Jeffrey Ortega, center, with scissors, cuts the ribbon for his business, Shaves & Fades, 2128 E. Winona Ave., Warsaw, during the ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday with the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce.

Text and Photos
By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — Shaves & Fades is a classic-style barbershop with a modern day twist, according to owner Jeffrey Ortega.

His shop located at 2128 E. Winona Ave., Warsaw, has been open for four years, but Shaves & Fades has been open in Warsaw since 2015.

While Shaves & Fades may not sound like a new business, Ortega said “as a whole” they’re just a year or two old. It was always just him for the first four years of his business. Then for the next four years, he was joined by three or four barbers, in and out. It wasn’t at the scale it is now. In about the past year, it’s grown to nine barbers at the shop, with the ninth one joining a couple months ago.

Thursday, Oct. 24, the business had a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce.

On the shaves and hair cuts Shaves & Fades offers, Ortega said, “We’re like a classic-style barbershop with a modern twist, is the best way I can describe it.” He defined modern twist as “the new styles, designs, eyebrows, modern mullets, tapers. We use the razor. Back in the day, that’s what a lot of people did was the razors, basic haircuts, flat tops, high and tights. But now we just (offer) a wide range of haircuts. Our skills are very vast.”

Any style a person wants, Ortega said they can pretty much do it. While they currently don’t do hair coloring, he said that’ll be their next step. They’ll have to take some classes on that and then try to include that in their services.

Ortega has been cutting hair for 13 years. He has barbers in the shop who have been cutting hair for five years, with some having two to three years of experience. There’s male and female barbers who can take care of customers of any age.

As for the style of the barbershop, Ortega stated, “I’m originally from California, so when I came I brought that style with me as far as cutting hair. A lot of people kind of saw them on Instagram, Facebook and never really had the haircut done properly until I got here and they saw the difference from a regular basic haircut to the detail stuff that we do here. So I brought that style here, and then the shop look as well. A lot of shops are more modern and trying to do something to stand out.”

While a basic shop may just have chairs, stations, windows and mirrors, Shaves & Fades has artwork decorating the black and gold interior of the business. “Because that’s what we do. We’re artists. So we’ve got artwork on the wall. A lot of us like tattoos so a lot of the artwork on the wall is done by tattoo artists that are clients to the barbershop as well,” he said.

Appointments are recommended to secure a spot, but they do take walk-ins as they have more barbers.

Shaves & Fades is open seven days a week, but the barbers are each subcontracted so they make their own schedules. Ortega said they can be open as early as 7:30 a.m. and some barbers stay until 9 p.m.

Costs are generally about the same for each of the barbers, but Ortega said the newer barbers will start out at a less expensive price while they build their client base. Prices may range from about $25 to $45, depending on the work included. Basic haircuts can often be done in 15-20 minutes, with fades and other detailed styles take about 30 minutes or so.
For appointments, Shaves & Fades uses an app called Booksy, a common app for barbershops.

The phone number is (574) 265-1859.

“We’re the top shop in town. We do a lot of the detail stuff that’s hard to find, that you have to go to the city to get. We do kids, we do adults, we’re open seven days a week. Our hours are pretty open,” Ortega said

The nine barbers at Shaves & Fades, 2128 E. Winona Ave., Warsaw, gather around a client Thursday for a group photo.