CHAIR I
AC
Albert Cutter
Master barber · third generation
Took the shears from his father in ’94. Cut for two prime ministers, six footballers and the man who plays the organ at St Botolph’s.
§ 04 · THE STORY
Three Cutters. One shop. Sixty-three years.
- 1962
Frederick opens the door.
Fred Cutter takes the lease on a shuttered cobbler’s at 42 Hanbury Street for £18 a week. First haircut, his own brother’s, on a Tuesday morning. Shilling and sixpence.
- 1978
A son, then a son.
George Cutter, sixteen, leaves school and starts sweeping. Fred won’t let him near a comb for two years. He’ll keep this rule when his own children come up.
- 1994
Albert takes the shears.
George’s son Albert, eighteen, gives his grandfather Fred the last haircut the old man ever has. Fred dies in the chair in ’97 - we don’t say in front of the children, but everybody knows.
- 2008
The shop, kept whole.
Spitalfields turns. Half the street goes coffee shop. The lease comes up; we buy the freehold with three families chipping in, a handshake at the Pride of Spitalfields, a mortgage we’re still paying.
- 2018
Joseph comes home.
Joseph Cutter finishes seven years on Berwick Street and takes Chair II. Brings two regulars with him; they’re still booked every six weeks.
- 2021
Ruby takes Chair III.
First woman to cut behind a Cutter chair. The first three months Albert spent fielding raised eyebrows at the bar of the Carpenter’s Arms. By month four, nobody was raising them.
“The shop’s job is to be here. Not to grow, not to franchise, not to put a second one in Shoreditch. To open at nine on a Tuesday in 2062 with a Cutter behind every chair we can fill.”
- Albert Cutter