My hair looks pretty fantastic, which is something I don’t get to say very often. Don’t get me wrong, I’m my own No.1 fan but my hair’s always been practical at best, a mess at worst. It’s a nice change; lauding the merits of my own writing was getting dull and mentioning my sexual prowess led to some uncomfortable silences.
Anyway, there’s a reason for my new well-coiffed self and it’s not because I woke up and decided to finally put some effort in. It’s because I left all that effort to the chaps at Ted’s Grooming Room.
As I tend to find myself working nearby, I decided to take a break from the infernal clacking of my keyboard to spend just under an hour at the Soho branch of Ted Baker’s bescissored offshoot, which is most definitely a barber.
I say that meaning it’s a world away from a hairdresser. There are no white tiles, just dark woods, no glasses of pink fizz, just beer, whisky… and maybe a little fizz. On request of course. Simply walking in there’s little doubt that this isn’t the kind of spa day pampering of a hairdresser but the rugged, manly graft of grooming.
Ted’s is distinctly a Turkish-style barber, which means all the best things: hot towels nearly to the point of scorching, cutthroat razors and fire. The first two come as a pair, the last as a little extra you can’t help but find out about. There are warnings. I didn’t get it done myself, but from what I saw it’s more of a spectacle than I’d expect to see around hairspray. What’s a touch of pampering without (wrongly-perceived) danger?
I went for what they call the Full Ted Service, which is essentially a haircut and shave. The whole thing took just over 45 minutes which given everything involved was pretty damn quick. There was the haircut of course – the barber’s interpretation of the ever-vague ‘short back and sides’ – and a shave, linked together with hot towels and a rough and ready massage.
The only reason it took a little longer is that I really wanted to finish my beer. No man left behind and all that. But if you have drinks on the horizon and don’t need quite as much work done as I did, then you can be in and out in a lot shorter time.
Some guys like to be pampered like they’re at a spa day with cucumber water on tap and calming zen music in the background. Ted’s is not for them. If you’re looking for somewhere unapologetically masculine, where you can let the barbers get on with their excruciatingly precise work beer in hand, then Ted’s is for you. More at: www.tedsgroomingroom.com
