From Henry (Henry Bucks’ magazine)
A good shave and a haircut can leave you looking sharp and feeling great.
It’s that stage in life. Things are looking a bit thin on top. And to be quite honest, the heat and the pollution on Collins Street are not helping. But Leo Di Valentino has just the thing for me: a snip, a head massage and a shave. A hairdresser Leo is not. Rather he’s a proper, old-fashioned barber.
The word “barber” comes from the Latin barba or beard. And although barbers have been around almost as long as facial hair, it took until 296 BC for the ancient art to be exported to Rome from the Greek colonies in Sicily. Perhaps this was when it was made law that all free men be cleanshaven. No doubt this was brought about by the lobbying of the barber’s peak body.
But back to Leo. He is not Roman but may as well be,
his home town being only a short trip away from the
Italian capital. Visiting the barber is a way of life in Italy, as indeed it is around the Mediterranean. Barbers can soothe that grappa headache and trade gossip. “You go for a shave, a head massage, for example,” Leo tells me.“You may have had a heavy night. You get the feeling you are being looked after. It’s a lift.” And so Leo learned the dark art of soothing troubled heads and chins. He began his trade in the 1950s, and in 1959, at the age of 16, followed his elder brother to Melbourne.
He’s snipping away while I sink into the old-fashioned barber’s chair in his shop downstairs at Henry Buck’s Melbourne flagship store. His shelves are populated by the sorts of condiments and unctions that were once only the preserve of English gentlemen. We’re talking Taylor of Old Bond Street. Oh, and as a concession to fashion, and without becoming too hairdressery, Zegna aftershave.
By now Leo has a large contraption strapped to his hand by springs and plugged into the wall. As it vibrates on my head my fillings shake. My sinuses start to rattle and my jowls roll.
Leo tells me about his experiences as a barber at the Southern Cross Hotel. Billy McMahon, then the Federal Treasurer, dropped in, and of course he forgot his wallet. Then there was the time Rupert Murdoch dropped in for a snip. Those were the days.
A psychiatrist once told him that extraneous facial hair was a method of maintaining machismo; the more hair lost on top, the more men tend to compensate by growing hair elsewhere. “In the 1960s and 1970s if you were losing hair you felt you should show that it was growing somewhere else,” he explains. “Today, gladly, it is the other way around.” Wisely he guides me away from a combover.“There is more a tendency to go to other extremes: short or shorn off completely,” he says, making my locks neat and short.
By now the seat has been tipped back and the head-rest jacked up. He’s whipping up the shaving foam into thick peaks. My whiskers are as tough as wire, and I discover where I go wrong at home. The secret is to get those stiff peaks of foam and to ONLY use cold water. Don’t shower first to soften the beard. I’m lathered up for a good five minutes, with Leo leaving the soap to dry to assist his open blade razor on its way.
The technique is to follow the direct ion of the beard and not to shave too close. He says it is better to shave twice a day than have one close shave in the morning. Now Leo wraps a steaming hot towel around my face as I relax further into the chair. Zegna aftershave is gently slapped on to my face. A balm is rubbed into my pink and shining skin and then I’m back on Collins Street. Not quite a master of the universe, but I can understand why customers have been regulars with Leo for more than 40 years.