From Fear to Freedom

A stylist and travel editor opens up about his hair journey—and how he learned the power of a good cut

- By Alexander-Julian Gibbson

Gibbson is all smiles in freshly cornrowed hair.

For many kids, hair is a playground: a place for self-expression and experimentation.

For me, it was a battlefield—and my mom was the general, armed with practicality, marshaling friends and family far and wide as they used their clippers. Her goal was efficiency. She was a single mother, working exhausting hours, doing what she could; and that typically meant finding the cheapest haircut available. For us, that was often the $5 Chinese barbershop down the street.

Hairstylist Neyikha Zamy, of House of Braids 509, cornrows Gibbson's strands into intricate patterns.

The Chinese barber once gave me some sort of bacterial infection on my scalp—I still have the bald spot. But if I'm being totally honest, almost every haircut I had early on was a disaster. My aunt used to cut my cousin's hair and mine in her bathroom. The experience was excruciating: hot clippers, jagged lines and occasional cuts to the skin. My uncle once put a literal bowl on my head and trimmed around it. And my mom's boyfriend, well, he'd eventually become infamous for destroying one of the most important hair moments of my young life. With a record like that, I never saw getting a haircut as something to enjoy. It was something to survive.

For a soulful touch, Zamy added cowrie shells to the end of Gibbson's braids.