Our Promise is Beauty

Angus Mitchell, co-owner of Paul Mitchell Systems and a powerful educator in the beauty industry, was an infant when he grabbed his first headline. “The show was stolen by Angus,” gushed a newspaper article on his father, the late haircutting guru Paul Mitchell. With a baby bottle rattling in his briefcase, the senior Mitchell, a single father, took Angus whenever possible as he hit the road to educate and inspire haircutters all over the world.

Today Angus Mitchell is in a new generation in the creative wave that is taking the industry by storm. He is shaping not only heads, but the future of the profession through international seminars and a studio, Angus Mitchell Studio in Venice, CA where he creates multi-media projects—photography, music, hair and fashion—to spread his message worldwide.

Dubbed “one of the hair industry’s hottest headliners” by ZINK, an avant-garde style magazine, Mitchell is a dynamic representative of the world’s largest privately held professional hair care line, Paul Mitchell Systems. Since it was founded in 1980, Paul Mitchell Systems has become a global leader in educating and inspiring hair professionals, as well as a prominent contributor to humanitarian and environmental causes.

Following in his father’s footsteps with a style uniquely his own, Angus is also an exceptional haircutter. He is the Artistic Director of Education for John Paul Mitchell Systems, which he co-owns with John Paul DeJoria. Angus has trained professionals in Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and throughout the United States and continues to travel internationally to teach the next generation of hairdressers. His message: cut hair, develop your skills, be creative, and enjoy success. In his mentoring, he is also encouraging his audience to find their own voice and sense of freedom. His appearances for JPMS attract thousands of fans and screaming, standing ovations.

“My goal is to help educate the beauty industry and give professionals the tools that will help them in all aspects of creative expression and business,” he explains. “It’s not only about form and technique, but also about bringing excitement back to hairdressing. It’s about breaking some rules to keep things young and fresh.”

Like his father, who was known as “the hairdresser’s hairdresser,” Angus has a robust interpretation of education. “I believe that hair should be simple and beautiful,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be so avant-garde and so geometric that it looks like a shape that should be put on everyone’s head. It can be softer, with more movement and air. For me, it really depends on the person, the individual, more than on a certain style.

“Although celebrities and runway fashions create certain looks, I think it all rests on a person’s own feeling—his or her creativity—and lifestyle.”

Angus’s personal style, a cross between rock-and-roll glam and Marlon-Brando-bad-boy, also finds inspiration in architecture, nature, music, automobiles, furniture design, and street fashion.

Educational Background

Born in Manhattan in 1970, during the height of the “British invasion” in music and fashion, Angus has traveled extensively all his life. His mother, Jolina Mitchell, was a prominent fashion model in New York. After Paul Mitchell sold his thriving New York salon, Superhair, and moved to Hawai`i in 1974, Angus spent as much time in Hawai`i as possible and attended the Waldorf Schools as a child. He moved to Hawai`i full-time when he was 12 years old.

Although initially interested in an acting career, Angus succumbed to the call of the shears and headed to Vidal Sassoon for training in 1990, the year after his father died. After ten months of training at Vidal Sassoon, Angus returned to Honolulu and worked at Bottega Antoine, the top salon in Honolulu.

“Eventually I realized that I had to move to a new place, reinvent myself, and work for a company where I didn’t have a name, where I would be just an employee,” Angus recalls. “So I moved to L.A. and worked for Vidal Sassoon for three-and-a-half years, assisting at the school and the salon in Beverly Hills.”

The training allowed him to learn the basics of hairdressing from the ground up. “They never cut me any slack,” he chuckles. “I did everything—clean with Windex, sweep the floor, observe, assist, and eventually, learn about all aspects of the business.” He also had absorbed a good measure of education from a lifetime of watching his father.

“Somehow, going into hairdressing was a way of keeping my father alive in me,” Angus muses. “I saw others being supported by their mentors and families working hand-in-hand with them. There I was on my own, with no one to lead me or give me words of guidance. It was difficult, and I was filled with self-doubt, but working in a company where I was an employee, not the son of an icon, made me stronger.”

Paul Mitchell Systems, meanwhile, had become the industry trailblazer in product development and hairstyling, with a global network of distributors and educational programs the world over. Angus began working for the company in 1998 and now is one of its premier artists and educators, the fresh new force in the company.

In creating new hair shapes and adapting old ones with fresh new interpretations, and in encouraging young professionals to be free and be themselves, Angus is continuing the Paul Mitchell legacy: taking the industry to new levels of success—with heart.