Style Guide: Frankie and Jordan Hair Studio
The Frankie and Jordan Hair Studio is a woman-owned LGBTQ barbershop and salon located in Brooklyn, New York. Since opening in 2022, the business has gained many fans due to the highly trained stylists who care about both how hair looks and feels. Focusing on the health of client’s hair is a key component of this small but growing business that offers complimentary drinks and is dog-friendly. Their salon is located at 570 Manhattan Ave. Greenpoint, Brooklyn NY 11222 and the owners recently discussed their experiences running the business via an exclusive interview.
Meagan Meehan (MM): How did you get into hair styling and why is hair health such a focus of your business?
Frankie (F): I was always *that friend* that did everyone’s hair to go out, but I never took hair very seriously until — believe it or not, my first psychic reading! Long story short, a psychic pointed me in the right direction when I was 19, I dropped out of college and enrolled in beauty school. We take hair health so seriously because good hair is more than just how it looks right? It’s how it moves, how it feels, how it holds up between appointments. Hair that gets fried to achieve a specific tone doesn’t feel great, won’t move naturally and with the quality of cameras now it won’t even photograph well.
Jordan (J): I had kind of taught myself barbering when I was in high school, just for fun really. As I got older, I found myself managing restaurants, and cutting hair was kind of just my fun hobby. I had been working in a restaurant where the chef/owner had this really long hair that was not doing the most for him, one day he mentioned maybe wanting to cut it! I jumped on the opportunity and that was the catalyst for everything hair. People started complimenting his cut and asking where he got it, I started accumulating some real clients and fell in love with doing hair. I quit my fancy restaurant manager job and enrolled in cosmetology school to legitimately pursue a career in hair.
MM: How did you break into the stylist profession and how long did it take you to learn the techniques?
F: We both did the state mandated 1,000 hours of education required back in 2015, and I think we can agree that from then until now we are constantly watching hair videos and trying to learn every day. I assisted under master stylists and colorists for about two years, and attended many classes before being a full blown stylist with my own chair. And I still continue to further my education and learn newly developing techniques and products.
J: I freelanced for a while before finishing cosmetology school. Once I finished school, I got my own chair at a salon in the east village as the, “mens/short hair stylist.” I did that for a year before ending up in a barbershop and learning that I preferred the feel of a barbershop to the salon. I appreciate the time I spent in cosmetology school and in a salon environment though because I definitely learned techniques that I wouldn’t have had I just gone to barber school or only worked in a barber shop.
MM: How did you meet and why did you decide to start working together?
F: We met at the Paul Mitchell Academy in 2015, and we started working together even back then. The school had a salon floor where we took paying clients, and we quickly learned that we had opposite strengths that made working together very natural and complimentary.
J: If Frankie got a short men’s cut client and I got a highlight client, no we didn’t, we would switch. Sometimes I’d have a freelance cut and Frankie would come with me and cut my clients daughters hair. It just worked.
MM: How did you establish your Brooklyn location?
F: In the fall of 2021 I left the Park Slope salon I had been working at for a couple years. Jordan and I opening something together was always the eventual plan, so we decided to start looking. We said to ourselves that it could be the kind of thing that takes three months or three years to find. It took us not even two months to find the space. It was perfect because it is almost in the middle of where the two of us were previously working, so not too hard for our clients. It had separate spaces for us to work in, salon up front — barber in the back, complete with a bonus window in the back. We jumped on it and had three months to renovate the completely raw space. We had our books open for January 15th and construction finished January 14th at like 7pm! But we did it & here we are a year and a half later, loving it!
MM: How have you grown your clientele?
F: We both definitely are super lucky to have clients that love us enough to talk about us and refer us to their friends and family, word of mouth is always the most reliable advertising. We’ve accumulated some pretty great reviews, which have definitely brought us new clients. And then it wouldn’t be fair not to mention Instagram. Instagram has been great because the clients that find us through our posts specifically want what we do, you really get what you post.
MM: What are the coolest hair styles you’ve done?
J: Once in a while we like to collab with an artist friend of ours on projects where we will bleach and tone the hair as white as we can (without damaging the hair too much of course), and then our friend will paint a custom design using hair color. Not only is it super cool, but we always have a blast doing it, and it always gets our creative juices flowing!
MM: What has been some of the best feedback that you’ve gotten about your hairstyles?
F: Usually the best feedback we get does not really highlight anything specific about the hair- but more so about how our clients feel. How much they enjoy spending time in our space, or how great they feel about themselves afterwards. Those are the compliments that really stick in our heads and in turn, make us feel great about ourselves. It’s awesome when a client comes in and tells us how many compliments they got after their last visit or is hair savvy enough to complement our techniques. But the feedback that tells us we boosted the client’s confidence is definitely the best.
MM: How much does your dog-friendly attitude help your business?
F: We’d like to think it’s a mutually beneficial policy. We know a lot of people have dogs that suffer from separation anxiety or work long hours and feel guilty about leaving their dogs home alone even more — so we like to think we are helping our clients. But honestly, it helps us the most probably, we are both big dog lovers and find them to be instant mood boosters. Keeps work fun and that is always helpful for the business. We even have a dog highlight reel on our Instagram page!
MM: What’s the best thing about being a professional hair stylist?
F: There are so many advantages to doing what we do. We have the ability to make our, “office,” feel however we want it to feel, we set the vibe. We have the power to make people feel better about themselves not only by giving them amazing hair, but also by the conversations we have while doing it. Not a day goes by where at least one client doesn’t make a comment about how therapeutic getting their hair done with us can be. And then of course, never having to worry about our look not being, “work appropriate,” having the freedom to express ourselves as stylishly as we please is a major plus. Jordan can be heard pretty often saying the only difference between when we are working and when we aren’t is that we are doing hair, we don’t have to put on any fronts.
MM: How do you hope your business evolves over the next five years?
F: We are eager to grow our team, now that we are over a year in and feel like we’ve hit a stride it’s time to bring in more talent! That is our main focus right now, finding hair artists that love what they do and giving them the space to do it. Another long-term goal of ours is to eventually develop a product line. We have found that there isn’t really a line that caters to long and short hair styling. We have had to carry multiple product lines to satisfy both of our needs as a hairstylist and a barber. To create something that will be a perfect fit for our brand is a dream.
*****
For more information about their salon visit, https://frankieandjordan.com/
