The BarberShop Revival in Milan: an Old Tradition in a Renewed Vintage Style

Milan is widely acknowledged as the italian fashion capital, especially for being every year the venue of some of the most glamorous and trend-setting fashion shows. Nonetheless, the most fancy city streets are full of luxurious boutiques and ateliers as well, where you can find top quality fashion design products from the very leading brands of the industry.

There is also another reason why the city can fairly be considered as a fashion capital; in Milan sits the italian stock exchange, together with many business and financial firms. For this reason, every day thousands of lawyers, accountants, managers and high profile employees gather in the city to reach their offices. What does this imply when it comes to fashion? Well, all this people are usually demanded to respect a quite strict dress code (basically suit and tie, at least). Similarly, the presence of a large number of top level restaurants, clubs, cafè and, not less important, a major opera theatre like “La Scala” contributes to enhancing the importance of having a stylish and neat look, suitable for a glamorous event.

In this perspective, it is not surprising that Milan has a strong tradition not only in taylor’s shop and haute couture manufacturing but also about the male hair care, thanks to many long established barber shops.

The vintage revival

In the aftermath of the pandemic crisis, barber shops were kept shut down by the Government in order to not fuel the contagion spread; thus, people had to wait quite a long time to go back in a barber shop and take care of their own look. Yet this fueled the desire to have beard and hair done by professional hands, as soon as it would have been possible, after months of do-it-yourself shampoos and hairdo.

People who prefer a careful hand instead of self shaving found in Milan plenty of shops where specialised barbers could take care of their flowing hairs and beards. Many of these have been in business for decades, and some were opened in the early years of the last century; this type of shops have endured the changes that modern times bring in, so as to keep some vintage vibes, without looking decrepit or just old fashioned.

Several traditional shops have not discarded their vintage interior design but have turned it into a distinguishing feature, useful to create a cosy yet exclusive environment where they welcome gentlemen, medicians, professionals of any kind with a passion for personal care. Also the newcomers of this peculiar niche have somehow joined this new trend, establishing brand new shops characterised by a slightly old fashioned yet pleasant atmosphere. One of the most striking feature of this ‘modern vintage’ barber shops is that they are a sort of club where cutting your hair is just one of the things you can do; inside some of them the customer is given the chance to taste worthy distillates or cigars, for example. In addiction, they direct their efforts to a high quality hair care service, using the best products available on the market, thank to suppliers with a solid expertise, such as Gaspa, a small company founded in the early 1990s which presently operates through both a physical shop in Viale Monza and an online e-commerce, Gaspa-Milano.it.

Nowadays, any supplier must integrate offline and online sales, and the haircare and hair style products do not make an exception from this point of view. The ‘vintage revival’ shops as well are part of this new mechanism, exposing various samples that customers can later buy in shop or online, as they prefer. Even in an old fashion shop, a new and modern product finds a decent stage to be promoted for potential buyers.

Featured image: Bodystock69 @DepositPhotos