Meet the hands

Joe Orlowski

Joe started cutting hair on his brother and never stopped. Twenty years on, after sharpening his craft in London and styling for Australian Fashion Week, he built Stanley & Co in Redfern and named it for his grandfather, the barber who started it all.

His thing is structure: where most cutters just take off length, Joe reads the grain and the weight and works with how your hair actually grows. A lead educator for Mr. Smith, he is at home with thick and coarse textures and will always give you one honest observation over three polite ones.

Gabriella Di Mascia

Gabriella Di Mascia brings European craft to the chair. She started hairdressing at fifteen in Molise, the Italian region she grew up in, then followed the work to Rimini and on to Milan, training with names like Aldo Coppola, GH Hair and Jean Louis David and building an eye for detail that only that kind of apprenticeship gives you.

Her work has never stayed in the salon. She has been backstage at Milan Fashion Week, coloured and styled for Italian Vogue, and worked with names like FEDEZ, Achille Lauro, J-AX and The Kolors. That pace teaches you to adapt, read a face quickly and deliver under pressure.

At Stanley & Co she works across every hair type, pairing advanced colour and colour correction with makeup when the occasion calls for it. The throughline is the same as the rest of the team: listen first, then tailor the result to the person in the chair, not the trend of the week.

Gidget Newman

Gidget (they/them) is the stylist for when you are done playing it safe. They came to hair by accident and then by obsession, falling for the late-night creativity, the mess and the realness of backstage work. Hair, makeup and a bit of creative chaos, art meeting adrenaline.

The vibe is zero pretence: slick glossy colour, strong shapes and a little subversion, editorial but wearable. Want your colour contoured to flatter your skin, or the basics twisted into something worth a double-take? Done. Gidget loves the problem-solving side of hair and will never tell you there is only one way to do it.

The experience is built on listening. You sit down, you talk, and Gidget reads not just what you ask for but the impulse behind it, whether you want to chat the whole time or sit in easy silence. You leave with something you actually want to claim as yours.