We celebrate our ONE HUNDREDTH EPISODE with one of my true hair heroes. He’s a brilliant hairdresser, editorial stylist, photographer, and industry icon. The former Creative Director of Sebastian Professional Hair Products has worn many hats: hairdresser, salon owner, product creator, painter, and visionary artist. His work has graced the pages of nearly every major beauty magazine both nationally and internationally. I’m delighted to celebrate this Headcases milestone with the legendary Robert Lobetta!
- 3:59 – The transition to editorial hairdressing
- 8:56 – Competition and collaboration with Trevor and Anthony
- 14:14 – Mentorship and personal growth
- 17:06 – Challenges and adaptations in hairdressing
- 20:43 – The impact of art and creativity in hairdressing
- 25:02 – The future of the hairdressing industry
- 1:04:45 – Overcoming adversity and building resilience
- 1:07:12 – The role of accidents and mistakes in creativity
Complete Transcript
Chris Baran 0:00
How great would it be to get up close and personal with the beauty industry heroes we love and admire and to ask them, How did you learn to do what you do? I’m Chris Baran, a hairstylist and educator for 40 plus years, and I’m inviting all our heroes to chat and share the secrets of their success. You Well, welcome to head cases, and I’m particularly excited about this episode for two primary reasons. Number one, it’s our 100th episode. And number two, the guest that I have is one of my true hair heroes. He’s a brilliant hairdresser and an editorial stylist, a photographer and a true industry icon. He was the creative director of Sebastian. He’s a student, a hairdresser, a salon owner, a product creator, a painter, artist and a photographer, and he’s a true creative leader. There isn’t a national or international magazine that his work hasn’t been featured in, and to simply put that into one word, a visionary. Okay, that’s two words, but Throw me a bone here. So let’s get into this week’s head case, Mr. Robert Lobetta. Well, first of all, Robert, I got to say, Welcome to head cases. And I think, knowing from a fellow creative, etc, we always called it head cases, because you got to be a little bit of a head case to do what we do. But I just want to say, welcome. It’s an honor to have you on here. And you know, I think, as you and I have been communicating back and forth, it was really important to me on our hundreds episode that I had somebody that was really influential in the in the industry and and was really somebody that helped to lead my career as well. So welcome. It’s great to have you on.
Robert Lobetta 1:57
Thank you so much, Chris. It’s Thank you for having me. Well,
Chris Baran 2:01
thank you for being had. You know, it was great on here. I just love for anybody that’s listening now, we’ve got, I love his T shirts got kind of alien head and eyes on there that I think that’s super cool. And it’s actually what I love about it, alien and a heart and and I love that is going on so because you’ve given so much heart to our industry. But curious is there before you got into hair, like, what’s your background? Was there any jobs before hair? How did you start off? And then, what’s the hair story?
Robert Lobetta 2:31
The hair story was, when I left school, I really wanted to do contemporary art, so I expected myself to go to art college, but my parents saw me differently, and they thought perhaps I should do hairdressing. See, my father had a manufacturing company, and by trade, he was a pattern cutter, so who used the scissors to cut patterns, and he thought that would be good for me. This somewhat disappointed me, because that’s not what I wanted to do. So I never really picked hairdressing. So as the story goes, my first year in hairdressing was somewhat innocuous. I was not interested at all. By the time the second year came around, I moved to a different salon, and things improved a little bit, but there was still no aptitude by me to want to carry on and be a hairdresser. It was only when I got a particular interview a song called Ricky Burns in London’s Kings Road. And that was really by default, because the person who was supposed to take the job got a job somewhere else. So I got the interview. The interview went something like this, in a way, the Kings Road was a great street. It was really wonderful. And I had decided to take three models to the interview. So I took my three models. I’m walking down the King’s Road. There’s an air of confidence within me. I think I’m going to get this job. I get there, and as I walk through the sun, I watched everyone else work, and I thought, Oh, dear, this is not sort of the work I was expecting, it was far better than what I was used to or what I was doing. So my heart dropped a little bit, a bit of uneasiness occurred within me, but I proceeded, did my three models, presented it to Ricky, and he looked at me, and he sat me down, and he said, Robert, what I think you’ve done is shit, but you could be good. So start Monday. That was my interview. Wow. And immediately I thought, Is he having a laugh with me? Does he really want me to start Monday if my work is shit? So immediately, once he left, I phoned my mother. I said, Mom, Ricky said I was shit, but start Monday, it doesn’t make sense to me, and she pacified me. Said, No, darling. He didn’t mean that. He meant you’re going to start Monday, and everything will be fine. So I did, and on that first week of starting was a place which changed everything for me, Ricky and the and shall we Say the people there were different to what I was used to. In that first week, I met more celebrities. In actual fact, the first week I was there, I’m shaking hands with Mick Jagger in with the Rolling Stones, and there I am making tea for Mick Jagger. I thought this is great. The other wonderful thing that happened to me was that I think it was about 1972 and Trevor Sorbie had just done this wedge haircut, yeah, and I looked at that wedge haircut and thought, this is like architecture for hair. This is wonderful. I definitely think I should be involved, and I need to stay at this salon. So that’s how I got started. My start was basically as an editorial hairdresser. So when I went to Ricky’s, he gave me the opportunity to do editorial work. Editorial work, then was when you work for the magazines. And I remember he said to me one day, he threw me this wig, and he said, Robert, color it blood orange, set it on perm curlers. And then when you take out the perm curlers, every fourth curl, I want you to leave in, but take the rest out, because every fourth curl will leave you a gap. And then when you spray it out with your fingers, you’ll get this wonderful effect of uneven, frizzy hair. Then I want you to put it on backwards, which I said. He looked at me and said, Yes, you put it on backwards. Anyway. I got to the photo shoot. The magazine. Was a magazine called 19. I was 19, so there was some ironics going on there. Put it on the model’s head. Put it on backwards, as Ricky said. And the photographer came up to me said, Robert, that looks fantastic. How did you get the hairline to look so silk like and real? I said, Oh, you just put it on backwards. Put my hands together. Went, Ricky. Thank you for always being there for me. Ricky became my mentor and helped me see things differently. He made me look at not hair. He made me look at the magazines. He made me look at art. He made me look at the culture. He made me look at people. He made me understand that there was a person below a head of hair, and you have to get inside the psychology of the mind. So that was my beginning in hairdressing. Wow. So, you
Chris Baran 7:19
know there’s a parallel there, because I, I remember working with, working with Kris Sorbie. We did our first shoot for the corporate and and we made these wigs. And it was, was great. And I had that attitude, my, you know, my art, my way of doing it, little bit of stubbornness. And I remember that the people we did that first shot on this, this black girl, and the shot came out amazing. And then they said, Okay, we want to twist to it. And I hadn’t worked with wigs enough that time to to work with him. I got my knickers and a twist, and I was saying, No, you can’t change it. This is the look that I did, etc. And I was actually was gonna bail, and I’d say, look at that’s not, I don’t want this, etc. Kris took me outside and had a little talk with me, and said, look it, it’s, it’s their shoot. It’s not our shoot, so let’s just try something. And then she went inside, and you just turned the wig around, turned it upside down, and and, boom, that was really the shot that everybody wanted and everybody used. And it was a little bit of humble pie for me, but I think, like you, it that simple twist just made me think of two things. Number one, it was their shoot, not mine. And then, as an editorial stylist, you have to do what what reflects on the customer, what they want, if it needs a change. And the second part was, is not getting stuck thinking that there’s only one way to do things. So that was a good part for me. So I totally identified with what you’re talking about, what Ricky did about putting on backwards. I wish I would have known that before going in. So I didn’t make an ass of myself when it was there. You mentioned, you mentioned Trevor, etc, and and, you know, for the people listening and watching right now, especially the young kids that are out there right now, the the whole idea is, I think that the era that I grew up in, when hairdressers journal would come out. Everybody would wait for it to come out every month. And you just watch what all of the people, because at that, you know, London and and UK was just leading everything when it came to hair, particularly, I’m on guard work, etc. And you and Trevor and Anthony were always the ones that your work would come out. And we’d always pray for it and wait for it to happen, etc, and and there’s a rumor going around, true or not, that that you and Trevor and Anthony and some of the other UK artists would always spark one another, is that truth? Is it fiction? Did you guys push one another? Did we. Were you guys friends? Was there a rivalry? What was it?
Robert Lobetta 10:03
It was absolute truth at the beginning, when I look at the mid 70s, Trevor Anthony and myself were fierce competitors, rivals, and this was instigated by a particular character called Renato Brunas, who owned a magazine called Oro, and he had a company called Renbow. Renato would put on these shows. And what Renato would do, he was very clever this way. He’d say, he’d come to my cell and say, Robert, have you seen what Trevor’s doing? It’s fantastic. Then he’d go to Anthony, Anthony, have you seen what Robert’s doing? It’s amazing. So he would set us up against one another. And this rivalry grew in the beginning of the 70s, and as it grew, we got better and better and better, because all of us wanted to have that number one position, yeah, and it was a fierceness. But the time we got to probably 1985 which was the first world hairdressing awards, and we were all up for an award, Trevor myself and Anthony, so Trevor won hairdress of the year, I want avant garde of the year, and Anthony won London hairdress of the year, in a way that particular period. Then we looked at one another and cemented our friendship. I became very close with Anthony, not as much with Trevor. Trevor, more or less. I think what happened there is that we were all good friends. I called us frenemies, and what we did together was unique in the aspect. But what Anthony and I pursued other avenues. So we pursued into photography, graphic design, art and other things. Trevor stayed the purest. And thank God Trevor did stay the purest, because we all needed one another. So basically, by Trevor staying pure, and Angie and I going out to on left field, doing what we wanted to do, we had Trevor to think, to look behind and say, Oh, look what Trevor’s done again. We better do something on par so we didn’t get too carried away with our photographic and video work. So it worked exceptionally well between us and we all became I only spoke to Trevor last week, funny enough, and Anthony, I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. Anyway. So Anthony and I became very close. Our children got very close. We went on holidays together. I think it’s because Anthony worked for TG Toni & Guy I worked for Sebastian. So our jobs were very similar. There was a synergy going on between us and what we were doing. So we could explain to one another how things were working without any fear of telling each other too much information, because we had nothing to really hide from one another. So this is how our relationship grew, and it grew to the extent we both grew out of it, Trevor included.
Chris Baran 12:48
So when you say you grew out of it, you grew out of the room. Sorry,
Robert Lobetta 12:52
I need to rephrase that. We all grew out of having this good relationship. So we all progressed in a wonderful way, somehow. Yeah,
Chris Baran 13:01
so it’s, well, there’s two things that I that I loved about what you said there. The first thing was number one, about Ricky and having him as a mentor, and then have about Anthony and Trevor. And I think that’s where a lot of people get confused, is there’s people that are inspiring and push you. And then there’s people that are truly the mentor that have an effect on the teaching of you, etc. So the you know to it would be fair to say that you know your frenemies that you had, they were the ones that inspired and helped to push and they made you better at what you do. But it’s different than and as it’s coming in my mouth, I’d love to hear your opinion on it, if is that they’re they’re the inspirational ones, the ones that push or you made you get better, but the did it spark, and that spark that came from your mentors and the teaching,
Robert Lobetta 13:56
I think that two things are somewhat different. The mentoring is a different thing. When I think about Trevor and Anthony and myself, I think about tennis, and I think about, if anyone knows tennis, the fact that you have Djokovic, Nadal and Federer all playing at the same time, all with different styles, but dominating the whole arena of hairdressing for many years, that’s what it felt like for us. We would play against one another. We tried to beat one another, but at the same time, we were convivial with the mentorship. I’ll go back to Ricky now. It was, I think 19, I think it’s mid 70s, and I will tell you this story, and Ricky was looking at certain hair he was starting to like, sort of shiny on his star style. Should we say? Excuse me, I fluffed that one must get my tongue better, and I was not particularly keen on it. I think. It in about 1975 and I said to Ricky, no, I got this feeling for twisting hair, matting hair, plaiting hair, braiding hair, and doing all these things with hair. And he said to me, no, I don’t think that’s going to happen. And in order for me to progress in my career, I had to leave my mentor. I didn’t want to leave Ricky, but I had to go to another salon, because I was so convinced in this platting and weaving and whatever that was going to happen. So I went to another salon called Michael John. And at Michael John, I managed to push through this idea, and they liked the idea of this twisting. Twisting was where you take sections of hair, and you twist it all the way through, all the way through the front, and you joined it up with thread and showed it to Michael and John. The Salon was called Michael, John, and they liked it very much. And they were very much a different sort of Salon. It was more Royal. It was more Duchess Kent. There was a lot of royalty there, which was different to rickets, which was sort of like models, superstars, singers. There was a madness about Ricky’s, and they said, Okay, we’re going to speak to someone at Vogue, and let’s see if they like it. And sure enough, Vogue liked it. We shot it, and it came out as a double page in vogue, which was great for me, because what I had was vindication that what I was doing was correct. But the problem was I didn’t want to leave Ricky. Ricky was such a big instrumental part of my life, but Michael and John had a different feeling. Both of them had an empathy, and their entity was about kindness and giving, and it was really nice working with them, and they installed upon me a greater understanding of what it meant to be a particular sort of hairdresser. So again, they weren’t a mentor like Ricky was to me, but the two things was a guidance factor. The thing with Trevor and Anthony is we’re competitive, and without that competition, we would not break new ground. So we had to force one another. So when any one of us would come up with something good, the other one will come up with something better. So you had this rotation of work, this spontaneity that would happen between the three of us permanently striving to be the best of the three of us. Yeah. No,
Chris Baran 17:18
you. You just sparked something for me is that I know from the work that I’ve done, avant garde work, etc, and I was having a conversation with someone, and they said at that time that most people don’t understand that 85% of the time is in research and development and creating something that you know, because you’re going to try Certain things that doesn’t work, so you have to try have to try a different thing, and it doesn’t work. And then most people think that you came out, you come out of that just with, you know, you had the spark. You did it the first time, and it’s there. I, you know, I’m guessing I had to do 85% of the time in research to make something work. Did you just do things and it just came up and it happened there. Did it just happen automatically? Or did you have to try it over and over until you got it down to where you got it, where you got the look you were after,
Robert Lobetta 18:11
prior to avant garde hair? I think there was a time when punk arrived and punk affected me in a strange way, not in a good way, but a weird way. And I’ll tell you the story of a particular character, and you’ll understand how we got to the avant garde style of things. It was about 1976 and punk arrived and made my nice little geometric haircuts look like inept and inadequate. Somehow there was an aggression to it that scared me. I had a particular client called Jordan, and Jordan worked just down the road from Rick is in the King’s Road at Vivian Westwood’s shop called Sex, with Malcolm McLaren. And Jordan was this quiet but assertive character, and she had this white blonde hair that she wore in a big bouffant with dark roots. One day, Jordan comes in and she says to me, Robert, I want you to bleach my hair white. I want it whiter than white. I said to Jordan, Jordan, if we do that, your hair will just break off. And she says, I don’t care. Do it anyway. Just make it whiter than white. I didn’t want to argue with Jordan, so we just did it. We made it whiter than white. Sure enough, bits of it all broke off. It was like this spongy, sort of strange texture. And Jordan looked at me and said, Well, Robert, what do you think we should do? And jokingly, I said to Jordan, Jordan, well, I suppose what we could do is cut the short bits that have broken off, really short, and leave the long bits really long. And I grinned and laughed about because I didn’t know what to say. She said, that’s a fantastic idea. Yes, let’s do that. Went, what short bits? Really short. Yes, I want you to cut it right down a half inch long, these short bits. So she said, Okay. So I started to think, how am I going to do this? What do you want me to do? And she began to dictate to me how this haircut should be. And she said, now take this bit here and cut this bit really short. Now leave this bit long. Now take all this side shorter here. And it was weird, because I’ve never had someone tell me how to do a haircut, but she was so insistent on it, and I did it. And then when we cut all the short bits short and left the long bits long, she said to me, now I want you to take all the long bits and make them go into spikes. Spikes. I said, Oh, no, this was the Antichrist, the haircuts I was doing, yeah, so sure enough. How am I going to make it on spikes? We didn’t have straightening irons in those days, so I didn’t know what to do. So I took the sections, and as I’m cutting the short bits, I’m leaving the long bits. And I tied bits of cotton around the long bits to keep them separate from the short bits. And then I got that comb back, combed it, and that got hair spray and sprayed it. Then I got two cans of, I think they were hair spray, and they were empty. And I’d rolled them up the side to make the spikes. And I kept doing that, as my assistant sprayed it, I would roll with a can of and we got these spikes, and we’ve got these short bits. And by the time I’d finish, Jordan looked at him, went, both, that is fantastic. I love it. I looked at it and thought, Oh, this is probably the most hideous thing I’ve ever done in my life. Jordan walked out the salon, and as she’s walking down the King’s Road with all the people there, I thought, I’ve got to go out and see this. And as I went out to watch her walk down the road, everyone was staring at her and looking at her, which made Jordan feel really super cool, because that’s exactly what she wanted it to be. So punk, in a way, changed my thought process on here, because what it did basically was saying, well, if music can change an industry and punk can change something like hair, for a moment I thought, well, maybe I could change how I thought about hairdressing. And maybe it’s not punk, but something else could literally about seven seconds, I thought, Yes, I could change hairdressing. And then that thought subsided after about the eight second and realized, no, I can’t do that. Who do you think you are? About a month went by, and I sort of pursued the fact that there is possibility of doing something different. So I thought about doing long hair, and that’s when this sort of weaving technique sort of happened. And I started to weave hair, and once I learned to weave it, and that came out of an accident as well, because I was, remember one evening, I was a good friend. I was with a good and I’ll tell you this story, and you can edit it out if you want, but it’s up to you. I was with a good friend of mine called Charles, and we went to some salt beef cafe in SoHo in London. And I was moaning to Charles, saying, I’m a little bit low. I’m not quite sure what hair I’m supposed to be doing. I’m totally lost. I don’t know I want to do this, but it’s sort of not working. And Charles said to me, Well, why don’t you look at things differently? You’ve always said you like, Ah, you always said you want to be an artist. Well, why don’t you think like an artist? I looked at him and said, Well, how does an artist think they think differently? So he all of a sudden, he picked up this mat that was on the table there, and he said, Why don’t you do hair like a mat? I looked at the mat, and it was this woven raffia mat. And I said, Charles, it’s a mat. I can’t do hair like a mat. And he said, why not? And that froze me a little bit, because it was a question that, why not? I never thought about it. I never thought about looking at hair. Yeah, so when I went back to the salon, I decided to try and weave hair like this mat. It actually worked, and that was the beginning of the end of just being a hairdresser for me, because what that did was change my whole perspective about hair. Now, hair became this sort of fibrous form that I could do whatever I want with and I just had to have the imagination so I could make hair look like leopard skin. I can make it into trees. I could make it into carpets. Whatever I saw, I would try making it with hair. Sure, there were lots of failures along the way, and things didn’t work out. Some things looked absolutely hideous, but some things were brilliant. And out of some of these things, the mistakes that would have them gave me new ideas to do new things. So the enthusiasm I got at looking at just the outside world of everyday objects and try and turn them into hair was almost like opening Pandora’s box. And for me, all these wonderful ideas would appear just by looking at everyday things. I just had to keep my imagination open and try it by doing hair. And sure enough, as time went on, and because I was an editorial hairdresser, and I was working for the magazines and I was working for the advertising agencies, the advertising agencies got hold of this, and they actually started to sort of get me to do hair, whatever they wanted to. I remember doing a chinzano ads and harmony ads, where I had to make hair look like Peacock Feathers, I had to make hair look like leopard skin. I had to make hair look like palm tree leaves. And there was no end to all these commissions. I’d get to do these things from the advertising agencies. And here become this strange phenomenon that the agencies would all write about. Here is. A new phenomenon, and there’s this crazy person called Robert Lobetta doing it, and this was great for me. So this was like, oh yeah, this is wild. This is fun. So that’s how things progress for me in my career, being, I suppose, in the right place at the right time, and having good people around me helped me tremendously. Without Charles, without people like Trevor, Anthony Ricky, I would not be here talking to you, basically. So all these people were important to me and played a massive part, because I think so many of them had greater faith in me than I had in myself. Funny enough.
Chris Baran 25:33
That’s brilliant, you know. And this is a thing that I always love. If you took a look at a lot of the industry, great, and when I look at your work, it doesn’t matter whether it’s the haircut that you did or the avant garde, avant garde that you did. It’s always tasteful, you know. And I think there’s this, this, you can look at some avant garde and and it’s, it’s avant garde or fantasy, but it loses that beautiful taste quality to it. And I think that’s the hardest thing to explain to people. Do you think that that comes from within? Does that come from just years of doing things differently? Where do you think that taste comes from? Like sometimes it can be over the top, but there’s still a simplicity about it. What if you were, if they were going to tell somebody, like a kid that was coming out, and somebody just starting off in the industry to start to develop their taste? What? What would you advice would you give them?
Robert Lobetta 26:32
I think it’s um, your esthetic values are important, and learning how your esthetics are for you as a person and for other people as well. So what Ricky did was instill certain set of esthetics with me. So when he showed me Italian Vogue, he said, look at how they’re photographing this. Look at how the model’s reacting. Look at how it looks. Look at the picture itself. Look at the oval thing, which gave me the esthetic I needed. So when I was doing avant garde hair, it had to be beautiful, it had to be tasteful, because these are Ricky’s words coming through to me and saying, you have to do it brilliantly. See, doing avant garde back then is different to doing it now. Then we were using hair on the head. It was a head of hair that you would use, and you would fill it in with a few false pieces now and again, but you would never know they were pieces. We integrated it brilliantly nowadays. Unfortunately, I sometimes despair at avant garde because people just get loads of wigs. They get one wig on top of another, on top of another, and all you get is these mad hats. So there’s no immediate intricacies that happen anymore. There’s no surprises. It’s all a little bit we need to go back and we look at avant garde a either call it a different name or reconstitute it for what it is and bring a new beginning to it, because it is very like, unfortunately, yeah, yeah,
Chris Baran 27:51
so, but you know, again, congratulations on the fact of how I love the two words that you used. It’s got to be beautiful and it has to be tasteful at the end of it. And I think that’s absolutely brilliant, you and you’ve always been, you’ve pushed the limits, you know, always every almost everything that you’ve done is pushed the limits on that, you know, especially when it comes to the status quo of your work, etc, and and you’ve always had an opinion on even just like now, where I love that about the industry, that you’ve always had an opinion, and you’re talking you just talked about that with the avant garde. What do you think? Where do you think our What’s your opinion of our industry as it stands now, when you look from where you are at it now,
Robert Lobetta 28:40
okay, that’s a good question. I’ve been out the industry for a while, quite a while. But as I look at it, I sort of think about we’ve just come out the pandemic, not just but it’s been a while, so we’re a little bit stagnant, stagnant. Sorry. I wish there was a new body of people that can grab hold of our industry and take it out to the masses, when I mean the masses, not just hair colleges or hair schools, but actual colleges and schools like Berkeley USC, and allow hairdressers to actually flourish in a way where we say, okay, look, a career in hairdressing is bullying. And if you think about it, it can be when I look at my career in hairdressing, the people I met, the countries I’ve been to, it’s a great career. It’s the only career you can have where you’re actually making someone feel wonderful during that day. And I think the problem we have as an industry, we’re stuck in our own bubble. So just imagine that we went out there and you had this body of people who went to schools and colleges and sort of said, Okay, hairdressing is great. This is why it’s great. Look at what happens. And I’ll give you some sort of, let me try and see if I can give some speculation on it. Just going to take a sip of water. I. Yeah, so when I was doing hair back then, it was a question of, okay, here’s my client, and I would say to me, I’m going to give you a choppy little fringe, and I’m going to make it deep blue, and it’s going to match your blue eyes. And would do it. And just, let’s just go through the thing with me here, the client would look at it. Okay? Then she would look at what she looked like the hair. Would change her face to a degree. So then she would go and get different makeup. So with this little blue fringe and this choppy cut, she would buy a pair of large eyelashes, and she would do matte red lipstick. Then she’d go home and look at her clothes, and she might buy some new clothes. The clothes that she would buy, would change her she would then go to the club, and then people would look and go, Wow, you look totally different. What have you done? Oh, I changed everything. And that change stem from one little blue fringe with black over the top that would show her eyes, make them leap out, show her lips, show her new style clothing. And if you think about it, lipstick you can wipe off. Yeah, eyelashes you can pull off. Once you get your hair cut in color, it’s there all the time. So by instigating that fact, the clothing you buy, sometimes I buy clothing and I don’t even wear it. It stays in the wardrobe. Never gets used. So in a way, hair can be the forerunner, if we let people know what a wonderful industry this is for me, my clients. I my clients stemmed from artists, photographers, models, bankers, clerks, waitresses, strippers, pole dancers, everything. So I had an opportunity to meet an eclectic group of people who taught me many things. So being a hairdresser, you learn so much about everything else, about life itself. So I think it’s a wonderful career. And we don’t actually get out there, you know, our teaching situation, and I know you used to do teaching heavily. I don’t if you still do, yeah, still on. So just got home, we just think, when I think about teaching, I think that, as we’ve become, genders have changed, hair has changed. Just to imagine, let’s just do something silly here. Imagine Chinese people marrying African American people and they have children. What hair would come out, yeah, you’ve got the dead straight with the fo hair. Well, you’d get a different sector of hair. So we’d have to look at that differently as hairdressers. Should there be black hair salons and just white salons? No, there shouldn’t be a salon that caters for everybody, because hair will change if I think about teaching. How do we teach? Everyone is so much more individual. You can teach techniques, absolutely, but you have to teach to what the person’s strength is. So I think teaching may have to change, to a degree, how we look at people is important. So there’s so many different things that could change within our industry, but we’ve got, we’ve got to stem from the salon. So once we get the salon strong, once we get people wanting to be hairdressers and go into salon, you’ve got this strange sort of division at the moment between the salon and suites. There has to be a new model. It can’t be the same two models. Someone has to come up with a new model that encompasses a new beginning that will take us into the 21st century. So there’s all these and they’re just big overviews. They’re just opinions. Whether we can do that. Maybe we should do that, because if we don’t, we’re just going to drift around. How can we link ourselves with the cosmetic industry? How can we link ourselves with other industries to help lift us up out of the funk we’re in and get us where we need to go? So once we get ourselves strong, then we make our manufacturers strong, then people start to invest, because they see there is money in this. So it also the dovetails together in a strange way for me. But this hasn’t happened yet, but the first move would be to invent a new body of people to go out to the world and say, this is one of the best careers you can do if you’re a people person.
Chris Baran 33:59
You know what? I just think that’s great, great thoughts. And I think it’s something that has to be done as well. And will you, we’re always looked at as a, as a, as in its overhead view of 35,000 foot view of hairdressing, we’ve always been seen as sort of the red headed stepchild that doesn’t make money, etc, and and I, while I disagree with that wholeheartedly, the what you said earlier is, when somebody has to you a little blue fringe that you put in, and you’ve got you go out and you get some makeup, and you you go buy new clothes, and then now you want to show it off, and you go to a Club. Is the trickle down industry and in the economy as a whole, had never even thought about that before, about how one thing in hairdressing affects and is a financial gain for so many other businesses. And I think that ties back into what you said, is that when all of those. Under, under other industries get together, and they become a part of that movement as well. And I think that’s part, that’s where that really comes from, because I know that, if I’m, you know, whatever makeup company that that we talk about, but the moment that you change the hair, I make more money than whatever clothing stores know that I make more money. The moment that you there’s a there’s a hair movement. And I know that’s, you know, let’s face it, that’s fashion as an overall but I think, I don’t think that most people think about how you do you change one thing, and it how it makes money for everybody all the way down the line. So I think that’s, that’s just brilliantly put. And, you know, maybe out of this, someone will come up to you and say, Robert, who are the people? Who do you get together? What do you do? You know, and I don’t know if that’s what you still want to do, but you know, we need people like that that can think differently about everything that goes on with our industry. So thank you for that. This is i i want this to sound I’m just gonna say it, do you, you’ve, you’ve reached this level of success, and you have people know who you are, and like the greats in our industry, know who you are. People know who you are. Does Do you ever recognize that people are intimidated by you, or does that do you notice that when it’s there?
Robert Lobetta 36:24
No, I try not to. I mean, I really don’t. I think, I think I’m a very approachable person. You want to have a dead bait with me. You want to talk with me. You want to have the beer with me. I’m there for you. I will talk to anyone, anytime, anyhow. I think the intimidation, possibly, if you’re saying that you’ve brought it up, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s a question of, I have an opinion. Now it’s my opinion. That opinion may not be correct, but because I’m opinionated, people may often think, oh, Robert’s really over opinionated, and we don’t quite know how to handle this situation. But then you have a son. His name is Lee. Yeah, I went to Lee’s house for dinner. Do you think Lee feels intimidated by me? No, right? Yeah, so, and I had the best time with Lee, so I don’t think I’m I don’t go out to intimidate people at all. Why would I do that? I think it’s a question of intimidation. Is perhaps, how can I put that? I can’t. I’ll leave it at that. Intimidation is something I don’t want to be involved with, simply because if I intimidate someone, they’re not going to be truthful back to me. So the key thing here is, I want an honest conversation. I want truths. I want to say truths, and I want the people I meet to come up with truths themselves. So if I intimidate them, then that can’t happen. So I’d like to think I don’t do that. Yeah, I don’t intention, and never intentionally try to do that. Yeah, let
Chris Baran 37:57
me, let me kind of put that into a better phrase that not about you personally being intimidating to anybody, but the fact that the level of success that you’ve got and to I find that I’ll talk to people who are just starting out in the industry, and they’ll look at somebody With your stature, and it’s not you personally intimidate them, but the fact of who you are and the successes that you are you have that that can lead to some intimidation by and maybe that’s the wrong word. Is that that they’re just, they’re afraid to show what they do based on like, it’s like, it’s that complete spin on what Ricky said to you is that if they saw your work, that you might say, oh, that’s complete shit, you know. And it’s more because of the level of talent and skill and experience that you have, that they might be intimidated for the by your work. So if, in other words, I can remember that being in a class, and then Trevor walked in the room, and I went completely in my head, because I wasn’t doing the work that I wanted to do, that I knew I could do, all I was thinking about Trevor’s in the room. He’s one of my idols. What’s he thinking of my work? Does he think my work is shit, etc, so I don’t mean that people see you and feel that you’re an intimidating person. It’s just your level of excellence could intimidate them. I
Robert Lobetta 39:29
think what you’re saying, it’s the body of work that can be very sort of powerful. And people look at the body of work and think, oh, it’s Robert. What do we say or do, and how do we act? And for that, I understand that, yes, that can be very intimidating, because I’ve done, I’ve got such a huge body of work that, yes, I suppose it looks a bit sort of hugely encompassing everything I’ve gone to and done, yeah,
Chris Baran 39:53
and I just, I, you know, even I have to say it is that every piece of. Work that you’ve done, and I remember the body of work that you did, and then with photographically, it was, it was the first time I saw anybody take pieces of a photograph and then put them together into a collage. And it was going, Oh, my God, what you know? It was one of those things that you did that everybody else, myself, probably as well. David, why didn’t I think of that? Because it’s that, it’s that thing that that happens where you do something first, that people go, Oh my God, that’s what I’m just waiting for. And I think that’s what, that’s what you’ve always done in our industry, and why I think that your opinions are so valued and needed right now, particularly because I think that thank you for saying, Well, you welcome him. It’s just that, but you’ve earned every bit of that just and I feel I’m gushing now. And we, we made a deal beforehand, no gushing, and so gushing, no gushing, that will not happen. There’s, there’s that old saying that’s out there that says behind every man, that there’s a person, a partner, that’s out there that helped to push them get to where they were. And I’m sure you remember a god willing, she’s with she’s not with us anymore, but Joan Harrison, she had the Canadian she was a Canadian magazine editor, and she and she always said that she wanted to get the people together, that the wives or partners of the people that were always on stage, and then have a have a panel or a forum at a hair show to to know what it was like to be around them. What was that like, etc. And I can personally say I wouldn’t be anywhere where I am right now if it wasn’t for my wife, Rita. You know, she’s always the one that’s behind the scenes. She doesn’t want to be seen, doesn’t want to be heard, but she’s always will tell me and give me honest feedback, etc. I bet we have something in common. I have this love hate relationship. I hate paying for something that I’m not using. I hate working in a small, cramped box, yet I love working in a cool salon that impresses my clients, and I love the culture and synergy of a team while enjoying the freedom of being my own boss. You too. What if all that was available to you at the salon you rent from meet artist on go, a game changing way to rent salon space. With artist on go, you only pay for the time you’re behind the chair. You can choose a salon that fits your vibe, location and amenities. With artist on go, you’re a part of a stylist community, not hustling alone. Plus you get to enjoy perks like clean towels and back bar supplies. Check out artist on go, built for stylists serious about their clients and growing their brand without the hassles of managing the space. Here’s the kicker, you can save more than 50% on your rent. To find out more. Go to B, I T, dot L y slash, artist on go, C, B, that’s B, I T, dot L y slash, artist on go, CB, what would if Kay, your wife, was on that panel? What do you think she would say about Robert?
Robert Lobetta 43:36
I don’t really know. I know what I would say. I think when I met my wife, I think we are, in a way, quite opposite. I’m very much out of left field and uncontrollable and an immediate, spontaneous and and she’s very much logical. So it’s the illogical side meeting the logical side between us. Now the body of work we did, we did together. We never really did anything. I never did anything separate. I always had the input of my wife on everything. And ever since I started hairless, because, in a way, she did her as well. So in time, she did better hair than I could. I remember many times would be on doing a photo shoot, on session work, editorially, and I’d get Kate to do the hair, because she could do it better, and it was great, so I’d have a day off. So we rely upon our other half, simply because the other half are our spouses. Will always be honest, always be truthful, and always give us something we weren’t ready for, because we can be very single minded as men, but women have a different approach to this. And you’re right. Kay is the same as your wife. She wanted to be behind the scenes. She didn’t really want to get involved too much, but everything Kay has done has been to the betterment of everything I’ve done. So when we started to learn to do the retouching, and Kay would do the retouching, and she would be great at it. And. She just learned it and did it because I said to her, why don’t you do retouching? She went, Okay, she did that. So that enhanced our work tremendously. So that meant I could go away, take pictures, make them look bad, and give them to her, and she’d make them look really good. So this was a great deal for me. It was a win, win situation. So yes, if I look at Pat and Anthony, it’s the same situation. Was always there for Anthony, helping him out. If I look at someone like Tony Rizzo does the alternative hair show, Maggie’s always there trying to help him get through that evening and that event so unbeknown to most of us. What would Kay say? I don’t know what she’d say. Would she enjoy it? Would she not enjoy it? I think it became part of her life too, and now we’ve got to a different stage in our lives where we look at things differently. We still don’t agree. And Kay has this wonderful way of trying to tell me something, and she does it subtly. She’ll sometimes I’ll do something and show it to him. She goes, Yeah, that’s sort of interesting. And sometimes I think I look at it and I go, What do you mean by that? And I carry on doing it. She knows after a couple of days, that I will look at it, come back to it, and sort of say, you’re right. This is no good. What on earth was I thinking doing? Yeah, this is not right. But she knew that already, but I had to go through the process. So having someone like my wife, Kay, understanding of what I’m going through helps me see things differently. So in other words, she helps me understand the process, that process of going away from it, coming back to it. So if I’m doing a piece of art, I will show her the piece of art, and she will give a rendition on it, and I’ll go forward and take notice of it and think about maybe that’s right, but I won’t do it immediately. Always takes me a couple of days process what she’s saying. I don’t want to give in so easily. So it’s quite funny. But without my wife, I there’s nothing. I mean, it’s easy to say, but it’s an absolute truism. When I think of everything we’ve gone through, we just do everything together, and it becomes this natural, symbiotic situation between the two of us, yeah, yeah. I
Chris Baran 47:14
agree. And I think, I
Robert Lobetta 47:16
can’t sorry, I can’t answer Chris What Kay would think. Yes, I don’t know what she I can only tell you what I feel. You know,
Chris Baran 47:22
no no worries and I but I always think that it would be, I think it would be nice to I know there’s a chance that you and I might be at this thing in a few days where the mark Woolley did this, the flag, the flag, the US flag, and then had all of the the artists in, within the US, not all the artists, but the main artists that were, that were recognized as legends or icons or whatever. And they have them in there, and it’s beautiful piece. But inside there, I I think it would be nice at some point in time if some magazine or industry mag or whatever, even that we have all those people that are out there that don’t get the credit for some of the things that the legends and icon do, that they would even it would just be recognizing them. I think it would be brilliant, and have K on there, and the other the other partners, both male and female, that support and make sure that the creative sorts that are out there that can really do the job that they want, because we would be nothing if it wasn’t for them. No,
Robert Lobetta 48:30
I totally agree with that, and I think maybe you could perhaps put that together and get the words I’m just gonna call why not? Because I think their stories would be better than our stories. Exactly
Chris Baran 48:40
this.
Robert Lobetta 48:41
This is where sort of a bit more one dimensional. They have a different viewpoint, and they will give you a different viewpoint. I can only give you one viewpoint, yeah. And, you know, it would be fascinating to see what other people think.
Chris Baran 48:52
I think I might be a little afraid what Rita might
Robert Lobetta 48:56
say. No, I think it would be brilliant. Yeah.
Chris Baran 48:59
I mean that with my tongue and my cheek, but I’m just making a note here that, and I’m gonna get, I’ll get that. I might even talk to you about it and see you know, what can ideas that come from you on that? But I think it would be great now just kind of switch gears, just a little bit. When I was living in Canada, I had an artist that came to me. His name was Ernest Lindner, and at that time he was just brilliant. I mean, I when I say at that time, he’s not with us anymore, but is a brilliant, brilliant artist. And he was a an Officer of the Order of Canada, meaning that in in the art world, he was seen as a as a dignitary. And when I used to cut his hair, and I was just so honored to have him that I he would come in and he’d say, Well, how much do I pay? And I said, Ernie, I just for the fact that of who you are and what you’ve done for Canada, it’s no charge. And he would send me in limited edition prints. And one of my best friends was was a. Good friend of his, and he brought me in the first picture, and I looked it up. And I’m I was kind of at that time I my art would match my couch, is what the way I kind of looked at it, and I looked at this thing, and, oh, that’s really beautiful. And he and my buddy Cliff looked at me and said, You have no idea what that’s worth to you. And I said, No. And he told me the amount, and I was astonished. And every time that Ernie came in, he would just say, Listen, could you just, you know, you’re not going to let me pay come to the place and just pick out, you know, a print that you want. And the point is, I went over to his place at one point in time, and I asked him, I said, I would want to know, what piece of art did you do that I could get this print of that you loved the most. What was the piece that you really loved? Because that would mean a lot to me to have a print to that. And he said, I hate all of them. I don’t I never liked anything that I did and and I know, with all the beautiful work that you’ve done, and I know I looked at at some of my work that I’ve done, and I, you know, it never really came out 100% to the way that wanted, but it’s still, there’s some at the end that I liked, and there’s a few that I loved, and others that I went, you know, as a suffering artist, I just, you know, okay, thank You, but I wish I would have taken that further. Do you classify yourself as in that realm where you do your as a suffering artist, and do you always love every piece that gets out there?
Robert Lobetta 51:37
We do things as an artist out of the capabilities that we have. Yeah. So for instance, most of my work is like it was in hairdressing. Has to be perfect, and I found that that is the detriment. The perfection I’m trying to attain is actually spoiling the end result. I want some more imperfection in the work, but somehow my hands and my eye don’t coordinate how I’d like them to be, and I can’t allow these imperfections to happen, which is a shame, occasionally it happens. So if I’m working in my mirrored glass and I’m doing something with jagged edges, then you get lots of imperfections, because you can’t make this jagged piece of mirror perfect, or I don’t want to I just like the rawness of it. But a lot of the things I do are, I’ll call them Simplexity. They’re simple ideas complicated on how you achieve them, and to look at them is often, hmm, I could see something that is unique within them. But do I love them? Not really. They’re an endurance of what I’m trying to do, and at that moment in time when I’m doing it, they look great. When I look back in a couple of years time, do they still look as good? No, not. Normally they don’t, because they don’t have that spontaneity of when I was doing it. So for me, when I’m doing art, I’m trying to get to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. At the moment, I’m hitting a bit of a lull where I don’t know quite what the next thing is. I think I know what it’s going to be, but I haven’t tried it out yet. So as we look back at our work, our taste over time changes, and within that taste, we look at previous stuff from years ago and go. Did I really do that? That’s and some of it can be really good and some of it’s really bad, but it’s hard to ascertain which is the good ones. It’s like, a bit like putting out a post. Let’s say I haven’t done a post for like, five years, but let’s say I did a post and I put out something I like, and it only gets 10 likes. Then I put out something that I’m not really fussed for and don’t really care, and it gets 100 likes. And then it becomes confusing, because are you doing it for yourself? Are you doing it for other people? So the artist within you says you’ve got to do it for you. But unfortunately, not everything we do is good. We do a lot of shit stuff, and we have to admit it. And sometimes that’s why I have my wife. She’ll look at it and go, I think you need to start again in the nice and possible way. Yes, interesting. So that’s sort of what happens. Is I don’t dislike my work. I just find over time it’s done, I need to get to the next thing, bit like headdressing, in a way for me, when I’m trying to search for the next thing and trying to find what that is. And that’s not always easy. I often have these mental blocks.
Chris Baran 54:27
Do you Do you find that working with other people like I personally, I find that if I can get what I always used to call creative bounces with somebody that I respected, and I would say, What do you think about this? And then they’d give you an idea, and then you throw another idea, and then another idea, and then it kind of builds on to one another. And the end, the the idea at the end is different than what it was at the beginning, but that much better do Are you a? Are you a? Is like an I’m catching. That you’re a collaborator to a degree because of the way that you deal with, with, with Kay, and then Michael Pauline, who you know, you know when, when I’ve talked to him, he just, you know, praises the ground that’s around you. Sorry, that was gushing. He said, You’re okay. But Michael talks greatly about you, about you helped to build you kind of took him under your wing. And when I look at his work, I think it’s so beautiful when you see that kind of work. Are you a collaborator on that work? Do you find collaboration works for you the best
Robert Lobetta 55:39
collaboration works the best, except for art. So if I’m shooting a picture, I’m doing a head of hair, I would always work with as many people as I could to get a different bounce back. So I want a photographic shoot, or a video shoot or a show, there’s other people your work, because you have to, you have the models, and they have an idea what they think. So I would always ask everyone, what do you think? What do you think? And from that, I would have a set idea how I’d like it to be. But these people would bring me forward different ideas and might not have thought of and might not have seen, yeah, and most of the time, I take them on board because it was different. And for me, it’s a bit like doing analog film and digital film. So when you’re doing analog, you don’t, you don’t have the computer in front of you. You get, you send the film off. It goes to the lab. You get it back, you look at it and go, Oh, dear, that’s good, bad. But all you need is one shot. When you’re doing digital you can actually see it immediately. I have no idea where this piece of conversation is going, so I’m loving, sure we’ll be trying to get through with it with digital and analog, but that’s okay. I think at the end of the day, you need to rephrase that question very quickly, and I will answer it succinctly and perfectly
Chris Baran 56:54
well. First of all, I love where that the direction that was going, but it’s just like there’s there’s people that around you, that that that you can bounce ideas off of and collaborate, versus being a solo artist, where this I’m going to take one idea and run on myself.
Robert Lobetta 57:10
I think collaboration is I’ve always collaborated. You have to when you do a big show, and when we were doing big shows at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles, you’ve have hundreds of people, and they all have an input into what you’re doing. Your job is to direct them, but also take on board what they’re saying. So something’s not working, and they they show it and explain it to you. You have to listen. You can’t not You can’t just go in there and do this. So listening. I think in my early life, that’s what I had a problem with, and as time went on, I became a better listener, and I listened and listened and realized. But like I said, when it comes to art, that’s the different thing. It’s me and the art piece in front of me. Yeah, I can have a conversation with it knowing that it doesn’t talk back, doesn’t give me anything back, but that art piece is just me and the piece itself, and there is no collaboration that way. The only place I collaborate is when I’m doing something. Get halfway through it and show it to my wife and say, Okay, what do you think? Yeah, and she’ll give it the YAY or the Nay. Yeah, that’s the only time. But the rest of the time, and everything I do is absolutely collaboration, yeah? Because other people have brilliant ideas. You know, we all have shitty ideas, and if we ran on every idea we did, we’d turn out a load of crap sometimes. Yeah. So when someone comes to me and they have a better idea than me, absolutely, let’s do that.
Chris Baran 58:28
Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s just you reminded me of something that a person that I know and respect said to me one time, that is that if somebody gave you an opinion, and that person gave you an opinion, and you knew that that just based on who that person was, you can make the decision. I know and respect this person, I’m going to take that piece of advice. But if that person knows nothing about you, nothing about what yours, they can give it to you. And rather than just you, just say thank you. That’s a great idea, and then just move on and move away from it. And I think that people in life can give you advice, and if you take too sometimes too much of that advice that somebody you don’t respect comes from, you got to learn to wash that away and just go back to true you. Sometimes
Robert Lobetta 59:15
you can’t keep your mind too open. Otherwise people throw all sorts of rubbish into it exactly. I found that I when I got to collaborate and I got to work with people, they would give me something truthfully, and I would give them something back. So I would sort of say, No, I don’t think that’s quite right. We need to do this. Oh yes, I think that’s really good. So I will be honest and open. Absolutely honesty was always the best way for me to go.
Chris Baran 59:36
Yeah, yeah. I’m going to jump back to Michael for a second, and because he said that as as a mentor, as you were his mentor, and you guys would talk about things, and you would give him his very honest feedback on the work and, and I’m kind of he never said what it was exactly, but he said You always were truthful. You always told him that. Well, this is good. Keep going. Or this is it’s got to change and and it kind of made me think almost full circle, like, what, what, what your mentor did to you? It said, Well, that’s shit when you when you are mentoring people. Is it just that, because you have that truthfulness, that and that openness about it, that is that your style, that you do, that you would just say, look, I love it, or I hate it, move on. What’s How would you describe that style to you? I
Robert Lobetta 1:00:28
don’t know if it’s quite that way. I think mentoring for me is symbiotic. We both have to get something out of it. Yeah, so I’m being known to Michael when I’m mentoring him, and he’s showing me something, I’m giving him my truthful opinion, but at the same time, he’s showing me something different that I may not have thought of. So in a way, I learned from him, unbeknown to him, what he’s trying to do, and I find that refreshing. So both sides win here, but in teaching Michael and my style of mentoring is the obvious, which to me is I want whoever I’m mentoring to be better than me? Yeah, I will push them as hard as I possibly can, because what’s the point of teaching someone if they’re going to be average? I’m not interested in that. I think of someone like Carlos Alcaraz in tennis again, again, if you know tennis, and Alcaraz has this coach called Juan Carlos Ferrero. Juan Carlos was a great player in his day. And when I look at someone at Alcoa who does something totally different, the job of Juan Carlo is to harness what Alcaraz is inventing, how he’s sliding, how he’s moving, how he hits the ball, that Juan Carlos would never do, but he has to take that on board and look at it, and then finesse it. So I look at someone like Michael, what are you doing? Give me that idea. I look at someone else, what’s your idea? And then my job is to finesse it and make it just that little bit better, make it that little bit cleaner and sharper. But it has to come from them, not from me. That is the key thing about mentoring, as long as I get something from it as well. We’re both very happy with Michael. It was easy because he had an aptitude to want to learn. He wanted to grow. He wanted to do things. He he had that knowledge of where he was going with it. So with Michael, it was somewhat much easier.
Chris Baran 1:02:13
Yeah, what I really got out of what you were saying there was that you see so many people that they mentor, coach, you pick your word, or whatever that might be. But it tends to be like a silo or vertical or they’re, they’re, they’re talk, not talking down, but they see that person always below them, versus like, what I love that the image that I got was was more lateral. That were wherever you’re at, you’re kind of growing at the same time, but it’s a it’s a lateral relationship, or that’s where I got that symbiosis from with you, that you’re both rising, versus this vertical piece where I’m above you, I’m always better than you, and I always push up. I think we see that out there with some people and and I like you, like to think that if I’m going to help you, I want you to be better than I am. Eventually.
Robert Lobetta 1:03:13
That was always my goal. Whoever I teach, basically, you’ve got to be at least as good as me. So these are the things you’re going to have to do,
Chris Baran 1:03:20
yeah, what the you mean? Let’s face it, when I’m not, I don’t want to have to take it back too far into where you are as because, let’s face it, if you are a visionary, you know, and I don’t mean that from from fluff. I don’t mean that from gushing. I just you are, you know, in our industry sees you is that way and and I always think about when people see people like you, Anthony Trevor, and you don’t know, they just think that, oh, they just got to where they are. There was no hard spots. There was no crap that they had to go through, no hard times that they always think that I could never get to that level. And that’s one of the parts that I love about doing this, is that is that when people we talk about the wins that people had, but also so when they know that there was some they had some hard times. Did you ever have any hard times that you were going through or crap that you had to crawl out. Or I always think of the times when I even was driving to the salon or driving to a shoot, and I just don’t know. I didn’t know, maybe, what if I bust my arm? What wouldn’t it be nice? So I just don’t have to do this. Was there any of those hard times that you had?
Robert Lobetta 1:04:33
I think I’ve had a lot of them, quite a lot more so than people. I don’t often discuss them, but I suppose when I first had to come to America and join Sebastian, because previously that I was doing Sebastian work from London, but the new CEO at the time, Manolis, said, We want you to come to America and work there. Once I got there, I never realized how much I. Animosity there was from majority of the people who were working there, because I was the outsider from London coming into their place and possibly doing what they wanted to do, because in their minds, it was their right. And why not? They’ve been working there all that time. I’m an outsider coming in. So they felt uncomfortable with me, and every morning I woke up, I had to go into the space. I called it the space, and I had to have this resolve and belief knowing that I was going into battle. Because it wasn’t just one or two people, it was practically half the not half the company, but I’d say probably a third to a quarter of the company, not so much a dislike. But why is he here? And I had to prove myself again and again and again. And in order to do that, I had to have this inner belief. I believe I will do this. I have the resolve. So every morning, I’d have my coffee, get myself ready, get in the car and get ready to do battle. And I would say to myself, here we go. We’re going into battle. Let’s do it. And that’s what it was like for the first year. So that’s one of the things. The other thing is that I wish I never would have opened salons. I was not good at that. I really wasn’t, because in wears hairdressers, we’re taught to be great hairdressers, and you get your techniques and you understand. But no one teaches you to be a leader. No one teaches you about business. No one teaches you about all these aspects that go along with it. And if I had that time again, I would never have open sounds, most definitely not because I didn’t have that business acumen. No one taught me certain things that I needed to know to be successful. But I think when I think about this Sebastian thing and many other adversities I had to sort of go through, it was a question of, no matter how much they work, it’s the inner belief that I believe, if you can have that inner belief within yourself. You can come to the table and you can solve so many of your problems that way. You just have to really believe you can do this and no one’s going to stop you. Yeah,
Chris Baran 1:07:12
thank you. I mean, thank you, because it’s, I think we’ve all gone through that. And, like I said, and I want to reiterate this for anybody that’s listening and watching right now is that everybody has to get to the other side. But if you’re not persistent, if you would have given up and said, Look at this, you know, I’m not going to, I’m not going to go into work today, then your work wouldn’t have got out there. You wouldn’t have helped to change them and change it. Because you not only changed the way that people looked at her hair industry, but you changed the products because you were developing the products. I thought one of the most brilliant things that was done from a marketing concept was when you launched exta, yeah, and they said it’s only for editorial stylists. I went, That’s brilliant, because every hairdresser that was out there said, you can only get that. You can only get that as an editorial stylist. I’m gonna I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna say that. And that’s, you know, that’s why, when I got and I crude played, was always one of my favorite products. I thought that was just the most brilliant product that was out there at the time, and and, but I thought what a brilliant marketing campaign, only for editorial stylists.
Robert Lobetta 1:08:32
I love that work to a degree. I must admit, it was fun to do crew. Clay was also one of my favorite products, and that was an accident waiting to happen. I have a story about that, but we don’t need to get into that. You would like to hear it? Yeah, it was back in London, and I went to a party with my assistant called Katherine. And the party was you had to dress up as Greek goddesses or gods. So we had to do our hair and our togas and everything. So I arrive and and Catherine speaks me said, What should we do with our hair? And I said, Well, you’ve got that sort of clay modeling stuff. It was Art Clay. It wasn’t like clay. And we put it on our hand. We sculpted our hair into sort of statuesque looking things. We arrive at the party, and I don’t know if you know John Galliano. John Galliano is there. And I know John because I’ve worked with him a few times. And he said, Robert, what have you got on your hair? It looks amazing. And I said, it’s some sort of clay that’s mixed together, and it gives it this dried sort of texture that’s moldable and whatever. And he said, You should market that you should do a product just like that. I went to Catherine, I looked at her, and Catherine grinned at me. And then when we left and we got into work the next day, we said, yeah, if John said, this is a good idea, maybe this is a really good idea. So I went to the chemist and tried to explain what I wanted with this clay, which it wasn’t exactly what. John was seeing on my head, but I gave him the derivative of what I wanted it to be, and it came out better than I could possibly imagine. And it was such an easy product to use. It was great. I used it on myself. I used it on everyone. Crew play was one of my favorite products that I accidentally invented. And I say that accidentally, but you know,
Chris Baran 1:10:18
isn’t that the truth? And a lot of the great things that came out in our world often happen by accident. So, you know, it’s wait for the accident, wait for the surprise, and it’ll be there.
Robert Lobetta 1:10:28
Oh, so in everything I do, there’s the I’m waiting for this mistake to happen that takes me in a different direction. So many photographic shoots when that the lights wouldn’t work and everything sort of be slightly sort of dark, when I just accidentally clicked the camera, and I’d look at the the end result, I go, wow, did I do that? Yeah, and that’s because it was a mistake, and everything I’ve done has basically come out of a mistake somehow. Otherwise you would never learn and grow, otherwise you’d just be doing the same thing. I think for me, that’s why I try to do as many things in life as possible. I you know, from hairdressing to creative direction to photography to art to writing to everything I do is born out of curiosity, and it’s that curiosity. I’m not I’ll fail on a lot of it, and it’s okay to fail, because there’s nothing wrong in there. Most of us do fail, and accepting these failures a way of growing. And if someone wants to point the finger and say, Robert, that’s not very good, I’ll say, Yeah, you’re right. It’s not very good. But it won’t hurt me, because it won’t stop me trying again, because it’s taken me a while to let the ego go. But once the ego is gone, and you don’t have to worry about the ego. You’re not worried about if something’s perfect or someone likes it or don’t like it, as long as you know where you’re going with it and you keep that curiosity for what you’re trying to do.
Chris Baran 1:11:48
I have to tell you this. First of all, for me, this has been one of the most insightful podcasts that we’ve done in that right? But I would say to people, even if you didn’t take anything else out of that. If you took that last snippet that you just said there about curiosity and just going down a path and just going down that, even if it doesn’t work out right, that alone, I think it will help to change careers for people, especially like I. I love this industry, and I want it to get to gain and flourish, and I want it to be where we have the same respect that doctors, lawyers, I mean, pick anything else, because we know we can make the same amount of money if we apply ourselves to it. And I think that we just want that same amount of respect based on what we do. And I think that would help to be what you just said. If every person that should be in every manual, it should be in every school, that way it’s taught is just to be curious. I think that’s got to be something that’s in there. So, Robert, we’re just getting to the end here, but I just want to do, I always love these. I want to go, gonna take you through the rapid fire. So just quick answers. What turns you on in the creative process,
Robert Lobetta 1:13:02
discovering something I never thought I was going to do.
Chris Baran 1:13:07
And what stifles creativity for you, doing the
Robert Lobetta 1:13:10
same thing again and again and again, thinking it might come out different this time.
Chris Baran 1:13:15
Einstein had a phrase for that too, called insanity, right? Yes, the thing in life as in general, what do you love the most about life
Robert Lobetta 1:13:25
at this moment, good food and good wine.
Chris Baran 1:13:28
Oh yeah. We can be friends. We can be friends. And what do you dislike the most in life, bad food and bad wine. We’re definitely going to be friends. The thing that you love most about our industry,
Robert Lobetta 1:13:44
the people, the camaraderie, the enjoyment watching people have fun together, the spontaneity. There’s so much charisma, character about all the people you’re going to meet. Everyone is so different. And I love that about our industry, that you meet all these people from different walks of life. So for me, that’s what it is. The difference of all the people who come into contact with that make you think differently. And what
Chris Baran 1:14:09
do you dislike the most about our industry?
Robert Lobetta 1:14:13
I think we touched on it before, about sort of how avant garde sort of been too far to the left side. Yeah, gotcha
Chris Baran 1:14:21
person that you admire the most,
Robert Lobetta 1:14:25
probably my wife, because I always say to when I grow up, I want to be like you
Chris Baran 1:14:32
now and just, you know, like some people talk about possessions, etc, and they, they don’t always talk about possession things, etc. But have you do you have a most prized possession, like whatever, a watch or a thing that that that you if you had to move and you had to take one thing with you that reminded you of something or did, what would that be? That’s a hard
Robert Lobetta 1:14:53
one, because I think it wasn’t long ago we had, we have fires here, where we are, and we had to evacuate. One year, and Kay said to me, what should we take? What should we take? And I said, I don’t really know. So we took nothing. We just went. So possessions are sort of strange for me. There was one item of clothing, and it used to be my father’s double breasted jacket, and that item of clothing I put on and fits me beautifully, and I always think of my father when I wear his past Now, unfortunately, but that is probably the possession I’d I enjoy the most, because I still wear it. So it still means something as I put it on, it fills me with memories and different things that I aspired to and Helm. So maybe it’s that particular jacket. Yeah,
Chris Baran 1:15:45
yeah. I can so relate to that, because my, my dad gave a watch to me and I, and, you know, to me, that’s, you know, every time that I have that watch and and I don’t wear it that often, but, and I always get that back, and I think that’s really important as well a person that yet, and I don’t know if this even would apply to you, because he probably met almost everybody, but if there’s a person that you wish you could meet,
Robert Lobetta 1:16:11
oh, there’s lots. I think when I look at my career, there was a lot of stress involved, yeah, and to relieve the stress, I would play tennis, and it was in the early 2000s and I was watching tennis, I was playing tennis, and there was Roger Federer, and I watched Roger, and he was like this ballerina on court, so graceful, so beautiful to Watch. And then when he spoke, he spoke with this humbleness and this wonderfulness. And I thought, I want to meet Roger Federer, because what he gave me was that feeling is that when I went on court, I wanted to hit the ball like Roger, and nothing else coming to my mind. All stress went so tennis was the biggest stress reliever for me, and it was Roger Federer who helped me get beyond that. So Roger Federer,
Chris Baran 1:17:06
if I got a wish, if I got, if I have a wish that I could make come true, I’d wish that for you, my friend, is there something that that you? There’s something that people don’t know about you?
Robert Lobetta 1:17:22
I love gardening. I love digging in the dirt. I love getting dirty and messing up and laying in the earth and playing with the plants and carving things around and making pass. And I also still, at my age, at 71 I still love playing soccer, so I play in this over 60s league every Sunday. So those are the two things that some people may know or may not know. I can only think of those two things off the top of my head. Love
Chris Baran 1:17:46
it. If you got a month off, if you have month off, where would you go and what would you do? I
Robert Lobetta 1:17:52
wouldn’t do anything, simply because I’ve had the last 10 years off. So basically, my life is quite nice for how it is. I don’t need to go anywhere or do anything. Love anything is wonderful at the moment.
Chris Baran 1:18:03
I love it. Is there anything that terrifies you? Drowning? Oh, interesting. I can’t swim so well you get you come to our house. You never drowned in our pool because it doesn’t have a deep end and it has a bar and it has seats inside so that you can have your wine and just sit there. Excellent. There you go. Favorite curse word,
Robert Lobetta 1:18:31
all of them, probably, but I suppose the one I always say to myself when I’m whether it’s soccer or whether I’m doing some art, and it’s usually goes sort of, what the fuck were you thinking? So that is that phrase that often comes out. So it’s not just one word, it’s the sense. And I catch myself doing the most ridiculous things, and it’s always, what the fuck were you thinking. So that’s how it goes for me.
Chris Baran 1:18:57
I can relate. I can relate to that. What’s your favorite comfort food? Did you go to
Robert Lobetta 1:19:04
lobster bisque? So when we
Chris Baran 1:19:06
get together, Rita will tell you her rub her lobster bisque story. I can’t even see this applying to you, but I’m going to ask it anyway, something in the industry that you haven’t done, but you wished you would have, or want to.
Robert Lobetta 1:19:27
I think many years ago, I obviously talked about Trevor and Anthony a lot, and I think what I would love to have done, and we never, we talked about it, but never did it. The three of us was to be on stage together and do a show together as a uniform group, as one entity, not Trevor, not Anthony, not Robert, but the three of us under one banner, working together that I would have really enjoyed, and we came close to it. I think it was the late 80s, 90s, and didn’t quite get there. That’s one thing I would have loved to have
Chris Baran 1:19:59
done. Yeah. Know, the only thing that I would think would have stood in your way, I don’t think that there would have been a building large enough that you could have fit all the people in. You know, that would have been, that would have been some I would have traveled anywhere in the world for that one, if you had one do over, you know, think one thing you could do differently, what would that be
Robert Lobetta 1:20:22
in? The mid 80s, there was a film called Blade Runner, don’t if you remember, and Ridley asked me to do the hair for it, and at the time, I turned him down because I was too busy doing all my other editorial shoots. And if I felt I did this film, it would put me out of commission with everyone else, because the film takes a year to do. Yeah, I didn’t want to do that. Blade Runner became the most iconic film for me. Yeah, and if I had to do over that would be, I wish I would have worked on Blade Runner. I did work a lot with Ridley Scott and Sony Scott, and I learned a lot from them, but doing that particular film would have meant so much to me. Celebrity never happened. My fault. Yeah,
Chris Baran 1:21:06
the and I just want to, I’ve got one more quick question for you, but I just want to, before I do that, just to say thank you so much for being on here and and just literally opening up to the world. Because I, you know, I had people that were saying, you know, like, get Robert on. Get Robert on. And that was, you were always on my list. And always wanted to be, I wanted you on number one, number 100 because I wanted that, that connection. I wanted that one to be just a really iconic piece on I just wanted to say thank you so much for being here, and I really want to say that it’s been a pleasure and an honor. And while I’ve I haven’t gushed, but I will say that I’ve always, I’ve always held you at such high regard. And I even remember we were at a we were in Vegas doing something, and I walked into one store I can’t remember, with an MGM or whatever, and I remember that I walked in and you were there, and I said something to you, and I can’t even remember now, if you imagine it, but you said, Hi Chris, and I just went. He knows my name. And that was, again, that was a great, great big piece for me. But I just wanted to thank you so much for being on here, and I’m going to stop because I’m gushing. Okay,
Robert Lobetta 1:22:26
thank you, Chris. I hope your audience enjoyed it, and you’ll give me some feedback at some point, I will, I will share some wine over, wine in good family, wine at any given time. Oh,
Chris Baran 1:22:38
my favorites. My favorites. I’ll bring it. So listen, I have one, one last question, sure, if you had one wish for our industry, what would it be
Robert Lobetta 1:22:53
to wake up, to grab hold of it, move forward and be the best you can be, which sounds very broad, but waking up is, I think, the biggest thing we have got to wake up, because we’ve been dormant for years now. Yeah, and what I want us to progress so much. I think I’ve always tried to progress our industry as much as I could, and there were times when I think I failed. So I want us to sort of go forward and take our industry by the scruff of the neck and take it, drag it into the 21st century. Lee, wow, love it.
Chris Baran 1:23:25
Well, thank you again. And listen for the people that are watching and listening right now, if you could do us a big, huge favor, and then whatever your platform is on, if you can go on there and just give us a review, and so we can have more people that want to hear, more incredible people like Robert libetta, so I just want again, one more time, Robert, say thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure and honor, and I wish all the best for you and Kay,
Robert Lobetta 1:23:46
Thank you, Chris. Regards and love to your wife and your son, Lee and Suze. Love it.
Chris Baran 1:23:55
Head cases is produced by cut action media, with Marjorie Phillips doing the planning parts. Lee Baran on the video bits and Adrian Taverner mixing the audio jazz you.
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