WHERE WE CAME FROM
We spent 12 years building a barbershop and grooming product line that made their way around the world, but when it all started, our goal was to build a place that felt like coming over to your friend’s nerd cave for a haircut. We’re getting back to our roots while we tousle yours.
This story may as well be called There and Back Again.
MEET THE UNDERHILLS
NATALIE ANDERSON
THE BLADEMAIDEN
SPECIALTIES: While she can knock out fades all day like any barber, Natalie has a thing for letting the hair grow long enough to DO something, and then listening to what IT tells her it wants to do. She revels in finding ways to make cowlicks and troublesome hair parts the best feature of a haircut instead of something clients spend their lives fighting. Curls, longer men’s styles, and everything from classic to modern, she loves to let the hair be its best self.
CAREER: Natalie went to école de coiffure in Montreal in 2008, apprenticing under a Contessa Award Hairstylist of the year, as well as a barber that had been cutting for 80 years. Upon returning home to Chicagoland, she honed her beardcraft in Wicker Park during the hipster heyday before opening Beardsgaard with her barber husband in 2014. Natalie and Beardsgaard were featured in the 2017 book A Gentleman's Guide to Grooming, she was part of the inaugural class of Reuzel Scumbassador educators, was the barber at the 2019 National Beard & Moustache Championships, and currently crafts many of the men’s haircuts in Paramount and Stolp Island Theater productions like South Pacific and Million Dollar Quartet.
ABOUT: Hailing from Chicago before bopping about North America in the most random smattering of professions imaginable (serving, barbering, IT marketing, art school, military and so much more), Natalie is one half of the married pair of of founders of Beardsgaard Barbers, River Peak Apothecary, and now Underhill. The original barber of the pair, she is also the main photographer, graphic designer and copywriter for the business endeavors of the Andersons, and making most of the things you see on our corners of the internet.
FAVORITE THINGS: All of the hot caffeinated liquids, writing, photography, cooking, baking, knitting really nice/creepy things, DIY, avoiding unexpected social interaction, animals of all sorts, reading, fantasy (and sci-fi too), becoming a walking IMDB, obsessive organization and categorization, rainbow-color-coded Excel spreadsheets, being an elf, grammar.
FANDOMS: Tolkien for LIFE, The Martinverse, The Wheel of Time, Gaiman, Sondheim (knows every word and beat of Into the Woods from the Broadway days), Palahniuk, Tom Waits, Wheel of Time, Battlestar, Ga....la....vaaaaaaant! Doctor Who, Supernatural, Sherlock (hell, SuperWhoLock!) The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, and just about anything on the weirder end of the scale.
TYLER ANDERSON
THE BEARDSMITH
SPECIALTIES: Tyler is a methodical yet jovial beard, working steadily about your head while keeping the good barbershop conversation flowing. Before you know it, you're looking fantastic and getting on with your day. While he can handle absolutely any head that hits his chair, he takes particular glee in flat tops, all of the face stuff, and hairstyles that make you look like you were ripped out of a different era.
CAREER: While most would assume this married pair of barbers met on the job, and they would be right, it was actually a restaurant job - Tyler wasn’t a barber yet, and Natalie was getting some cross-country paperwork sorted. But in 2012 Natalie’s career success had Tyler looking towards a new side of the service industry, and he decided to go to barber school. Two years later, they opened Beardsgaard together. Since then, Tyler and the shop were featured in the 2017 book A Gentleman's Guide to Grooming, and he was a judge at the 2019 National Beard & Moustache Championships.
ABOUT: Born in South Dakota and raised in Mt. Prospect, Tyler is one half of the married pair of of founders of Beardsgaard Barbers, River Peak Apothecary, and now Underhill, but has long been a jack of all physical trades - baker, bartender, and now barber. As long as he gets to work with his hands and talk to people all day, he is a happy camper. In the tiny bit of free time he has, he has become a self-taught home improvement jack of all trades that have left his wife a project widow, and he’s fully addicted dragging home furniture/tools from Facebook Marketplace like lost puppies.
FAVORITE THINGS: Movies, sci-fi, horror, romantic shit (WHAT), Vikings, classic rock, tea, tools, baked goods, comic books, cuddly animals, lunch, thunderstorms, organization, spicy food, bacon, trees, historical trivia, grilling, geek show marathons, delicious beers.
FANDOMS: Star Wars, Battlestar, Firefly, Alien, Predator, Dune, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Marvel, DC, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Supernatural, Zelda, Tolkien, and pretty much the whole of the sci-fi-verse.