OI VIETNAM 55
EVERYTHING GREAT USUALLY
begins as a simple idea with a few
serendipitous twists thrown in for good
measure, and House of Barbaard is
no different. When Dutchman Guido
de Leeuw visited Hanoi in 2015, he
noticed how difficult it was to buy a nice
dress shirt despite being in the “Land
of Tailors”. Smitten with the idea of
establishing a clothing line in Vietnam
featuring European aesthetics, Guido
went home and tapped best friend and
graphic/product designer Tom Goedhart.
The fashion-forward duo sat down to
create a business plan, but soon decided
on a softer entry into the world of style
and fashion—by distributing Dutch hair
products suitable for Vietnamese hair,
sourced from their favorite barber shop
back in the Netherlands. Fast forward
a year, and the two noticed another gap
in the Vietnamese market—high-end
haircuts for men. “When we first arrived
in Vietnam and asked for a pompadour,
the barbers didn’t know what we were
talking about. We’d come back two days
later, and they’d be there with a TV set
up, ready to cut our hair while watching
a YouTube tutorial,” laughs Tom. So
it was that the distribution businessbecame an Old School barbershop
loosely modeled after Schorem, a
men’s only barbershop in Rotterdam
specializing in classic cuts like pomps
and quiffs.
Originally intended as a low-key
storefront barbershop in Hanoi, a last-
minute snag in leasing led the duo to
renting a colonial-era villa instead (hence
the “House” in “House of Barbaard”).
Without the lure of a storefront setting
and now needing to fill up the much
larger space, the two added a small bar
and seating area to the shop. “We soon
found that the guys liked it so much, they