This Is Where All the Cool
Kids Get Anime Haircuts

It’s a quiet end of day at TogenQ salon in Williamsburg. In one corner, a woman scrolls on her phone while a stylist curls her denim-blue-streaked hair into ringlets. Across the room, Jiwon, 25, gets her hime-style bob touched up so that it hangs above her delicately tattooed shoulders. Outside, three kids sporting freshly tousled shag cuts sling on spiked backpacks as they debate their next move.

TogenQ is only four months old, but it has already earned a loyal fan base for one reason: Hime cuts, raccoon hair dye, and rat-tails are as common here as a lowlight or a barrel curl. “It’s hard to find someone who gets the vision,” says 22-year-old Magali from the chair as stylist Weiwei Huang stands behind her, blowing out her new microbangs. 

Huang, who also goes by Chris, does, which is why Magali keeps coming back. Huang has accrued millions of likes on TikTok for their hairdressing style: feathered ends and neon colors, shaping cuts that look straight out of Dragon Ball Z. “Grunge, death metal, stuff like that,” they say. “You feel different; you feel cool.”

TogenQ might be new, but its parent salon, Double Q, has been styling the downtown crowd for seven years now. Co-owner Ten was working as a stylist at the Lower East Side location when it first opened, the summer before COVID-19 lockdown. He thinks the salon went viral in part because the haircuts and dye jobs they specialize in play well on social media. “The before and after look are totally different,” he says. “That’s why people love it online.” 

New York City vintage shop owner Emma Rogue is one of the salon’s many loyalists; her neon-green hair has become a calling card.  She got bangs and a blonde feathered mop on a trip to Japan a few years ago, but then she flew home. “So then I’m back in the States like, ‘Alright, well, I’ve gotta find someone in the US who can do this,’” she says.

She found Huang’s Instagram through mutual friends. At first, they stuck with the blonde and added a black stripe. Eventually, she decided to experiment with one of Huang’s acid-bright colors. She picked neon green and told them to freestyle the rest, which is how they came to the tortoiseshell speckles of navy, white, black, and green that make Rogue instantly recognizable.

Each generation needs its rebels: the counter-culture cool kids who listen to pop punk and metalcore. In the past, these subcultures grew around a system of values; the look was incidental. But as trends become increasingly competitive, and the attention economy more central to our lives, standing out from the crowd in any way — making someone stop scrolling for any length of time — is rebellious in itself. 

Having a signature look is everything, be it Gabbriette’s pencil-thin eyebrows or Alysa Liu’s bleached haloes. “A couple brands have reached out because of my hair,” Rogue says. “It definitely makes you stand out in a sea of millions of kids. When it’s so saturated, having something that makes you recognizable is important.”

Huang’s acidic work, therefore, is a healthy shock to the system. And it’s not prohibitively expensive (though it’s still “a pretty penny,” as Rogue puts it), meaning it’s possible to walk away with a new defining look for a few hundred dollars. 

There’s also the fact that every single one of the salon’s employees bleeds style, from the symmetrical tattoos adorning Ten’s neck to Huang’s signature shag, smoked-out liner, and spider-bite lip piercings. The influencer-hairdressers are part of what you’re paying for. They have a uniquely online point of view. They know how to create hair for the internet age. “ Some people are super into the subculture and know all about it,” Rogue says. “Then there’s the other side of it where kids are discovering Chris on their Reels and they’re like, ‘This person looks so cool. I wanna look like that.’” 

Rogue compares it to her Lower East Side vintage store. Some young shoppers come in with a deep knowledge of ’90s streetwear and the lore of now-defunct brands. Others just know that big jeans are back and find out about JNCO in real time. “ There’s beauty in both ways of discovery,” she says.

Some details get lost in the social-media shuffle. While Double Q and TogenQ are predominantly known as Japanese-style salons, they are more broadly influenced. Even around the room, I hear people speaking in Japanese, Mandarin, and English. Jiwon, for instance, has lived in Paris for the past seven years and is visiting her boyfriend in New York City, but she was born and raised in South Korea. Ten, a b-boy who immigrated to the US from China, drew on Chinese fables when opening TogenQ. The salon’s Mandarin name, written beneath the logo, is a reference to a story about accidentally discovering utopia. The interior, which is all birch wood and forest-green paint and rice paper lanterns, is inspired by its Chinese backstory. “We draw on all kinds of Asian and international inspirations,” Ten says. “We’re looking at the styles coming from Japan, China, Vietnam, Thailand, France.”

Huang’s work, though, is predominantly and undoubtedly inspired by Japanese media. They grew up reading the Tokyo-based magazine FRUiTS, watching anime, and listening to J-rock and J-pop. “They have really cool hair, spiky hair, kind of weird and intentional,” Huang says. “So I tried to bring [that style] to real humans.”

Many people, Huang and Ten say, come in looking for more simplistic haircuts. And to be sure, the stylists don’t just freak it on the hair — they’re also capable of giving you a regular layered mid-length U-cut or a deeply heterosexual curtain bang.

Magali walks away with baby bangs and plummy bronze layers, which Huang curls with a flatiron into delicate, wispy shavings — the signature finish on most of their looks. The receptionist steps around me, sweeping away fallen hair in Tabi slingbacks. 

“I like the style, so I do it,” Huang says, shrugging. “If people like it, they just get it.”