I Gave My Student 1 Hour to Transform This Haircut

What's going on Faded Culture? We're back with another tutorial. Today we got student Gabe here from Faded Culture Academy and we got a huge transformation on this taper fade. I hope you enjoy and let's jump right into it. How to double y'all's money as a barber? Haircut looks good but you're sending your client home with no product. We're barbers looking out for barbers. Now imagine making a few extra hundred dollars a week but not from doing more haircuts, simply just styling your clients with a high quality product. For all you barbers, we're officially offering our matte clay at wholesale where you're going to be able to double your money. So if you're ready, head over to fadedculture.com. Yeah, I got you. What's the reference? You want to do like short like that, like a you know what I mean, a messy tapered look like that. The c-cups pop out. Yeah, we don't have to edge up the forehead but the c-cups look nice edged up. Yeah, just like right here, like lower. Like forward and messy? Yeah. Okay, I think we can do that. All right Gabe, how would you start something like this, bro? Man, dude. He said man, dude. I would definitely have to wet a section of hair. All right, cool. Go ahead, just grab your bottle. Okay, like detangle it a little bit. Just so I can run the comb through. It's just the waves that are kind of tangled in a little bit. When the hair is like really, really curly, I usually run my finger through because have you had hair where you can't even run the comb through? It's just, dude, it's so curly or like so thick that you can't even run the actual brush through it. What would be your first section? I'd probably just part it down the middle. Okay. Do the profile section and then I'd do the radial section like going down the side. Okay. And then like the top to the sides and then that's what I would start with. I think something that could help you to speed up the process is because it is so long and rather than having a section something this long and like saturate something this long, we could technically already go in and start like literally just dry cutting. Like I can literally cut this and now that gives us less hair to actually saturate and section. True. You know what I mean? So you want to go ahead and try that? Yeah. The only thing I would mention is this haircut is tailored around the perimeter, the fringe, so I would just make sure that we don't cut that too low, right? So I would grab it. I'll literally grab all of this. So would you do something like maybe because like whenever the fringe is like the focal point? Correct. I sometimes would do that just like main like keep that out? Yeah, you can. But in this case, so like for instance, all right, we already established that it's going to be right there where the C-cup's at, right? So even if I do grab it from here now that you already sectioned it, we can see I at least want to leave this. So now I can grab this along with everything else, pull out just a little bit to make sure and boom now I can at least get rid of all that. And now when I come back and establish my fringe now I got less to work with just all around. Just make sure we're leaving those blank. Yeah. And if you're ever skeptical like is this too much, then obviously just pull out more. Yeah, easy. And then, yeah, exactly. And then even this from down the bottom. Boom. Yeah, and you can just take that all around. Yeah, try to debulk as much as possible while still keeping the end in mind. Yeah. Way better starting point. And it's less like daunting, right? It's like less, it's not as overwhelming from the beginning like. Yeah, looking at this is like it's a lot to tackle. Yeah, exactly. Let me think about that. Yeah, I think that's good. All right, go ahead and start saturating. I wouldn't be like super worried about like where it's like where I'm pulling, like what hair I'm pulling. Okay. I'm just trying to establish like a length first. Instead of cutting right there, I would still pull a little bit lower. Yeah. I like too how you grabbed this section from over here. That's good. We left it long enough to probably coil it to like right there right where we need it. What helped you the most when learning how to section besides doing it a million times? Doing it a million times. Right, that's pretty much the secret. What I've seen like a lot of people like including me too like have questions about at the school. Yeah. Is like the delta section, like why a delta? Yeah. Because everybody understands a horseshoe and box I feel like. Yeah. But like the delta is like the special one, you know. The special one. It's my favorite. I feel like honestly I can, you can achieve most like 80, 90 percent of the hair cuts with the delta. Actually like starting to like get to this point, I'd probably cut the sides first, the side and the back. Yeah. And the way I would do this and an easy way for me is I would grab a horizontal section right here, right under the parietal. And I would establish my length there, follow that, use that as my guide, and then just connect to that. The reason I would start my guide down here is because I want to make sure that when I actually come diagonal, I'm not cutting into this length. So you would do diagonal sections for the haircut? Yeah, I can easily do diagonal sections because that doesn't, it wouldn't make a big difference, right? So like I could diagonal or I could do horizontal, but my point is I'm gonna first come in and set it my guide right here. Okay. And then that's it. I'm not gonna cut nothing from up here no more. So even if you do do horizontal, right, I would chop this, come all around, and then I would just grab my section under and then match it. Okay, cool. Let's try that. I definitely like horizontal or diagonal sectioning is or like cutting sections is like not what I do often. Not your thing. Right here though, the only thing I would keep in mind is you're doing like my finger angle according to the head right here. So personally, I would probably, just so I can still make sure that I'm preserving this, I would probably have my finger angle like this. Just a little bit so I can preserve more length. Just on this side. Okay. You see how I'm preserving more length here versus here? Yeah, just so I can preserve that. And then at the end, I'll touch up if I need to. Just because everything, like you said, this haircut is very centered with the fringe. Yeah, like that. And then that would be my guide all around the head. So I would just follow that and then stay under the occipital to make sure that I preserve all of this. Sorry if I smell like coffee, bro. It's okay. I drank coffee this morning too. I remember I used to hate being in school and then my teacher would come up to me and help me. I would hate to ask for help because she'd just come up and coffee breath in my face. I'm like, you know what? I'll figure it out. And now I'm the teacher with the coffee breath in Gabe's face. We had this one teacher in high school and he was my English teacher. Yeah. And he was the only one in the school that had like a doctorate's degree. Everybody knew he smoked weed. He was smoking weed in like the parking lot and stuff. Jesus. And he would come up to us and try to get in our face. Come on, man. You smell terrible. That's hilarious. You see what you're doing here though? Do you understand the why? Yeah. Trying to like keep that length correct. So we don't like expose the occipital wall. Correct. I think. No, I know. That's actually good. And that's going to be used, like you said, as our guide for the rest of the hair that's laying under. But now we preserve length. We preserve the weight. What's one thing that you didn't know Kind of like everything there is to know. Yeah. Like sectioning, angle, everything. Like kinetics. All the kinetics. Because whenever I used to do like sheer work before I came to the school. Yeah. It was kind of just pull and chop. That's what I would tell my clients. Like hey bro, this isn't going to be the best. And I'd call it my pull and chop. Your pull and chop. I feel like the amount of weight that we were about to leave is probably a little too much for the outcome that we're trying to get. But it's just a little bit more. Nothing crazy, honestly. Okay. So at like this point, like the haircut, are you being like super precise? Yeah, a little more. I feel like the first one's a rough draft. So like what you put in was like a clean rough draft and now it's like just refine it and then we'll set in. Okay. But yeah, this is basically I'm just finalizing the guide before we move forward. So learning all the kinetics is what's helped. Yeah. And then I also like, I still do even like with years under my belt of cutting hair, like I go home and like I'll kind of like super self-analyze the haircuts that I do to try and find flaws. Like I'm not trying to see if it's perfect. I'm trying to see where I messed up, what could have been better. And then I'll like try to like go over with myself like what I could have done better to fix that. Yeah. And what's been like one of those things that like you're like, oh okay, I'm gonna do this now? Yeah, it's like whenever I do that, it definitely helps when the client comes back in because now I know exactly on their head where I need to change something. Now we have our guide. We could either come horizontal and still pull this hair up and follow that or you can do diagonal. And now we have our guide sitting at the top. You see that? Yeah. But now we're preserving everything that we initially did from the parietal and then up into the crown. So no matter where I pull diagonal, I have my guide sitting at the top. So like for this, like what is your guide? Like where, what hair are you looking for to be your guide? Like what did I, like why did I even establish the length here? Yeah, like if I pull this section and then I look at it, am I using like this length as my guide right here? Yes, the top length, like the shortest length basically. So maybe like right here would be like my guide right there? Correct. Because that was my horizontal line. That's where it was sitting. Okay. If I pull, there's my guide. Are you looking for the shortest length that we established? Correct. I'm gonna taper all of this so it doesn't really matter again, but it's a good example. I could have gone shorter right there intentionally. To a setup for the taper? Correct. You see my guide still right there? One thing I'm, I'm just coming straight out the head. I'm not, there's no more crazy finger angle. The only angle is here. Okay. It's not this no more. It's just straight out? Yeah, I don't need to try to preserve anything that's already preserved from my horizontal line. Oh. Does that make sense? Yeah. So now I can just comb. As long as you just don't cut that part of the hair. Exactly. Are you connecting this to like the previous section? Yes, in a way. I mean that's just the way I'm combing it, but you don't have to no more. It's not like intentional? I don't, I don't need to over, yeah, I don't need to over direct no more to the previous because I have my, my, my guide already. Okay, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Does that make sense? So it's slightly different. We're not using this as a guide, it's this as a guide. Yes, exactly. But if we didn't set the perimeter guide line, that's when we would have to over direct. Yes, exactly, and that's when you need to do this too, to preserve. You see that? I'm smart. To preserve. So instead of you having to preserve every time like this, we already did it by doing this. Gotcha. You caught on. Something clicked for you, huh? Yeah, it did because I would definitely then over direct. I'd probably build up too much weight and end up chopping that. So I guess if you're like just looking at it, you wouldn't have to cut anything above this visual weight line? Yes. It's just everything that's like below it? Exactly, and that's the reason I went in and refined what you did. So we could better see it? Exactly, and it was initially a little too low. Okay. You know what I mean? Yeah. And this I can bring out to the head because again, I'm going to taper it. We're going to refine all of that. I think this is a good enough length to blow out. So yeah, you see what we're doing now? Yeah. Making sense? Yep. And then right there, because his hair's wavy, you can see like where the short length is perfectly. Man, it's crazy to watch y'all's tutorials in a day over here. And then see them in person? Yeah. See my guides right there. So you wouldn't cut any of that? Nah, I don't need to. I need to start trimming this to connect it to that. Gotcha. You're gonna take it from here? You're gonna try it? I feel like that's something probably a lot of people don't understand, including myself. Okay, gotcha. Remember, we don't have to finger angle no more as much. Yeah, we can just kind of come straight out of it. So like that right there? Yeah, and there's your guide. Perfect. You can still see your guide, right? You see it through? Right there. Yes, exactly. It's crazy to just how you say that you're now seeing it in person, but I think it's dope too that you were once initially in school and then now you're actually at the Fader Culture Academy. It's actually, I think about it a lot actually. The first time I ever cut hair, I never watched a tutorial ever. I kind of just winged it. Yeah. And then it came out really bad. It came out really bad. And I looked up how to do a fade. And y'all's videos were the first one to show up. And then after that, I just loved everything about Fader Culture. And then dude, now being part of it, I just feel like it's crazy how it circles back. So if you don't know already, we do have a program. We will link in the description down below. If you're not in Texas and still want to learn our four pillars, you still want a deeper dive into education and longer length tutorials, there is a link down below. It's on a platform called Skool where you can subscribe. You can also submit pictures of your own haircuts and my brother and I or students like Gabe will go on there and give you actual live feedback. You do get seven days for free, so make sure to check it out. That looks good like that? Yeah, it's good. And we're gonna blow all of this out anyways. Be like that. But yeah, looks good. Dude, this is always the worst side. I usually start with my worst side, to be honest. I usually start with the left side. Whenever it comes to haircuts, I usually start with what I think mentally is the hardest. So if it's the back, if it's the left side, because diagonal back on the left side is a little bit harder. Always combing into the direction that we're gonna section. Remember, each section too is about a comb's width. So when you and your brother started cutting hair, being like the king of tutorials on YouTube, was that always in your mind? Honestly, yes. Just because I felt like there was a gap. I don't know. I truly felt like there was a creative gap within the tutorial world on YouTube. I feel like there's been dope people that actually have done it before us, but I think just from the beginning, I was like, dude, there's not two brothers in the industry who are doing this. I feel like that already gave us an edge to help us stand out. But I mean, yeah, dude, from the very beginning, it's crazy because my brother and I both have OCD with certain things and it works, man. Because there's things where he's super particular about that I'm like, dude, nobody's even seen that. And then vice versa, there's things where I'm like, no, we're gonna reshoot that. We need to redo it again. And he's like, dude, nobody cares. And that's been like that from the beginning. And it's been like that from the beginning. We get that from my mom, dude. My mom has a strong OCD with certain things. Like my mom, when she writes a letter, if she misspells something, she'll crumble it all up and start again. Dude. Yeah, we're pretty much done with the sides. So I know that looks crazy, but we're gonna come in, taper this out. We're still gonna debulk this with the clippers and that leaves us with the amount of length and weight that we needed all around the parietal and the crown. I think for the top, I would... Go ahead, you can unclip it. I'd probably unclip it and then split it down the middle and comb it to each side and then connect that to here so I know it's not overlaying it. Correct. Because then it would be too long. Correct. And then I'd cut the top. Yeah. Now that we have like the... Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I would do a center profile and then finish connecting. So always comb in the direction that you want a section. I need to get that tattered on me. Here I'm doing a center profile and this in order to connect. Yeah, exactly. Do you ever get like intimidated by certain haircuts anymore? Yes and no. I feel like no for the most part because I understand a lot of the fundamentals. There's some customers that no matter... Like I'm huge on consultation. But like for instance, I have this one friend. I should say his name and blast him though. I know I've had to tell a lot of people like when they show me like a reference picture, I had to like explain to them like that's a hairstyle, not a haircut. Yeah, exactly. You know like that spiky look. Like I can cut it like that, but if you're not styling it like that then it doesn't matter. Come back to me, you know. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Shout outs to everyone who makes a purchase at fadedculture.com. Mailman just came. Then I would pull like my center profile cutting section and then I'd establish my top length and then I would then pull my vertical sections or my horizontal sections. Got it. Connect that. Got it. Oh, you just cut the middle. Correct. Connect the side to the side. Connect this so I can pull and I can see my guide right there. Boom. You see my shortest guide right there? Yeah. See how it seeps through a little bit? Yeah. Yeah, that would be it and then I would just chop that. Oh, that's easy. And then you just kind of like comb back. Yeah. And move back in the head. Exactly. And then we could still crop. Look, see how it's right there? That's what we use to connect. And then cutting like this right here without taking like super precise sections, that's when like you would definitely have to cross check, right? Yeah, I would cross check. Or you could still even do what you said just to like be that much more precise. But it goes back to how we were saying how shear work is. Yeah, and it's like a messy style too. Yeah. I learned this from a hairbender. If you see the way he cuts, man, it's very like he understands the principles so much. But what's cool is you can still come and just refine it. Start with the back taper, bulk first. Make sure I stop right there. Using my comb to help push that hair down. And then from there I can actually lay my guard down. I have no guard lever still open. Still kind of deep open to be honest. Here I'm going to set in my first guideline. Yeah, there's no fade right now that you feel like you've struggled with? No, not really. You're just a bro now. I try. I think if anything when fading is just connecting it to length, like the top length. Got it. I wouldn't say I really struggle with it. It's just more like sometimes it's not as good as I want it to be. Got it. So I guess yeah, it's a small struggle I have. Just connecting shorter lengths to longer lengths. Yeah, like if they have like this right here, like I can connect it. It just won't look what you want it to look. Yeah, it won't look like what I have pictured in my head. Do you think it was when I was doing the clipper over comb part or like? The back I get good most of the time. It's definitely the sides because it's like less space because like I have all of this like space to connect it. With this side I just have an inch and a half or two inches. Got it. Especially if they're asking for like a mid taper or something on the side where like it's coming up even like a low taper. Yeah, got it. Hopefully we could answer that today. Whenever I run across I just recommend cutting the top shorter. Makes it easier for me. That's hilarious. It reminds me of there's been a few times where I used to cut some people up and they would ask for tapers and I would just struggle bro. I don't know what it was with tapers. It was my biggest struggle. We'd end up just turning all of them into fades. Yeah, they ask for something I don't know how to do. I just tell them hey man I don't think it's gonna fit your head shape. That's hilarious. You should probably just get a mohawk bro. Just the amount of experience I have bro. I feel like it just suits you. Use big words to scare them man. They'll disagree. It's because your occipital bro is just. Yeah, it's connecting the occipital bone to the parietal ridge man. It's just not really doing it. What fade do you use right now Gabe? The same one as y'all's. I definitely used to like set it the bald line with a trimmer and I never really struggled to like fade that out but once I started like doing y'all's method. Yeah. The bald line just erases like so easy. Okay. Yeah, I've just been doing that. Once you started doing our method the bald line erases so easy. I don't struggle but I definitely have to like pay extra close attention fading out the bald line because like I don't have like a top limit. So like just being extra like detailed while like fading that line out. But it forces you to think of the kinetics. Angle, tilt, clipper tilt, your pressure. I know like clipper angle like is like the biggest thing. The more I angle it like the higher I can go in the fade. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's funny they say that. I've done tutorials where I'm literally showing that. Where I'm like look how high I am but I can achieve this because my angle and my pressure have changed. So when you're fading this out right here like what are you looking for specifically? In my head I'm already with like the end in mind of like okay how far up do I need to take this to still make it look clean. I think that's just developed through time. Yeah, keeping the end in mind because of the fact that like sometimes when I tell people the three-step process for that last line they stay way too low and sometimes like it just hair cutting is not perfect. It's not a like a one one plus one equals two. So sometimes I need to stretch out that first step and then compress the half guard or the lever halfway and then I don't need to do the open fully sometimes. Like it's just this last three steps always vary man. And at the top are you like coming out with the clipper right there? Yeah 100% and my pressure is super light. It's almost like once I get that high I'm gliding over the hair. I'm not even touching the scalp. After I debulk. Lately I've been trying to like connect the late before I start the fade connect the debulking length into the top length. Okay. And it's just like I'll bring the two up to like right here probably. Okay. And then just connecting that two length because that two is like that short into like something that's this long. Got it. And just like doing that in like this much space is just like takes me more time than it should. Got it. I'll come in with my two to debulk and I'm gonna taper all of this. Is there like a guard length that you like use to like preserve length for the C-cut? Two. Usually a two. A two is good. Even a three depending on the hair texture. Some people have it very light. But like two generally is like good. It's a good median of like short enough to where I can line this up but long enough to where it's still dark. But you see here even with my two guard as I'm debulking I'm focusing on shape. I'm not just digging in. I digged in down here and as I come up here and because it is just a debulk. And with this are you trying to like be more precise than like just rough draft or? Yeah. Yeah because see I feel like now that left me clean enough to just put the taper in. I see. If you look on the side right here like that doesn't connect I would like super thin I would like start chasing that. It's an intentional disconnect because of the style that we're trying to do. Gotcha. Okay. That's one thing that took me a while to understand too is learning how to be intentionally disconnected because with fades that's all you think about is like the blend. Yeah. And then what I like to do when they get these type of haircuts is set in my perimeter even with the trimmer so I can see where my taper is exactly going to be. And do it for mid taper on the side? Yeah. The picture was a little bit like a mid to high taper. So usually that intentional disconnect is what throws you off. Yeah for sure. Even here with the one dude I'm already trying to like yes I'm creating space but I'm not so much trying to create like a harsh guideline. I'm already trying to connect into what I did with the two guard. So with being like more like not like as precise with those like guards that you just went through you just like worry about like the precision with the detailing process? Yeah because it's like in my head I'm being precise because I know exactly what I'm looking for and doing with those guards. It doesn't look to the outside that I'm being precise but it's like again when it comes to setting up the foundation I'm not trying to create harsh guidelines. They're there just to give me room and space to set up the actual fade. Does that make sense a little bit? Yeah. And see once I set in the fade I can just come in and do any touch-up work. That's pretty much it. You want to attempt the other side Gabe? Yeah. All right Gabe let's step into the taper. So what would you do? I want to make sure that you don't over cut. Yeah I would take my two guard probably up into like right here. Okay perfect and then what I would highly suggest too is let's grab a small section just to make sure we don't cut the fringe and already move it to the side just in case. Gotcha. So now we're worried about here. I believe in you Gabe. Yeah see I like how you're already starting to vamp out. That's exactly what I did. What advice you got for a beginner barber Gabe? How long have you been cutting now? Almost three years. Three years? Just gave everyone free haircut. You're catching up to me bro. You're catching up to me. I try to tell everyone dude like I didn't charge anything for seven months you know like just do it for free until you're good at it. Yeah. Just get your reps in. I tell people that nowadays and they're just like I think they get into this industry wanting to make so much money so when I tell them something like that it just throws them off. Yeah. They're like what? Do you think you could do some of that or you could do it better? You could do it better right? For sure. Because you'll probably have like girls in the background and it'd be crazy. It'd be a party. Are you camera shy? A little bit. Just take a shot it'll go away. Don't take a shot. So I kind of like. What do you do bro? I'd like open the clipper just a little bit. Yeah. Before I fade out that bottom line. Somebody asked me that the other day because sometimes the three-step process changes. Sometimes we start with the lever closed. Sometimes we start with it at one-fourth and I told them exactly do that. Start with it at one-fourth and play it safe. I do want to make a hair girl soon. Yeah? Yeah. Because my idea is like I cut their hair and instead of aftershave I put that on so it goes back faster and they come back. Then I cut their hair again. Do I feel like it matters what barbershop you decide to work at? A hundred percent. It really depends on your intentions. You know what I mean? I think it's one of those things like your environment does play a big part. That looks really good. No it looks fire. I think that has a lot to do with as well like knowing yourself more than anything. Like are you somebody who's susceptible to being influenced by those around you? If you are then you know better. What are you doing there? If you're not then again you're in there with an intention to get clients make money and get out. But willpower is depleting so no matter like eventually you're gonna fall. You know what I mean? The longer you stay there. Nice. How's that look? Only thing I see is a little weight line right here. The very top. Not bad. And then we can just go over this a little bit more. Yeah. That's something I do struggle with is like lining up like bulk or like sometimes just behind the ear. So like yeah okay. Now you see it? You want to try it? Go ahead. You already ran the electric shaver on there? Down here? Yeah. Yeah. Okay perfect. Fire. That's better like that right? Yeah it's definitely more even. Just kind of now yeah now right there just above the ear. Yeah exactly. Try to soften that little weight line at the very top and that'll be it. The only thing you got to be wary is like I saw how you combed it down which is good but that's not how he's gonna style it. So it's like I like to kind of see like okay if he's gonna have it messy how how does it lay now? What is it doing? So if he's gonna have it something like that and blown out then I like to see how it looks because sometimes if I do this I'm gonna cut too much and then when he styles it it's gonna be super short here. Gotcha. You know what I mean? Yeah. Can you see how it's not as much now? Peace. Put some talk on that thing. Let's dust him off. Before I style it I want to show it to him and we'll just hit it with the blade. Man it's a really long. You grab the duster like that? I've never grabbed it like that. I just think it's so long to control. Just like that really? Yeah. You have any problem shaving? Oh no. Is that good? That's a good one. What's your name bro? I didn't even. Gabriel. Just saying it's a pretty good name. We have two Gabriel's on the show today. About a dime size. For me I can probably achieve like 90% of the styles with the matte clay. I'm gonna apply the matte product and use the diffuser to bring out the volume. So it's gonna give me that same look with just one product. You've used a diffuser before Gabe? Yeah. Oh you too. Oh wait which Gabe? Which one? So you've put product in your hair before? Yeah. Moose? So you like the wet look? I mean with your longer hair you'd like the wet look? Is that why? Yeah. We're gonna give you a matte dry look with this style. Go ahead and put a diffuser on and then just start blow drying it. And then make sure that we're starting the style and moving it into the direction that we want it laying. That's forward right? Yeah. Like a forward messy.