Cuts: the 1980s hair salon that gave the stars their cutting edge

After 19 years working on the project, film-maker Sarah Lewis is ready to launch her documentary on the ongoing style phenomenon of Cuts

Sarah Lewis capturing Cuts: 'It’s not really just about the haircuts. You just become part of that community.' Photograph: Nic Tuft

It was the creative hub of trend-setting Britain, a base for clubbers and a hangout for style gurus from David Bowie to Jean-Paul Gaultier. Cuts was where everybody who was anybody in 1980s London came to get their hair done.

Now film-maker Sarah Lewis is close to completing a feature documentary on the salon that has been 19 years in the making – – seven years longer than the time it took Richard Linklater to make the Oscar-winning Boyhood. She plans to raise the last £50,000 she needs through a crowdfunding campaign launched this month with Phundee.com, a new London-based company.

The clientele of Cuts, in a tiny basement stall in hip Kensington Market, reads like a Who’s Who of the entertainment world: from Bowie, Boy George and Goldie to actors Rupert Everett and Sean Penn, along with fashion designer Gaultier, Oscar-winning film-maker Steve McQueen and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Goldie, one of the salon’s regulars, was given an “armadillo”, with stripey patterns shaved into cropped hair, and Fran Healy, lead singer of Scottish band Travis, came away with a “fin”, a short haircut with a ridge down the middle. They are among the styles which got the salon noticed by trend-setting magazines and emulated around the country.

Set against a backdrop of the political and social changes during the salon’s lifetime, the documentary, Cuts, charts the comings and goings at the small but cutting-edge salon founded in the 1980s.

Lewis, whose own hairstyles from Cuts have included “lots of really crazy” looks, said: “It’s a really low-key but world-famous little hairdresser. It’s not really just about the haircuts. It’s not flashy or overt. You just become part of that community.”

What sets it apart, Lewis said, is its “casual” atmosphere where people just hang out and everyone is treated the same, and where the walls are decorated with changing art exhibitions. “You meet the most extraordinary people sitting on the sofas. It really brings people together, and people have great conversations,” she said.

The salon was launched during the post–punk, new romantic era by the late hairdresser-turned-artist James Lebon. From Kensington Market, the business eventually moved to Frith Street in Soho. Today, under the name We Are Cuts, it remains in nearby Dean Street.

 Goldie getting an ‘armadillo’ at the salon. . Photograph: Sarah Lewis/.

Lewis said: “In the 1980s the fashion magazines took their lead from the young people making statements through their DIY clothes and hairstyles. The Face andID were in their infancy, pushing multiculturalism and inclusiveness – at odds with Thatcher’s declaration ‘there is no such thing as society’. Cuts – the first independent hairdressers in London – was the antithesis of Vidal Sassoon and the place where the club kids went to get their hair done. Punks, new romantics, rock bands, young stars and the general public all trusted James [Lebon] with creating a ‘look’ to suit their personality.”

Lewis’s previous productions include a Channel 4 documentary, Crowded House, which she also directed, and The Staring Girl, a 10-minute fiction film screened by international festivals. It was partly the diversity of the salon’s characters that inspired her to film there. She recalls a former customer from the East End who brought in his photograph albums, showing everyone images of “the people he’d been associated with in the gangster world”.

Pete Dowland, one of the salon’s partners, said their hairdressers have always trained with high-profile companies such as Vidal Sassoon and Trevor Sorbie, but that at Cuts they have been more aligned to street fashion and loud music.

The documentary explores the salon’s influence partly through interviews with some of its famous patrons. Boy George jokes that Cuts was “like a community centre for weirdos”, while Isaac Julien, the artist and film-maker nominated for the Turner prize in 2001, calls it a “postmodern trendsetter in identity and style” and Goldie says it is “my home … the stomping ground, a hive for bees like us”.