‘Whoever invented the skin fade - I want to kill them’ - meet the Bristol barber at the cutting edge of fashion

A converted cottage and ironmongers in a sleepy village on the outskirts of Bristol may not seem an obvious base for one of the most in-demand barbers in the city. But if it’s a skin fade, buzz cut or beard trim you’re after, Charlie Lacey - known to his clients simply as Charlie the Barber - is a name you need to know.

Charlie started his career in this small barber shop on St James Street in Mangotsfield when it was called Level. It’s now JT Barbers and run by Charlie’s friend Joe Tizzard, who trained him to cut hair more than a decade ago.

The bookings diary for Charlie and Joe, along with three other barbers, is rarely empty thanks to online booking, much of it via Charlie’s Instagram account, which has almost 8,000 followers.

Last month, Charlie took part in the Great British Barber Bash in London. It’s a showcasing event with the best barbers from across the UK. Charlie previously worked at the Kings barbershop in Yate, which is where he’s from originally. Prior to that he worked in a women’s hair salon, but it wasn’t for him.

Charlie says: “I was at Kings for five years but then Joe tempted me back to Mangotsfield and most of my customers came with me. A lot of them were from Mangotsfield anyway but then lot of my Yate clients came over, too.”

Charlie is now so in-demand as a barber that he has also launched a training academy for barbers who want to upskill. Called Concept Education, it’s a collaboration with his friend George Knight, who runs the Minimal Barbering hair salon on Temple Way in Bristol.

Charlie says: “We do seminars and ‘look and learn’ sessions where people come along and watch us cut hair and talk about it. There’s a real interest in cutting hair at the moment, it’s very fashionable because of TikTok and Instagram. It seems to be the ‘in’ thing to do and a lot of kids think it’s easy but it isn’t, you need the skills.

“Concept Education isn’t just aimed at people starting up and we get barbers who have been doing it for as long we have. For them, it can be motivating to see what other barbers are doing.”

Meanwhile, at JT Barbers, business is good thanks to it being pre-booked appointments rather than walk-ins. Owner Joe puts the success down to the fact they’re doing something a bit different.

“We’re trying to be bespoke and we don’t really do the traditional. There are other barber shops in the area that do traditional cuts for men who want their usual ‘short back and sides’. We rarely do stuff like that - for us, it’s more about skin fades, buzz cuts, taper fades and patterns. Some of the stuff Charlie does is mental!”

A quick look at Charlie’s Instagram feed reveals an impressive gallery of cutting-edge cuts and the full range of trendy fades.

“Whoever invented the skin fade - I want to kill them,” laughs Charlie. “I do like doing them, and that’s what everybody wants now, but they can be so time consuming!” But with a packed bookings diary, Charlie isn’t complaining.

“It has been great to do online booking via my Instagram account because I post photos of my cuts on there and clients can see what I do.”

And for Joe, running a barber shop is all about providing a service to a range of people in the village, from his son’s schoolfriends to his own mates. “We just try and have fun up here,” he says. “We want it to be a professional place where you get a nice cut and good service.

“And we care about what we do but we want it to be personal and to get to know our clients like mates. We don’t want it to be like some barber shops where the conversations are ‘are you going on holiday this year?’ Or ‘nice weather today’. That’s not what we’re about.

“You should see what it’s like here on a Friday night - the clients even bring us beers so it can be quite a party. But the more relaxed the customers are, the more relaxed the barbers are. Most of the time it doesn’t feel like work - we’re just chatting to our mates as we cut their hair, that’s not really a hard day is it?”