Noble Wolf Barbers’ female owner prefers to cut it short
Roxy Collins didn’t grow up thinking she would become a barber. Even while in cosmetology school, she thought she would cut women’s hair. But the stylist never “got into” doing hair color, and she wasn’t a fan of spending hours on one client.
“Five hours was the longest I had spent on someone’s hair,” she said. “I run out of stuff to talk about in 45 minutes. That’s all I have in me.”
Collins, 35, opened a barbershop, Noble Wolf Barbers, in the Great American Plaza on West Sahara Avenue in late September.
The shop has a reception desk and waiting area, six chairs, a shampoo station and an alcove where Collins takes pictures of her clients. Some of her client photos adorn the walls; others she posts on her Instagram, @noblewolfbarbers.
“This is totally me. My apartment looks the exact same,” Collins said. “I love Southwestern decor. I love the desert. I love Vegas and being from this part of the country.”
Along with leather seats and cowhide rugs, images of wolves adorn the walls and serve as her mascot.
“(Wolves are) strong, intelligent. They’re family oriented. They’re beautiful,” Collins said. “I like to think that’s how my clients feel and that’s how I feel coming into work every day.”
The Jane-of-all-trades has been a go-go dancer, an actress, a retail worker and was a cheerleader for the city’s short-lived XFL team, the Las Vegas Outlaws. Her first encounter with the world of hairstyling was as receptionist at Floyd’s 99 Barbershop in Los Angeles.
“That was my initial inspiration. It was a really rock ’n’ roll place,” she said. The shop owners didn’t cut hair , so “I was like, maybe I’ll just own a barbershop,” Collins said.
She returned to Las Vegas at the end of 2007; by 2008 she was enrolled in cosmetology school. Collins’s first hairstyling jobs were at Hypnotic Salon and Supercuts, where she “butchered a lot of hair,” she said.
“But I realized I love doing men’s hair there,” Collins said. “I got pretty decent there because I was able to mess up so many heads.” Cosmetology license already in hand, she went to Masterpiece Barber School to get her barbering license.
She later worked at Fino for Men, where she met fellow barber Cat Ferrara.
“I learned so much from her,” Ferrara said. “She was always so professional with her clients. Like, she never cussed in front of them and was always very appropriate and professional with her conversation. In barbershops you don’t see that a lot.”
As long as the two worked together, Ferrara said, Collins talked about owning a shop.
“I didn’t doubt her for one second,” she said. “You could just tell it came naturally for her to run her own business.”
When she was ready to open her own business, Collins sought advice from Masterpiece Barber School’s owner, Marcus Allen.
“I told her the ins and outs about it, about the procedure and (looking for a) location,” Allen said.
He is confident about the outlook of hair industry, as well as Collins’s drive and determination.
“We have the NFL, the soccer team coming, basketball, (and) a lot of people are moving back to Vegas,” Allen said. “It’s most definitely no better place or better time to actually do that.”
Collins has rented out two of the five chairs left in her shop to other stylists (she works out of one). She said she will let word-of-mouth take care of filling the other chairs.
Contact Madelyn Reese at mreese@viewnews.com or 702-383-0497. Follow @MadelynGReese on Twitter.
Noble Wolf Barbers
Where: 8320 W. Sahara Ave., No. 170
Hours: 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesdays-Wednesdays; 9:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays
Phone: 702-776-7558
Website: noblewolfbarbers.com
Social media: instagram.com/noblewolfbarbers
