Bandit Hair Company gives gender-affirming haircuts while bolstering the local LGBTQ+ community.
hairsbreadth holds power , particularly for member of the LGBTQ+ community , for whom a good haircut can be life-time changing . Not only is whisker a puppet for self aspect and gender presentation , but an issue for creative thinking and ego maintenance . New Orleans , a city with an abundance ofqueer pridefulness , has one of the few place in the commonwealth where you could get a gorgeous grammatical gender - affirming slash and gossip openly about your love life life , whatever it looks like : Bandit Hair Company .
Bandit Hair Company was founded by Hannah Peterson in 2019 , as a way to create a safe , comfortable fuzz caution hub for her queer community . After working for more than a decade in beauty parlour and barber shops in Seattle and New Orleans , Peterson dreamed of open up a gender - achromatic blank space for her locale clientele . For the last five geezerhood , the store has been so successful that people travel across state lines to have it .
The shop is name for her endearing dog , Bandit , but it was also of import to Peterson that she vary from the woman ’s salon vs men ’s barber shop duality so she prefer the inclusive , non - gendered “ company ” moniker or else .
Hannah Peterson cutting a client’s hair at Bandit Hair Company|Photo by Giancarlo D’Agostaro for Thrillist
“ I require it to feel like you ’re going into a admirer ’s nursing home , ” Peterson say of the distance . So the shop is cozy and inviting with warm ignition , a superfluity of plant life , a bookcase filled with queer literature and zines , a disco ball , and local art .
Leyla Hekmatdoost — who drive an hour from Covington , Louisiana , on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain to get her hair curve at Bandit — says a feeling of comforter wash over her from the moment she walks in . From colorful toughie on the doorway celebrate body positivity and beautiful portrait of trans people hanging in the lavatory to the manner conversations in the shop can be boisterous and silly or sensitive and profound , every item is designed to ease a truly welcoming dependable quad for queer community of interests .
Hekmatdoost ’s partner , Shannon Parr , run to Bandit Hair Company , too . Parr followed their dear stylist KP to Bandit Hair Company near the ending of the COVID-19 lockdown .
“ My whisker ’s been short forever , ” Parr say . “ In Covington , it ’s hard to rule someone who will cut an androgynous cut . If you take for it short at a beauty salon , they ’ll give you a very feminine pixie cut , and barbers around here will barely even let a fair sex sit in the chair . I begin using clippers on my own fuzz eventually . ”
The first time KP cut their hair , they articulate they felt “ euphoria . ” It was the first prison term they walked out of the salon with that extra peppiness in your step that come from feeling confident and beautifully seen .
“ KP was one of the masses who made me very easy expressing myself the fashion I wanted to , ” Parr says . “ This is how I ’ve need my haircloth to await evermore . That haircut literally saved my life-time . ”
Peterson with her dog, and the shop’s namesake, Bandit.|Photo by Giancarlo D’Agostaro for Thrillist
In summation to Peterson , three other colorist and stylists presently work at Bandit Hair Company : Glynn Bai(she / her),KP(they / she ) , andZachary Chadwick(he / they ) . The shop operate on under a corporate role model , so Peterson leave the blank but each stylist maintains their own node list and hold back the profits from their work .
Hekmatdoost and Parr are n’t the only clients to travel long aloofness to benefit from Bandit ’s services . Peterson shares that one client on a regular basis fly in from Florida to have her tomentum cut and colored by Bai , because it was important to find a queer Asian womanhood to do her tomentum . Other client ride for hr from other parts of Louisiana like Baton Rouge and other southern country like Mississippi to get their hair done at Bandit Hair Company .
Every Bandit hairdresser has had the privilege of giving someone their first grammatical gender - affirming haircut , including several teen . Peterson say she remembers a young humanity whose parent had require him to demo as a female child and keep his hair long . When he turned 16 , his only natal day request was to be able-bodied to finally foreshorten his hair’s-breadth off . Hannah gave him his first masculine cut — he cried , and she did too .
Photo by Giancarlo D’Agostaro for Thrillist
Violet Falgout is a 17 - twelvemonth - old trans womanhood who , like many Bandit customer , had spent years having the frustrating experience of stylist and barbers not take heed to what she wanted . For her first haircut with Peterson , she said she wanted something feminine with bangs . Something that would get people ’s eye and make them call for her , “ what are your pronoun ? ”
She says she has a picture of herself after she got her first stinger at Bandit . “ I have the biggest smile on my typeface , ” she recalls . “ The salon means so much to me because of the bread and butter system that it provides . ”
Bandit Hair Company was Falgout ’s first introduction into queer community , and meeting the stylist and other clients there has helped her clear there are other people like her in her home city and , more broadly , in the South . Falgout credit her first haircut at Bandit with give her the confidence to continue her transition .
“ After my first appointee , see how my hair frame my face , how it truly commute how mass perceive me and I perceive myself gave me the confidence to make out out to my parent , to my friends , and to hold up as my true ego , ” she say . “ That ’s Brobdingnagian , I do n’t retrieve I would have begin to that full stop as easily without having this space for me . ”
Parr adds that Bandit stylists do n’t make any assumptions : about your pronoun , your gender , or your amatory entanglements . “ you’re able to go to an accepting salon or place , but you ca n’t warrant the patronage are going to be take , ” Parr say . “ The freedom when you ’re in a queer space , to never have that veneration of who ’s watching , who ’s judging , am I get to get hurt ? That ’s the most awe-inspiring thing for me . ”
The shop has brave out its fair portion of challenges in its lifetime , from the COVID-19 pandemic shuttering the store just six months after it open , to Hurricane Ida forcing the shop to close for workweek in late summer 2021 . Days after reopen , the shop was broken into and everything was stolen , from stylist ’ tools to the sound system . Although the damages amounted to or so $ 4,000 , the insurance party cut a check for just $ 600 .
But clock time and again — in true New Orleans fashion — community member take care of each other , and within days the stylists were capable to crowdfund the money to replace their tools . As a testament to its importance in the New Orleans queen fit , the shop was featured on Season 7 ofQueer Eye .
As the shop arise , Peterson hop to expand Bandit from simply a hair studio into a full - on queer health centre , offering services from “ rede ” haircuts that are give with a mindfulness lens to other treatments like manicures , massage , facials , and acupuncture .
Peterson also plan to proffer apprenticeships for “ child queer ” stylist who are progress their portfolio of skill . “ [ Something like that ] would have been life changing , ” Peterson suppose of the studio apartment . “ I probably would have felt more easy with myself . I want everyone that walk through the door — from coworkers to clients — to find safe and that they ’re going to be lead care of . ”
