Today we’d like to introduce you to Ben White.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Ben. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I started playing music after being turned in to Nirvana in 92 when I was 11 or 12 years old. Since then, I’ve been playing in one or multiple bands. Along the way, clothes and hair became an important part of that whole thing and until a certain point it was all DIY. Eventually, a couple guys in my band started dating real hairstylists and they really opened my eyes as to what was possible when you know what you’re doing. When it became evident that we needed to get a real job one day, they were my encouragement to go that direction.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road has been pretty smooth. I am lucky to have had my former girlfriend (now wife) let me do some squatting along the way. In 03 my band Pacifico moved to Los Angeles to get a record deal and become famous and through a wild series of unfortunate events we ended up back in ATL in a matter of months. While I was in cosmetology school full time, I was working nights and weekends at the stupidest job of all time in a call center for a power company. We took calls from people who had outages or couldn’t pay their bills or had gotten cut off and they were all mad and yelling at me. Those were the least smooth parts.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
In my real job in the hair world, I worked for a great salon in Buckhead, Bob Steele for 13 years. I was a stylist and educator there and have worked for a couple of beauty brands as a platform artist traveling around teaching hair cutting. I do both hair color and cutting, but my main specialty, I suppose is cutting, especially razor cutting. I now work with my great friend Jacob Khan at his salon Jacob K Hair and we have an education company called FancyEDU. We travel the country and host educational events in Atlanta. We try to approach hair education in a relaxed, unpretentious way without a lot of the corporate, branded language that makes the material more confusing. We have recently launched a subscription-based online education platform where we upload and archive full videos with explanations of each cut and will soon be adding color.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
At Jacob K Hair, I’m looking forward to continued growth of our FancyEDU brand. Trying to emphasize that hair education can be simple, unpretentious and easy to understand and use. I’m still in three bands also. I play bass guitar in Corsa which plans to release either and Lp or 2 Eps in the coming months and in a band called Pasadena that keeps threatening to book a couple of shows. I also sing and play guitar in a Nirvana tribute called Nameless Nameless and we play around town a pretty good bit.
Contact Info:
- Address: 597 Atlanta st
Roswell, GA 30075 - Website: Fancyhairdressers.com
- Phone: 470-303-9989
- Instagram: @benwhitedoeshair @jacobkhair @corsagrams @namelessnamelessatl @thedenaband
- Facebook: @benwhitedoeshair
Image Credit:
Daryna Barykina, and Just a Fan Photography
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