“A barber who almost became a counselor.”
Ridhwan
On the smell of an old shop, a bottle chosen for its contrast, the exact number of sprays a small room can take, and a conflict best watched with popcorn.
Tap the underlined phrases for notes in the margin. Most of this page can be touched.
Muhammad Ridhwan Azmi cuts hair in Jakarta, at Golden Hair Studio, the Pondok Kelapa branch in East Jakarta, and makes things for the internet in between. He answers questions the way a good barber talks while working: briefly, without wasted motion, and then back to the job. So we have taken him at his word and built the rest of this page out of things you can actually pick up.
He did not send a playlist. He sent one EP, from 1992, by a Japanese band who never made a small song in their lives.
A barber who almost became a counselor
That is his entire biography, in his own words, and he offers no more of it than that. He does not say what almost happened, or what turned him back. It is the kind of sentence a person puts down once and does not pick up again.
“A barber who almost became a counselor.”
Both, obviously. A barber holds a stranger still for forty minutes, stands behind them so nobody has to make eye contact, and works with their hands while the other person talks. There is a reason people tell their barber things they have not told anyone. The chair is the closest thing most men have to a counselor’s couch, and he ended up in the profession that does the listening anyway.
Picky, on purpose
He calls himself picky and means it as a working method. He goes toward the bold, the rich and the challenging, and toward things that sound like his trade. A barber is not a subtle profession. You are handling steel near somebody’s ear and you are expected to have an opinion.
The other half of the method is the opposite instinct. He keeps an open mind and goes looking, because a taste that never gets tested is just a habit wearing better clothes.
The old shop
Ask what takes him somewhere and he does not name a perfume. He names a room. An old-style barbershop: tonic, shave cream, talc powder and clean hair. It makes him feel at home instantly, and it is the reason he does this for a living.
His words for it are worth keeping whole: fragrance has always been part of creating confidence and memorable experiences for people. That is not a sentence about perfume. It is a sentence about what a barber actually sells.
Four things, on the counter of every old shop in the world. Switch them on one at a time and see what each is actually doing.
The room · Tonic, cream, talc, clean hairThe smell that told him what to do for a living.
One bottle, and how many sprays
He is wearing HoM Haute Ballad of Fallen Angel, and he is specific about why. He likes the contrast: fresh apple at the front, then something darker, woody and resinous underneath. The distance between those two ends is the part that sounds like him.
Then comes the practical half, which almost nobody thinks about and every barber has to. He works indoors, in a small room, standing closer to strangers than most professions ever get. So he counts the sprays. Noticeable, he says, but never overwhelming.
Games before work
His ritual is not coffee and it is not a spray on the wrist. He plays games before his shift, because it keeps his mind engaged, gets him thinking creatively, and hands him ideas he uses for the rest of the day. A barber is doing geometry on a moving object for eight hours. Warming up the part of the brain that solves things is not a distraction. It is preparation.
Authenticity, shaped by exploration
“Good taste is authenticity, shaped by exploration,” he says. “The best choices stay true to who you are while remaining open to discovering something new.” Two forces held against each other, which is the same structure he likes in a bottle: know your own end, keep walking toward the other one.
One belief, defended
And then the line he would actually go to the wall for, delivered with the timing of a man who has heard every argument in the world from a chair, and learned which ones are worth joining.
Not every conflict deserves your attention. Sometimes the wisest choice is to lie on the couch, grab popcorn, and enjoy the conflict.
“Just smile, like a child.”