Need a haircut (a good one)
I posted recently about needing a better job—well, if one has an interview for a better job (a much better job, hopefully), one needs to look the part. In the greater ATL area, two questions:
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I've gotten a variety of haircuts, from barbershops to salon-type places to Great Clips to at home with a Wahl, but they've topped out around 20 bucks. How do I find a really good haircut/face clean-up (brows etc) place? I don't want to just waltz in somewhere & end up looking ridiculous, but I don't even know where to start. It doesn't help that I have a kind of "weird" type of hair, where it's curly and kind of wiry, ethnically mediterranean/middle eastern, so if I get a regular clippers haircut it usually ends up looking chopped off.
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I also need a good suit, in toto; I have dress clothes but def. don't want to blow this one. National finance, I'm seeing business casual so suit/tie/shirt/shoes, nice enough to be unnoticeable is my goal. I have no idea how much a suit at that point would cost, but other than going to Brooks Brothers or Joseph A Banks I have no idea what the best approach would be (are those even in the same range lol)
Thanks again you all
Edit: i am a dude, sry
Some of this depends on where you are. Speaking generically:
Know what haircut you want. Be specific. E.g. A number three on the sides, medium fade, two inches up top, side part here. If you don't know how to describe it use pictures. When you get a haircut you like ask the barber how to describe it. Check reviews, and look for places that serve your niche. A barbershop that talks about styles you aren't interested in isn't the place to try. You want a place that serves a white collar clientele, not a college fades place.
The suit just needs to be tailored. You can get a great looking suit from men's warehouse if they have a proper sales person who takes your measurements, holds the garments for their tailor, and helps you pick pieces that look good on you. Figure ~$120 on pants, $120 on jacket, $50 for shirts, &30-$60 for ties. Very roughly.
I was traveling on business to Seattle, took a Lyft from the airport to the nearest men's warehouse, was measured, bought three suits, and when they were tailored they were shipped to me. Those suits get most of my compliments.
So pick things that look good, get them tailored, know what you like. And don't be afraid to use color and go with styles that others recommend if you trust their taste. Suits let you splash color like royal purple shirts and beautiful ties. Sometimes you want to pop, sometimes you want to blend in. At a big meeting where you are new, probably go boring black or blue. Interviews or presentations, jazz it up a bit. A sleek silver gray with a purple or striped shirt.
Don't forget to match the shoes and belt, and get dress socks. Socks are a great safe way to add personality, within reason. A strong argyle pattern is always popular.
Good luck!
Hadn't even thought about Men's Wearhouse, that sounds perfect! Thanks a bunch. I've got some wonderful fancy wool socks that are dark, prob go with dark blue suit/light blue shirt just off the bat, will that work? The thin dress socks drive me nuts & these don't get sweaty!
Yeah those socks sounds great!
The key thing to look for is that the place you go into takes the time to measure you and defaults to having them tailored. One men's wearhouse might be great and another terrible despite selling the same suits.
I want to add on that learning how to be specific in haircuts is a big benefit if you can speak using hairdresser terms. When I had short hair, I would be able to walk into a chain barbershop, and ask for a #2 on the sides and back, and 2" left on the top that I would brush to one side, and then to thin out the top as I have really thick hair. That would get me a relatively consistent haircut, with occasional drops in quality where they might miss some parts, or not clean up around the ears well. Now that I have a man bun, my haircuts are simpler but the terminology and communication I learned from my shorter hairstyle helps in getting it how I want. I think also just having preferences on how you want specific parts of your hair done and communicating that helps a lot.
To add to this: I'd emphasise that getting the tailoring right is very important, and the person doing the measurements and fittings, and deciding on what to tell the tailor to do, is equally if not more important than the tailor doing the actual alterations. Finding a person who does a good job can be a challenge, but is important. There are limits to how far a suit can be altered, so looking around for a company that makes suits that already fit you at least somewhat well can be helpful.
I'd also argue that in terms of how you appear, especially when they are reasonably new, an extremely good fit is more important than quality of construction or materials, above a rather low bar (some cheap polyester, for example, is going to look bad regardless). While it is dependent on how well-suited the base size is to you, when I buy ready-to-wear suits, the amount I spend on tailoring and alterations can be comparable with the price of the untailored suit.
I wear a mix of bespoke, made to measure, and well-tailored ready-to-wear, and it is specifically some of the RTW that gets the most positive comments, even from people in the men's fashion industry. The suits are not nearly as well-constructed as some of my much more expensive ones, they aren't necessarily as comfortable, and they don't last as long, but they look very good, and that is entirely from how well they fit me.
Also: shirt alterations are much rarer than suit alterations. Bespoke shirtmakers usually don't alter shirts at all: they do fittings by making a shirt, doing a fitting, and then making a new shirt based on that fitting for the next fitting, until they have them right. However, when wearing a suit, shirt fit can be less important: sleeve length matters, but can be adjusted with bands if necessary, the shirt front needs to look reasonable, and the collar needs to fit, but most everything else is hidden by the suit.
So the men's wearhouse near me does tailoring onsite, but I'm guessing you'd recommend someone independent? Any advice on how to pick
In terms of haircuts, I usually go and check reviews on their shops including the types of haircuts they give, whatever you think might look the best on you. The biggest thing is to see their clientele and also see if they actually have experience doing your specific hair type. You might need to spend more on that, unfortunately, but if you like it it's worth it!
Additionally, check the shops social media and the individual barber's social media as well. A good barber tends to post a lot of pictures of their work and you can get a good idea of the vibe of the barber/shop/skills/styles. Additionally I personally look for social/political stances but that's me (particularly any shop that had a black lives matter sign but gives police discounts was off my list.)
It takes a bit of work but I'm sure the question has been asked about a thousand times in the last year in your city/suburb/neighborhood's subreddit, so you can probably find a pretty good list of "best barbers in the area" to start your search from.
Price is a bit tricky they seem to be all over the place these days. I've had a $35 barber in a HCOL area and a $50 barber in a LCOL area. Makes no sense. That being said, I would expect around $50 after tip to be around average for a good haircut. I tack on a beard trim or shave every once in a while as well just to keep my face in check. Might be a nice add on for you to feel your absolute best. Lots of shops are adding spa services as well, and I find a lot of the ones that offer them tend to be the better shops in the area.
Yeah I feel like it's a good bet to spend some on this, so I'm not opposed—if anyone in Atlanta has a place they like feel free to send me a DM or rep them here lol
Gender information would be useful in this case but I’ll assume male for now.
For haircuts that are either long, or more elaborate, my heuristic has always been to prefer hair salons, who mainly have women as clientele. On average, women are just much more demanding customers in this respect, which in turn forces the employees to be more skilled. I’d expect this to be in the $30-$50 range. If it’s less, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad, but it is a signal of lesser quality.
For suits, well, to be honest a lot of people don’t wear good suits to work and it doesn’t seem to matter all that much. This goes all the way to prominent politicians on both aisles, so it’s not even a matter of money or class.
But it will depend on how normal your body is. At the cheapest, for someone with a fairly regular body, you can get off the rack suits and adjust them at a tailor. I’d recommend in person, you can only know how a suit fits in person. And try to ask the people in the shop for advice - sometimes they’ll be minimum wage teenagers who have no idea, but they may also be much more knowledgeable.
You must have them adjusted, though. It’s impossible for an off the rack suit to fit well. So add that to the budget.
You should be able to get a whole suit done for <$500 in this case.
Made to order will be in the 500-1500 range. Do not do the online ones. They’re all a scam. Made to order means that the shop has a set of patterns that they will adjust to your personal measurements. They need to measure you in person.
At the highest end, you have bespoke custom suits. These will be $2k minimum. If it’s less, it’s probably made to order instead. Here, the entire pattern is custom cut for your measurements. Only really necessary if you have a very unusual body (a body builder, for instance), or if you just want the best.
I'd argue that online ones are not necessarily all scams, but in order to not be scammed, you'd have to know enough about tailoring, the industry, and measuring and fitting, that anyone asking for basic help like this would get scammed if they tried to go an online route.
Prices are rather dependent on location; I feel like currently, for, eg, London or other major city prices, it would be more around double the prices you list for each of those categories (with the exception of Savile Row itself, where both bespoke and mtm prices are significantly higher than double those prices, and at that point you're really paying more for the name; those higher price interestingly don't extend even to Jermyn Street).
Yeah I was considering trying out one of the aliexpress numbers this morning, so you got me lol
should have included that, thanks! Yes I am male--thanks
I'm a woman with straight hair, so take what I say with a pinch of salt. But with your mention of your "weird" hair type, you may want to look into black salons/barbers or others that primarily cater to non-white demographics? From what I know a lot of cosmetology programs have limited focus on dealing with textured hair, to the point stylists have to go out of their way to enroll in classes specializing in it. I think it can be even a problem for plain old curly hair. I remember some people on reddit mentioned going to black or Puerto Rican stylists because while they were white, they also had unusual, not-straight hair types, and stylists at chain salons just lacked the knowledge to handle it.
everything you wear should be tailored.
for hair, go to a good shop for curly hair — not great clips or even a barber. also look into the curly girl method for keeping your hair super healthy and beautiful.
combining these three things, you’ll absolutely stand out and radiate confidence :)