-

MODERN met Victor Fontanez, @vicblends, the night he was named “Rookie of the Year” at the 2019 International Barber Grammy’s. Age 20, Fontanez has been barbering (professionally) for just one year and shares his clean and well executed shapes with more than 250K followers.

Victor Fontanez

@vicblends

Dibbs Hair Studio, Fayetteville, North Carolina

Specialty: Men’s fades, transformation videos and motivational speaking

Top-performing post: I have tons of posts that have gone viral, but there’s one specifically that I remember being circulated over the whole web with millions of views. I shaved a unibrow on a classmate in barber school. This post went viral because of the exaggeration and crazy look of the unibrow —it’s always satisfying to see a pet peeve being fixed.

Favorite apps: iMovie, Layout and PicsArt. iMovie is the app I use to put together my hair cut transformation videos. Layout allows me to create collages without any borders or watermarks. PicsArt is what I use to remove acne on my clients when cleaning my pictures. These are all very basic and user-friendly apps.

I follow: @staygold31, @los_cut_it, @robtheoriginal, @patty_cuts, @iamtyrikjackson

 -
Pro tip: The most important and most overlooked is your background. The whole point of our posts is to catch the attention of our audience, so when posting a picture of a men’s haircut, a dark or messy background can blend in with your clients head/hair and make it hard for that post to stick out on the explore page. You need some sort of contrast between your client and the background, I highly recommend purchasing a white backdrop for photos.

Hidden talent: My hidden talent is probably my attention to detail. I’m able to catch a lot of things most barbers commonly overlook.

Fun fact: Skateboarding. When I was young, I used to want to be a professional skateboarder.

My audience follows me because: I feel like my audience loves me not only for my work but my personality, age, and that my motives are all positive, new to the industry, and genuine. I have a lot of true passion for what I do, and it shows in everything I post or create.

How social media changed my life: Social media has not only changed my life from a business and financial standpoint, but more personally and spiritually than anything. My number-one motive has been using my platform for the right reasons, to inspire, motivate and be an example to not only the younger generation, but for anybody on this earth looking for a positive role model. Social media allowed me to not only accomplish these things locally in my community, but I am now able to touch the lives of individuals on the other of the world.

My first @modernsalon feature: The first time I was featured on MODERN SALON was after the CT Barber Expo. It was a surreal moment to finally make my way to being featured. Thank you so much again!

Click here to the see the full list of this year's MODERN SALON 100. 

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, Click here.