{"id":5307,"date":"2015-07-13T03:59:45","date_gmt":"2015-07-12T19:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/keeping-us-in-style\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T13:07:19","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T05:07:19","slug":"keeping-us-in-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/keeping-us-in-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping us in style"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ashley Williams has been the owner of Fringe Benefits salon since 2005, but to him it might as well have been yesterday. Although he didn\u2019t always plan to get into his line of work, the easy-going hairdresser is now an integral part of the Curtin community. Whether you want a trim, a restyle or just a chat, Ashley is the man for the job.<\/p>\n

How can other men style their moustaches to be as awesome as yours?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Haha! It takes a bit of trimming, a good wax and, I suppose, practise. It takes a bit of time to get the hang of it and to grow it.<\/p>\n

I had a beard for quite a while and then I noticed that everyone else had beards and I just got sick of it. I had a mate that actually had a pretty cool mo and I had been edging towards it for a while. I shaved the beard and the mo was there. That\u2019s pretty much it.<\/p>\n

As a hairdresser, I\u2019ve had a lot of different styles. When I had hair, I had it in all sorts of colours; I had curls and flat-tops. I think the mo is just one of those things that everyone loves. Clients walk in and they\u2019re like, \u2018The moustache is looking great. Great moustache!\u2019 People on campus, uni students and even high school students are like, \u2018Oh, by the way, great moustache. I love that moustache!\u2019 It just amazes me that so many people comment on it. It\u2019s bizarre. I\u2019ve never had anything that everyone has commented on so much before.<\/p>\n

Why did you decide to become a hairdresser?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t want to go on with school. School didn\u2019t want to keep me on. So it was best that I left. I didn\u2019t really know a lot of options either and I didn\u2019t really know what I wanted to do.<\/p>\n

My mum was a hairdresser for a while before I was born and she said, \u2018What about hairdressing?\u2019 After thinking about hairdressing and what it entailed: working with people, being creative, going in so many different directions and exploring different options in deciding whether to work for someone or for yourself, it all sounded really appealing.<\/p>\n

I finished year 10 on Friday and started in a salon on Monday, and I\u2019ve been working as a hairdresser ever since. Over the 25 years that I\u2019ve been doing it, I\u2019ve had six months as a break where I haven\u2019t been hairdressing. Working as a hairdresser, it doesn\u2019t feel like I\u2019ve been doing it for that long. I remember, when I was an apprentice, my manager said, \u2018I\u2019ve been hairdressing for six years\u2019. She thought it was a bloody long time, but I think after 25 years, it still doesn\u2019t feel like a long time\u2026 until you\u2019re talking to a student who\u2019s 19, which is when it does feel like it\u2019s been a long time.<\/p>\n

\"Curtin<\/a><\/p>\n

What do you love about your job?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love that people come back and see me regularly. I suppose you become a big part of someone\u2019s life. You get to change people\u2019s looks and make them feel so much better about themselves. Something can be getting them down and, once they leave, they feel fantastic. It only takes one haircut; it only takes one smallish thing to change the way someone feels. It\u2019s that chance to make someone feel so much better about themselves and give them a new look and a new outlook.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard you\u2019ve taken part in the World\u2019s Greatest Shave. How did that come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how long we\u2019ve been doing it. I think it\u2019s been about seven or eight years now. Mo (Student and community development coordinator Maureen Meredith) approached us and asked if she\u2019d be able to borrow some clippers and we said, \u2018Actually, we\u2019ll do it\u2019. I grab all my staff and we close the salon for that time \u2013 we\u2019re not actually making money for the two and a half hours that we do the World\u2019s Greatest Shave.<\/p>\n

It helps raise money for leukaemia. We really need to find a cure because it\u2019s a disease that affects so many different people. I think everyone should donate his or her time to a cause. I also used to volunteer for Telethon and man the phone rooms years ago. I think what I do helps \u2013 it\u2019s my bit for the community.<\/p>\n

With the World\u2019s Greatest Shave, it is being part of the Curtin community: to get in there, help out and bring the Curtin community spirit back onto campus. As a business on campus, there\u2019s a certain loyalty towards the students and the staff. It\u2019s a community. It\u2019s like a small town.<\/p>\n

\"Curtin<\/a><\/p>\n

What are your hobbies?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I used to play bike polo. I don\u2019t play it too much now. It\u2019s three people a side, on bikes, obviously. It\u2019s kind of like horse polo. The idea is to get the ball in the goal. That\u2019s something I helped start up in Perth and it\u2019s something I still play occasionally. It\u2019s a good sport. It\u2019s a good way of building up your bike skills. It\u2019s awesome fun.<\/p>\n

I also do a lot of mountain bike racing and cyclocross racing. Cyclocross is new to Australia, but it\u2019s an old sport. Basically, you ride road bikes off-road on a short course with multiple laps through grass, sand, mud and pavement \u2013 all sorts of stuff. They put obstacles, like barriers, in there as well. It involves a bit of running and riding and, again, good bike skills. It\u2019s great fun and a great spectator sport. We get a lot of people that watch. It\u2019s a bit more rowdy than a mountain bike or road race.<\/p>\n

Is there anything else you\u2019d like to add?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s hard when I talk to people all day, every day and conversations go off in all different directions. A lot of people know a lot about me, I think. There\u2019s not too much that I\u2019m able to keep to myself!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You can find Ashley at Fringe Benefits Hair Salon in Building 106 on campus, or call 9458 1625.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ashley Williams has been the owner of Fringe Benefits since 2005, but to him it might as well have been yesterday. Whether you want a trim, a restyle or just a chat, Ashley is the man for the job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4275,"featured_media":5308,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-5307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-and-global-community"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":false,"credits":{"author":"","photographer":{"title":"Sam Proctor","url":"#","target":""},"media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Ashley-3-720px.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Curtin","last_name":"University","display_name":"Â鶹ֱ²¥"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 01:35:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5307"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=5307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}