FANCIES IN BARBERING Hair OiL Pomatum, and Perfume Tabooed by Gilt-Eged Customer,

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 142, 20 February 1886, Page 6

FANCIES IN BARBERING Hair OiL Pomatum, and Perfume Tabooed by Gilt-Eged Customer,

" Do you want your hair dressed ?" asked a barber on Chestnut- street a day or two ago, after ho had finished shaving his customer. •' Yes, of course," said the customer. "You will excuse me for asking," said the barber, " but I suppose you know the style has changed now, so that the barbermg business ain't what it was by about 800 per cent. Our swell customers don't have their hair dressed at all. They simply run a comb through it, make a half-way part, and let it lie as ie will. It looks kinder careless and distinguished, you know ; and not aa though gotten up for the occasion. A few of our customers have their hair brushed dry and parted accurately, but they are in the very email minority. As for oil, we no longer keep it in the shop, though we have a little grease constantly on hand for tho old-fashioned customers who like it. As near as I can understand from what our swell customers say, they hate to smell as if they'd come from a barber shop. "A good many club men who come here ]ust have the razor passed over the face once, and do not have bay rum put on the chin or tho hair. It looks pretty well, too, to my mind, because people wear their hair short now, and if the hair is cut short and allowed to grow as it will, it is apt to give the appearance of the head a better outline than if the hair is oiled and plastered down solidly, " It is the same way with men who wear beards. Only a, few years ago customers always had a little something put on their beards to make them stay right, and they took kindly to a spray of perfume after the work was clone. Nothing of that sort goes now, however. Beards are usually trimmed close and brushed dry. It's a big difference from what it was when I went into the business., At that time customers kept bottles of lavender water at -the shop, used grease, cosmetics, and colouring matter, insisted on being shaved close to the chin, and when they went out of the shop and walked abroad anybody knew where they'd been if lie didn't come within 10 feet of them. Any man could be a barber nowadays ; but it took an artist to arrive at any eminence in his profession when I started in."— " Philadelphia Record."