to the internet world. The internet world is quick education. Younger generations know what they want, they are searching. The idols they want to be and the hairstyle they want are on the internet. They can only receive that classical style which is very popular at the moment in a classical barbers.
Another thing was hairstyles. How hairstyle changes came up to today. It used to be movie actors, you would see a whole town change their hairstyle exactly the same way… Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable, Elvis Presley. It then came to the big mullet at the back and then we probably changed to a kind of punk style in the early nineties. Then came long hair with lots of highlights. Then the style came back to a level with the products I believe… What does the female want the man to look like? In the end they are the boss.
–> Bowlers Barbers
