The Razor's Edge
by Marianne Dougherty for American Salon magazine
Bumble and bumble reinvented razor-cutting nearly 20 years ago. Now the company has partnered with Feather, master craftsmen for more than a century and descendants of Samurai, to create a hairdressing tool of utmost elegance and precision.

The new Bb.Razor has been a long time coming. After two decades of discovering, learning, rejuvenating, mastering and teaching razor-cutting, Bumble and bumble finally decided to partner with the Osaka, Japan-based Feather Safety Razor Co. to create a razor of its own. Howard McLaren, vice president, senior artistic director of Bumble and bumble, has watched the razor come full circle since the time when it was derided by Vidal Sassoon, who associated razors with hairdressers who were using them to thin the hair so they could create elaborate beehives and other hairstyles that were popular in the 1950s and ‘60s.

When McLaren moved from his native Scotland to London, where he began working with Anthony Mascolo at Toni&Guy, he gained a newfound respect for the razor. “Anthony taught me to use a razor to create a lot of different textures,” McLaren says. Still, it was when he moved to Paris to work as an editorial hairdresser that McLaren felt his world open up. “I learned more about hairdressing from professional photographers I met in Paris, who taught me to see the whole person, not just a white cape and head that I put the hairdo I wanted to on,” he says.

McLaren recalls his “aha” moment watching a session stylist named Roman, who worked for Phyto founder Patrick Ales, drag a model’s hair across her head. “I thought it would be a disaster, but it was like being hit by a train,” he says. “I felt that I needed to do things in a completely different way after that. I went back to my razor so I could get unique textures I just couldn’t get with shears alone.”

Then, in 1985, McLaren ran into Michael Gordon in London. Gordon, who had opened Bumble and bumble on 57th Street in Manhattan and hired a number of session stylists to work with him, was getting a lot of press in European magazines. When Gordon offered McLaren a position as creative director, he took it. By that time, McLaren was applying real technique to razor-cutting. “I wasn’t just slashing hair,” he says. Within four months of arriving in New York, he was featured in Vogue in a story about razor-cutting, which was being hailed as the next big thing.

“We’d figured out what worked in the studio,” says McLaren, who admits taking what he’d learned from both Sassoon and famed French hairdresser Antoine and putting them together. Brilliantine, a perfumed oil that gives hair separation and luxurious sheen, was the company’s first product and a tribute to Antoine. “In the ‘80s it was all about big hair and mousse, but we went against the grain, creating these small head shapes that looked kind of greasy,” McLaren says.
Education was, and still is, critical to Bumble and bumble. “We taught stylists techniques to build a haircut, then deconstruct it,” McLaren says. “Once they knew what they were doing, they could create a haircut with a razor alone.”

By the ‘90s, razor-cutting was so popular that everyone was making a razor, but McLaren was worried that many hairdressers were using razors incorrectly, just as Sassoon had feared 30 years earlier. That’s why training is so critical, he says. “The blade is the most important part of a razor,” McLaren says. “It gives the control you need so you don’t thin the hair out too much.”

When he began designing his own razor, McLaren was anxious to work with Feather because of its history, which dates back to the Samurai. “They were making these swords that could cut a person’s head off in one fell swoop,” he says. “Their commitment to quality is unsurpassed.”

Instead of going with plastic, McLaren chose fruitwood for the handle. “I thought that just from handling it over time, it would acquire a patina of sorts,” he says.

A very small number of razors are being made at the moment and will be offered to Bumble and bumble network salons. To find out how you can join the network, visit bumbleandbumble.com or call 888/7BUMBLE.

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