It would be safe to say that if my marketing director James hadn’t been there to meet me, I would have easily walked right past The Netwerk Academy’s founding members Josef McCasland and John Alanouf on this warmer-than-usual Sunday in May at The Camp off Bristol Street in Costa Mesa, California.

The Camp is known for being a slightly more granola version of the hip and established LAB Anti-Mall which resides directly across Bristol, housing the vegan restaurant Native Foods and a studio offering Bikram yoga classes in an upstairs unit; yet the disparity between persons one would find embodying each respective location is not great, insomuch as these guys fit right in with their surroundings in the shade by a fire pit.  At first glance they appeared to me like two guys who could easily be found here on any given day, comfortable in this location, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon, smoking cigarettes over conversations about any number of topics.  If one were to get a bit closer and eavesdrop on their conversation, however, one would rarely find them discussing usual fodder revolving around the newest Pitchfork band or the greatest dive bar in the Southland; listen closely, and the eavesdropper might become enlightened to a whole new way of approaching the concept of beauty school education.  In short, the listener would learn one thing: these kids have big ideas.  

 “You go to a hair show and out of all those people there are very few people who really recognize your explanation of work; they’re really more looking for kind of raucous entertainment,” John says, commenting next on that new film with Adam Sandler You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.  “We’re just a little bit quieter about the whole thing; we don’t wear leather pants.”

Criticizing the Zoolander, almost parady-esque nature of many of the product lines represented at hair shows, Joe ensures me “we’re not like dancing around on stage…dancing around with cowboy hats and shit.  We’re like the extreme opposite so we get quite a lot of respect for that.  We have a very straightforward method of teaching, and we implement the fundamentals; we’re not trying to do all this stuff that’s real flashy to grab peoples’ attention.  We do it for the people that are really trying to focus on developing their precision skills and growing as a stylist.”  It’s for this reason that even at a show where attendance is minimal, they still have standing room only at the Netwerk Academy booth, the walls lined with students and stylists eager to learn from these two young visionaries.  Joe modestly asserts “we have a little network of people.  Our last show we had a girl fly out from Illinois just to watch us teach.” Not bad for two 26 year old kids who still find the constant strain of starting their own business while teaching all the classes themselves with minimal outside help quite daunting.   

“We started as a creative team,” John explains, “and we really got into education a lot; we love to do the shows and stuff, but we’ve found it especially hard to book classes and to confirm classes and go all the way through and teach them when it’s just the two of us.”  

“It’s a lot of work,” Joe chimes in. “You’ve gotta pay your dues, you know?  John and I, we do a lot of work with this.  We’re going to have to pay our dues for a long time building it.” The two juggle the responsibilities of the Academy while also working at two different salons cutting, coloring (although John focuses solely on his scissors), and building an extensive clientele.  John explains that “to do a whole academy would mean not only people promoting it, like investors,” but would also mean that they focus all of their funds and efforts on this endeavor. And somehow everything so far seems to be falling into place.  “Pretty much everything we’ve done so far has turned to gold when we do do it,” Joe comments, speaking about their last shoot.  “Everything just fell into place perfectly.”                     

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Photos of The Netwerk Academy's work:

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Much of their inspiration for their educational model comes from the positive and negative aspects of their upbringing in beauty school.  “I got into hair school and was really lost for a while because there was no education there,” Joe states as he explains his history in the beauty industry.  After recognizing this fact and taking what was certainly an ego-bursting step down from styling to assisting, he “really got to learn the whole customer service aspect of it and [how to] deal with clients.  I got the discipline of working hard hours and juggling clients,” much like John received when he was educated in beauty school a few years earlier.  “My biggest understanding of our upbringing difference is that real hardcore discipline; getting yelled at not to lean on the wall and only doing one thing the whole time.  [I then] went to Toni & Guy and there it was like boot camp…it’s not so much that cultish feeling like it used to be, but it definitely felt like you were there with a purpose.”  John’s motivation behind creating an educational system that adhered to an anti-product pushing mentality came from his years when he began cutting for Toni & Guy: “My life revolved around hair.  I found a real love for teaching there [at the Toni & Guy Academy].  I left there with a real disciplined feeling, and also kind of a hatred for product lines.  Education has been commandeered by products.”  

Along with this anti-corporate mentality and learned discipline also came a fervor on both their parts for teaching.  They both have a very distinct collective idea about how to mold their students into regimented, technical stylists with a grounded sense of the beauty industry, but they also get a huge high off being educators.  “When you really love to teach you want students who love to learn.  When they come out of school they have a little bit more of a green mentality,” John gushes as he reminisces on recent classes the Netwerk Academy has held.  “Everything is like a golden nugget of information for them.  Older people tend to want to tell you how they do it too; it’s like, don’t pay to come to class and then try to teach it.”  And it’s this green mentality that Joe and John hope their students will imbibe from them and spread throughout the industry, making this whole scene less about flash and more about formal technique.   

A large part of what the two teach at the Netwerk is minimalism, free of the gunky products, much like John’s role model Vidal Sassoon employs in his styling.  “I use a minimal amount of tools,” John asserts. “I don’t use thinning scissors, I don’t use razors.  I try to work around the scissor, the comb and the texture of the hair.  I get a lot of inspiration from the architecture styles of Vidal Sassoon’s company as well.”  Their goal, as you can see on their website TheNetwerkAcademy.com, is to center their education around the three main primary shapes that can be found in hair cuts combined with a short list of fundamental techniques that inspire a myriad of different looks.  They offer on their website and at all hair shows a DVD that also emphasizes these same goals entitled “Headsets, Vol. 1,” inspired by a flier they found for a club when they were attending a show in Florence, Italy.  And from looking at their gallery on both their website and at myspace.com/thenetwerkhair, one can see that their simplistic techniques lead to astonishingly fresh and runway-ready results.  

In parting, Joe leaves me with a concept of their goal for future generations: “We try to reach out to the beauty school students because we want them to grow.  We try to [educate] in the schools, doing demos.  We want to grow with this generation.  It doesn’t happen over night,” but you can tell by their confidence and passion that their goal of an educated sect of stylists certainly resides close, in the not-so distant future.     

For more information on classes or to purchase a DVD, please visit their website at TheNetwerkAcademy.com.  

Contact Information:

John Alanouf
Shanghai Salon
Shanghai-Salon.com
333 17th Street - Studio 6
Costa Mesa, CA 92627
949.650.0008

Josef McCasland
Medusa Salon
22311 Brookhurst Street
Huntington Beach, CA 92646
714.968.2424

Photography: Header & portraits by James Lai

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written by Tiffanie Cross, September 17, 2008

I have taken a Two-day class of theirs and a One-day class. I had a great one on one experience with both of these guys. They are very structured but extremely approachable and patient. I am looking forward to taking another class of theirs soon!

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written by natalie chanel, October 11, 2008

Graduating this month of October, i have made sure to check right away if The Netwerk was going to be involved at any hairshow i was able to attend. Their teaching is wonderful, precise, and every detail sticks in your mind. My favorite part of being a stylist is cutting and i will definitely be attending The Academy.

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