Trio Of Female Barbers Offer An Alternative To The ‘Cool Guy Club’
DARTMOUTH — There’s a certain mythos surrounding barbershops: the smell of Barbicide, the buzz of clippers, stylish dudes with impressive facial hair. Modern barbershops are cool places, and stepping into one can make you feel like you’re part of a special club.
A lot of people love that, but the experience isn’t the same for everyone. The same environment that makes some feel special can make others feel awkward or unwelcome. Even for the people who work in barbershops, the environment can sometimes feel toxic.
The three co-owners of downtown Dartmouth’s newest barbershop hope to change that.
Robyn Ingraham, Courtney Whynott, and Madison Ingram recently opened Devoted Barbers and Co. The trio says the goal is to create a different kind of barbershop: one with an open, welcoming vibe where everyone feels comfortable.
“We wanted to create a safe space where everybody would be accepted and could come together and just express yourself and your individuality,” Whynott explains.
Whynott, Ingraham, and Ingram are veterans of the industry with decades of experience between them. They say they were tired of the exclusive, judgy atmosphere they often encountered working at other barbers.
“Most barbershops feel like a cool guy club. It feels like you need to be a part of this weird, little thing that they’ve got going on, Ingraham says. “We just never really fit into that in the shops that we worked at so we wanted to create our own cool environment that’s just for everyone.”
Sitting side-by-side on a couch in their newly renovated shop last week, the trio laid out how they plan to create this environment.
As they described their vision, all three begin smiling more and talking faster. They jumped in halfway through each other’s answers to add their own spin or clarify a detail.
They’ve laid out their shop so their stations sit in a quasi-circle designed to foster conversation. They plan silly questions to ask clients and make a conscious effort to include the entire room in whatever is happening.
“I like to spark good conversations behind the chair. This isn’t a place where we talk about the weather. We’re going to ask you the most outlandish questions,” Whytnott says.
“Something that you’re not going to hear in the workplace or in your office all the time,” Ingram chimes in.
“So when you take a break from working in the office and you come in here this is going to be 30 minutes of pure entertainment,” Whynott finishes with a laugh.
Sit in any of their chairs and you might get asked an outlandish “would-you-rather,” question, or join in on a gentle ribbing. Hopefully, Ingram says, you’ll end up laughing along with everyone else in the room.
“We like that, the togetherness vibe where we can all kind of talk together,” Ingraham says. “It’s more of a group discussion rather than, you know, that cool guy club.”
“The highlight of coming to work, for us, is when we have those group chats and we’re all together and we have the whole room laughing: that’s when you know that you’re doing what you love. Because when all three of us are standing behind the chair and all of our clients are laughing and we’re keeled over, that’s what we like, and that’s the kind of experience we want to give everybody,” Whynott says.
It’s the kind of thing they didn’t often see in the “cool guy clubs” they’ve worked in in the past. And while the trio says they didn’t start Devoted specifically to be an all-woman operation, they are pretty happy it is.
“I think that’s pretty important,” Ingram says. “It’s not something we really thought about… but we are pretty stoked it’s three powerful girls in here running the show right now.”
We are pretty stoked it’s three powerful girls in here running the show right now”
“People try and sometimes pit women against each other, so for us … really coming together as women and really bringing our strengths to the table and putting it all and sharing it, and growing together is really important,” Whynott adds.
Ingram says she’s already had clients tell her they felt more comfortable coming to Devoted than some other barbershops they’ve been to in the past. She hopes to be able to give even more people that same comfort when they sit in her chair, whoever they are.
“Whether you identify as he, she, they — come as you are, we want just a safe space for all walks of life,” she says.
Along with fostering a more welcoming environment for their clients, Whynott, Ingram, and Ingraham also want to foster more support between barbers themselves.
Ingraham points out that there can be a lot of ego and competition between different shops that she would love to see lessen. She thinks all the barbers in the city, her and her co-owners included, could benefit from more industry-wide communication and support.
“We really want to support each other and build each other up, instead of having that hostile environment,” Ingram says.
Devoted will hold an official grand opening sometime soon and they plan to invite other local barbers and shop owners to the event. Hopefully, Ingraham says, that step will help to start building a stronger community in their local industry.
“That’s one thing that we know here: we’re always going to keep learning. We learn from our clients every day, we learn from each other, that’s what being a good barber is,” Ingraham says.