Concrete Studio opened in 2018 in an unfinished ground-floor unit on Mateo Street. We poured a floor, hung four mirrors, and left everything else exactly as we found it. What is spent on the room is spent on colour and on time in the chair instead.
Facts
Opened
2018
Chairs
Four
Stylists
Four
Retail wall
None
Record
The unit was a storage bay with no plumbing and a roll-up door that did not close. Mirela took it because the ceiling was fifteen feet high and the rent was survivable, and because a room with nothing in it makes it obvious whether the haircut is any good.
The build took four months and most of it was drainage. Everything you can see was already there: the board-marked walls, the column in the middle of the floor that nobody can move, the steel window frames that leak heat in January. The four chairs are secondhand, the mirrors are plate glass cut to size, and there is one radio.
The studio has stayed at four chairs since. Adding a fifth would mean shorter appointments, a receptionist, and a retail wall — three things we opened specifically to avoid. Instead the book runs long: colour appointments get the time they need, and consultations happen before the day of the service rather than in the first ten minutes of it.
How the studio works
Four rules that hold whether you are in for a thirty-minute shave or a full day of correction. They are on the wall by the door, in the same typeface.
01
Price before scissors
You get the number in writing at consultation, before anything is mixed or cut. It does not move afterwards. There is no toner surcharge, no blow-dry line item, and no product on the bill you did not ask for.
02
Cut dry, always
Wet hair lies about where it falls. We cut dry first so the shape is judged in the state you will actually wear it, then check it wet, then check it dry again. If it only works on the day, it is not finished.
03
The hair outranks the appointment
If a lift will wreck the hair, we stage it across two or three visits, and we would rather lose the booking than the mid-lengths. Bond protector is in the bowl on every lightening service and is not an upsell.
04
Say the difficult thing early
That the photo will not work on your texture. That your grow-out plan needs eight months. That the answer is a haircut, not a treatment. It is a worse consultation and a much better year.
The room
Four chairs on a poured floor, a colour bar along the back wall, and two basins behind a steel screen. The mirrors are lit at daylight temperature, so the tone you approve in the chair is the tone you see on Mateo Street.
It is loud when it is busy and very quiet on Sundays. There is coffee, there is no reception desk, and nobody will offer you a magazine. Bring headphones if you would rather not talk — every stylist here would rather you said so than sat through it.
Finding the door
Ground floor of the grey block between 12th Street and Palmetto, opposite the loading dock. The door is unmarked steel. That is the one.
Parking
Metered on Mateo until 6pm, free after. The surface lot at 1230 Mateo is eight dollars flat and we will validate nothing, because we cannot.
Transit
Ten minutes on foot from the A Line at Little Tokyo / Arts District.
Four chairs 1224 Mateo Street Open Tuesday to Sunday Consultations are free Prices quoted before we start No product upsell Arts District, Los Angeles Four chairs 1224 Mateo Street Open Tuesday to Sunday Consultations are free Prices quoted before we start No product upsell Arts District, Los Angeles
Four chairs. 1224 Mateo Street. Open Tuesday to Sunday. Consultations are free. Prices quoted before we start. No product upsell. Arts District, Los Angeles.
Who is on the floor
Four stylists, four defined disciplines, one price list. Nobody here is on commission, so nobody has a reason to sell you a service you did not come in for.
Opened the studio in 2018
01 / Chair 01
Mirela Vos
Founder — Cutting / she/her
Mirela spent eleven years in West Hollywood salons doing what she was told before she took the lease on a unit with no plumbing and put four chairs in it. The rule she opened with is the one she still enforces: cut dry, cut to the head, and stop when it is finished rather than when the hour is up.
She is the person to see if you want a hard line — a blunt bob, a heavy fringe, a shape that reads from across a room. She is also the person who will tell you your hair will not hold it, which is why people keep coming back.
Known for
Blunt cutting
Fringes
Dry cutting
Trained
Vidal Sassoon Advanced Creative · eleven years on the floor in West Hollywood
At the studio since 2019
02 / Colour bar
Ify Okoye
Colour Director / she/her
Ify came out of a technical colour lab rather than a salon floor, and it shows in how she works: every formula written down, every developer volume logged, every lift tested on a strand before it goes near your head. She keeps a card on file for each guest and can tell you what was on your hair three years ago.
Most of her week is correction work sent over by other studios — grown-out balayage, banded blondes, black box dye that has to come out in stages. She will give you the number of appointments straight, and she does not lift beyond what the hair can carry to make a first visit look better.
Rem trained in a two-chair barbershop in Boyle Heights where the queue on a Saturday went out the door, and he has kept the pace and the standards. Skin fades, flat tops, hard partings and freehand shaved detail — all cut without a guard on the first pass.
He works fast and finishes properly: hot towel, neck shaved with a foil, and a straight answer about how often you will need to come back to keep it. Most of his guests are on a three or four week cycle and book the next one before they leave.
Known for
Skin fades
Shaved detail
Beard work
Trained
Licensed barber, California · trained in Boyle Heights
At the studio since 2022
04 / Chair 04
Jo Baik
Cutter / they/them
Jo cuts curl dry and in its natural state, section by section, and refuses to touch it wet — which means a first appointment with them runs long and every one after it runs short. They came to the studio from a specialist curl salon in Highland Park and brought half its waiting list with them.
They also do the studio's shorter androgynous work: crops, mullets, shags and the awkward eight-week stage of growing something out. Sunday is their day, which is when the studio is quietest and the appointments are longest.
Known for
Curl cutting
Crops and shags
Grow-out plans
Trained
Curl specialist certification · Highland Park
Come and sit in the chair first.
Consultations are free, take twenty minutes, and carry no obligation to book anything. Bring photographs, bring the box dye, bring the haircut somebody else gave you.
