Word of Mouth... Farley's Hair Emporium

Situated at the Windmill Hill end of Hermitage Road, Farley's Hair Emporium offers unisex hair stylings, good conversation, and a calling point for info about events around town.

Shout or Whisper ask Felix, who owns the shop with his wife Charlie, to take a turn in the chair, for a natter about all things Farley's, hobbies, and community goings on.

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Felix, repping the Emporium's colour scheme.

So, I thought to start with- we wanted to find out, how Farley’s started?

Farley’s... Farley’s started with- so,  in 2006 I became very ill, couldn’t work for, it turns out, about a year. And by the time I was well enough to start working again… it got to a point where we thought it might be okay to start work again down the road to recovery with a brain injury and so on, so I wasn’t very well coordinated for a long time. And I had a hippocampal lesion which made it quite difficult to work out processes. So any particular… it doesn’t matter what it is, but I knew where I had to be at an end point but working out how to get to the end point from where I was, I couldn’t work out. And it’s still the same with my sense of direction. I’ve got no sense of direction. I get lost now. I’ll leave my house and I’m in the car and I suddenly don’t realise where I am, and I can’t work it out at all. And it’s quite a weird experience. Having no idea where you are. But just soldier on, just carry on, because I think “I’m obviously supposed to be driving in this direction, so I’ll keep going, until I recognise where I am”. It always works out.

But, anyway, so that used to be much more acute. I started doing- tentatively started to cut friends’ and relatives’ hair from home, and then I realised it’s all right, it’s coming together quite nicely. And my friends’ friends and my relatives’ friends started coming in, and before we knew it I was getting really busy working from my dining room and didn’t really have the space for it. So… put half the contents of the dining room in a van, drove it to a shop that I took over, which used to be on Ickleford Road. And we were there for two years, and then moved from Ickleford Road to where we are now. So business started in 2007, and then we moved to where we are on Hermitage Road in 2009. And here we are now. Here we are now.

Hermitage Road, which fully closes to traffic for Hermitage Road Day- and Windmill Hill, soon to thrill Hitchin Soapbox Derby racers.

Is there a story behind the name? Why Farley’s Emporium?

Farley’s- yeah, it’s Farley’s Hair Emporium. Let’s work backwards from the end. Emporium is just a great word. And when we first started it we did haircuts, and I sold custom bicycle’s that I built as well, and we sold sunglasses, belts, fashion accessories and stuff like that. Because we just… just decided to start a shop selling and doing the things that we really dug. Which is also why it was vegan at the time as well. Well, it still is vegan. But we set it up following the same… we just thought there’s no point having a vegan lifestyle and then a business that doesn’t reflect that. So, called it an Emporium because we did lot’s of different things.

Originally it was called Farley’s Green Salon, but we realised that sounded a little bit… naff. So we changed it to Hair Emporium. And it’s Farley’s because my name is Felix, and my wife’s name is Charlie. I do the hair cutting side of it, she does the paperwork side of it. So it’s Felix and Charlie’s, so it’s Farley’s. Sounds better than Chelix.

I think you might have made the right call there…

I think so. It’s got a better ring to it. And then we came up with that one pretty quickly. When you start a new project, whatever it is- whether it’s a business or a band- you think it’s going to be quite difficult, the name has to be right. The name has to come first, I always think. And I didn’t think it would be very easy but we came up with that very quickly. And it stuck!

The um… the thing we didn’t think about was that people then, because it’s Farley’s, they’ll either think my first name is Farley or mine and my wife’s surname is Farley, so it’s Felix and Charlie Farley.

For the longest time I did think you were a double-F, Felix Farley.

Which is… sometimes people will say to Charlie “is that your last name?” and she’ll say [in a sing-song voice] “Oh yeah, I’m called Charlie-Farley”. So we’re Camfield-Walkers, but Farley’s is Felix and Charlie.

just soldier on, just carry on, because I think “I’m obviously supposed to be driving in this direction, so I’ll keep going, until I recognise where I am”. It always works out.

So you mentioned the Emporium is vegan, you were selling belts and sunglasses and all that sort of thing… It still is quite a quirky space, decorated with all manner of hats and paraphernalia, you offer non-binary and experimental haircuts etc.- how important to you is it to be this quirky kind of reflection as a business?

I’ve never really had to think about it. I’ve always been very, very single-minded and stubborn- I suppose is the least flattering and most accurate… When I decide to do something, I don’t particularly consider the practical applications of it I just “I want to do this, and I want it to be like this”. Same with bands, same with DJ-ing, same with festivals… I decide to do a thing, and if I’m passionate about it I’ll do it. And if people like it that’s great. But if they don’t, I don’t care, because at least I did.

That’s a really good way of looking at it!

And that’s only become more acute since I got sick and didn’t think I was going to make it. That’s galvanized that even further. Now I will just only do things that are fun. If it stops being fun, I won’t do it. Because life’s too short… for compromise.

Since you had the first shop, and moved to over to here, has town changed? If so, how has it changed?

Since I started the business? Um… since I started the business, I think the town has changed in such a way that it’s become younger. The demographic has changed. A lot of the people that I remember from here growing up and so on have moved away, and there’s been a huge influx of young single people and young couples moving here from London or from Cambridge, setting up homes here and starting families here. That’s changed the demographic quite considerably. But that’s good! It’s good to have new young blood in a place. And the business benefits quite a lot from this new demographic, which is another… goes back to me setting up the business and just doing it very naturally, just doing it how I wanted it. Luckily, almost coincidentally, I’ve set up something which appeals to the demographic that is now here. But that wasn’t a deliberate act, it’s just a happy coincidence!

If I were to ask you to look into the future, and with the hat on of having seen how it has changed, how do you see town changing in, say, the next five/ ten years?

A lot of the people- a lot of the couples that have moved here, moved here because there was a strong nightlife, and culturally- it’s a culturally rich town, there’s an awful lot of cool stuff going on. Because we’re close proximity to London and to Cambridge, we get quite a lot of couples coming in where one of them works in Cambridge, one of them works in London, so they look at what’s in between. And we benefit from being slap-bang.

But, a lot of these couples that moved here to take advantage of the cultural nightlife and so on are now having families. Which… has dented the nightlife in Hitchin a little, I think. I feel. But! It means there are an awful lot of families, new young families around, so in the next ten or fifteen years we’re going to find, it’s going to become an even younger town, because the young people who’ve moved here are having kids. So the average age is going to go down again by quite a bit. Which is lovely!

It’s a beautiful thing, lots of new young families moving here, setting up, bringing new kids into the world. It’s no bad thing. And when the kids get old enough that they can have babysitters and stuff then the parents’ll start going out, using the pubs and the clubs again.

On this year's Hermitage Road Day: finishing at half past four [...] it feels a bit sudden and people are still in the mood. So we’re going to extend it to half six. Keep it rolling.

Talking about nightlife, and how culturally rich the place is- you’ve already mentioned a little bit about DJ-ing, bands and stuff, and before we sat down you were talking about the Soapbox Derby- I just wondered, can you give a slight outline on the various things you’re running in the community, what’s coming up?

So, working out from the shop and it’s immediate influence… One of the things I wanted the shop to be when I first set it up was a hub, an information hub for all things going on in the town. And that was always quite important to me that it had that. So there’s always been posters, there’s always been flyers for what’s going on in town. I promote local events on social media and so-on. And from that, I’ve been asked now and then to get involved in local things going on. So working from the shop outwards…

We’ve got Hermitage Road Day, which was born out of… when I was telling people that I had a shop and it was in Hermitage Road, a lot of people didn’t even know where Hermitage Road was because this whole street was very depressed at the time, and there weren’t many shops on the street. So an idea was hatched to have a one-day street party here that would attract people from further away, just put this street back on the map again. People come here for a street party and they’re going to see all the things that this street has to offer, pushing it back into the local consciousness. Because it had drifted out. And that was eight or nine years ago?

It’s grown from an afternoon on the pavements to an entire day where we shut the whole road off- because it’s the widest street in Hitchin, so if we shut it off at the top and bottom for six or seven hours and then we can just have a bloody great big party all day long. And it’s gone from just letting people in Hitchin know that it’s here to people travelling in from quite a long way away. It’s almost become like a one-day festival of itself.

There’s live music now, and there’s plenty of food and drink, there’s a classic car show, there’s DJ-ing… there’s an awful lot going on during the day. And we’ve extended the hours, this year it’s going to be two hours longer than previously. Because it’s kind of outgrown the time parameters that it's got- it was finishing at half past four, and it feels a bit sudden and people are still in the mood. So we’re going to extend it to half six. Keep it rolling.

So there’s that. Then there’s the Walsworth Festival, which is in May of every year. That’s a one-day, Sunday festival on Walsworth Common. That pulls in about five thousand people between half nine and half four. And again, I’ve turned that from a little village fete to a one day music, food, and local… lots of local charities, lots of local youth groups, lots of local… there’s the local wrestling club, local car club (which we’ll come back to), there’s local Viking re-enactment people, ballet clubs, martial arts clubs…

Local businesses bringing their food trucks, and the local festival Todd in the Hole have a stage there where they showcase new music, and Anglia Country Inns who have The Hermitage on Hermitage Road, amongst many others, they supply the bar for the day. It’s a wonderful day, all day long. We’ve go an arena in the middle of it that we set up and we’ve got all sorts of acts coming in and showing people what they can do, attracting new customers to their social clubs or whatever it is they run.

Viking re-enactment at the 2024 Walsworth Festival

And then… what else have we got? We’ve got the car club, which I believe is nine years old this year… That set up when I got back into running classic cars, when my daughter was old enough that I knew what spare time I’d have (and spare money!). I bought an old car, and then found that I couldn’t find any local clubs that I wanted to be a member of. So I started my own! And run it in a very similar way to how I run the business, in that it’s all inclusive, in no way judgemental. So we’ve got people coming from all over- all colours, shapes, and sizes, preferences, in whatever they’re driving, and there’ll be no judgement on them or their cars, and everyone is welcome.

I started that just as it became really important for that, when lots of new people got into the scene and younger people got into the classic car scene. They found that lots of clubs they wanted to get involved in weren’t particularly welcoming, and then they saw my place and, er… the year after we started, we came second in a UK-wide competition to find the UK’s best classic car club. It was highlighted by them and by quite a lot of other big classic car organisations that we were the zeitgeist of this new wave of classic car owners. That might be seventeen. Might be of colour. Might be gay. Might be non-binary. And it was a whole new world to a lot of the old school of classic car runners.

Not in a homophobic way, not in a detrimental way to them at all, just not- just a new world. So we were applauded greatly for doing that. But it was another case of just doing it how I wanted to, and accidentally getting it right. So the car club has gone from strength to strength from that point. We’ve got about four and a half thousand members now, we’ve got people coming from quite a long way away for that. We meet on the last Monday of every month around Hitchin, it’s called H-Town Classic & Dub Club.

Some H-Town Classic & Dub Club cars at the 2024 Walsworth Festival.

What have we got after that? I DJ around town, and in London, Margate, lots of different places. I just do it because it’s fun. I like playing people records, making them dance.

I play drums in a band- The Saboteurs. And I’m just in the process of putting a new band together, a new project, we’ll see what happens there. Dunno yet, dunno what it’s going to sound like, but I’ve pulled in some local talent- or some talent that has become local. Doing that.

I’ve just found out one of the members of Friendly Fires lives in Little Wymondley, so I’m going to have a chat with him! That’s quite exciting.

What else? Oh, and now we have Hitchin Soapbox Derby- which a small number of us tried to put together a few years ago. We got to the final stages of planning, and then lockdown happened so we had to shelve the whole thing. And it’s not until this year we finally feel like we’ve got everything together enough, and organised enough, to go back to it and start thinking about it. So that is in the process. That is going to be on 21st September this year, on Windmill Hill. Which sounds terrifying but, y’know, we’ve got it. We’ve got this, we’ve got your back. We’ve got chicanes and we’ve got plenty of haybales.

Applications are now open for the inaugural Hitchin Soapbox Derby.

So that’s all very exciting. I’m trying to work out how I’m going to fit that in. I think that’s about it!

I’ll pick up on a couple of bits in a minute- as a slight gear change, where you mentioned lockdown put back plans for the Derby… slightly alarmingly, it’s five years since the first lockdown happened. What impact did that have on you in terms of local business, community efforts, and personally? How was it as a time?

Lockdown? It was wonderful. It was really- it’s still difficult to say that, because some people are like “Really though? 250,000 dead?”. But… if you remember the first lockdown, I believe it was April and we had a heatwave which seemed to last for the entire period of the first lockdown. And being a local business owner, I qualified for the business relief. And my landlord, the Hitchin Property Trust- who were absolutely outstanding from start to finish- supported all of their businesses, reduced our rent, set up lots of business advisors that we could get in touch with if we had any questions, if we needed any help, and generally looked after everyone as much as they could afford to. And probably more than they could afford to.

The Government gave us a grant in order to stay closed, because I was one of the businesses that couldn’t open under any circumstances. So, I spent that whole… something like three months? Just going for long walks every day and sitting round in the garden. And I absolutely loved it.

Y’know, I’d been building a business up for years and I had, at the time, a ten year old daughter- so it gave me a period of time to do nothing but spend time with my family. And that was wonderful, that was truly wonderful. There are some great memories- and some awful memories, in that time. It’s quite weird, looking back at it now, looking at footage of it all. It seems like another place. Y’know? It’s quite surreal. But yeah, I loved it.

Winter one, not so much. But summer one… was great fun.

Coming out of it, has it… Obviously it’s affected getting the pieces back together for the Derby and that sort of thing, has having such a weird set of breaks affected your outlook in planning anything? In the community? Or have you come back to it with the normal zeal you always have?

I’ve come back to it with the same mentality as I went in- in that… “just get on with, and if people want to come along, they’ll come along”. Um… it changed the way the business works, for quite a long time. The Christmas we’ve just had, Christmas 2024, was I think the first one that felt some way towards what the Christmas period and Christmas workload was like before the workload.

People don’t have office Christmas parties any more, and there’s not as much socialing over the Christmas period. It used to be, for the first half of November it’d go very quiet, and then from the middle of November to Christmas Eve it’s insanely busy. Twelve to fourteen hour days, six days a week. Trying to keep up with it all. And then January was, again, doldrums.

But now… there’s a little hump in busy-ness, but it’s pretty much plain sailing all the way through. So we don’t have that mad rush, which is better for… my back. Better for my relationship with my family. And it’s actually preferable. But this year, this Christmas just gone was busier than it has been since lockdown lifted.

So it feels like there’s a pretty long hangover from it, but it is starting to return to normal. Rather than the new normal, we’re getting the old normal!

Now I will just only do things that are fun. If it stops being fun, I won’t do it. Because life’s too short… for compromise.

I think I might know what the answer to this is going to be- when you’re not doing your DJing, doing your band stuff, in the shop, setting up all the community bits and pieces- what do you do to enjoy yourself and unwind?

Polish my car. I don’t do yoga, or anything like that. My yoga is to find a decent day and then get my enormous box of car cleaning equipment out and spend a good six hours concentrating on tiny little details on the car. Cleaning the bits that even, that no one’s going to see. And concentrating on that, focusing in on the car like that, allows you to switch the front part of your brain off which allows the back part to kick in. And without even consciously doing it I’ll get to the end of that six hours or whatever, for example, and realise that I’ve worked out how to do a bunch of stuff that I didn’t even know was bugging me. And that’s great, that’s really good therapy. Really good therapy.

I do that. I spend time with the family. I sit in the garden. I’ve finally, for the first time in my adult life- my entire adult life, I’ve wanted to have a veranda that I can sit on. We now have a veranda attached to the garden office that we’ve built, so this summer I shall mostly be doing some sitting on the veranda. That’s going to be a wonderful thing.

Yeah. Family stuff. Cleaning the car. Pottering around. Catching up. That’s it.

If I do find any time where there’s not much going on, I tend to plan new things. So… try not to relax too much.

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You can keep up with what is happening next at Farley's here.