Ted Gibson and Jason Backe
The married hairstylists give us the inside scoop on sharing a home and a business.
By Lindzi Scharf
Photography by Kate Jones
Celebrity hairstylists Ted Gibson and Jason Backe found themselves when they found hair. Shortly after, they found each other. Twenty-seven years later, the Larchmont Village–based couple has a thriving business that includes the STARRING by Ted Gibson salon; celebrity clientele like Priyanka Chopra, Sandra Oh, and Lupita Nyong’o; and a haircare line featuring Gibson’s Shooting Star Texture Meringue.
But there was a time when Gibson didn’t think he wanted to work with celebrities.
“I was a fashion hairdresser,” he says, perched on his couch, sipping coffee. Gibson explains he used to do shows in New York, London, and Milan six times a year from couture to ready-to-wear. “If you were a fashion hairdresser, you lived in New York City. We created the trend, just like in ‘Devil Wears Prada’ where they’re talking about cerulean.”
However, once celebrities replaced models on the covers of magazines, Gibson quickly adapted and found himself working with Angelina Jolie. “The fashion business was like, ‘That’s not going to last very long,” Gibson says of celebrity covers. He laughs. “Twenty years later and it’s still happening.”
After two decades in New York, a 3,500-square-foot Flatiron District salon, and additional locations in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Washington, D.C., the couple started asking themselves what the next trend might be. In 2018, they packed up everything they owned and moved to Los Angeles with their now–eleven-year-old Norwich terrier, Spencer.
“We moved to California because of influencers,” Gibson explains. “We knew that this was the place where the influencer could have way more clout than an actress that makes $10 million a movie. These people have really great opportunities and that’s going to continue. So [I started asking myself] ‘What does that look like in my career? What does that look like for our lifestyle? What does it look like for everything?’”
Shortly after, Gibson and Backe opened a state-of-the-art salon called STARRING by Ted Gibson on La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles, where Gibson’s rate is $2,400 per cut and Backe’s is $450 for every thirty minutes.
Business was good. Then came 2020.
TURBULENT TIMES
“When the pandemic first hit, every single revenue source [dried up],” Backe says. “We had a perfectly oiled machine. We would fly to New York, we would do a day’s worth of clients, and that would pay our rent for the salon in California. And then with the freelance stuff that Ted was doing for red carpets, special events, magazines, celebrity, whatever — that would pay for our rent on this apartment and our fun stuff. And then we would rent a house out in Palm Springs [that we own] and that would pay for the house in Palm Springs — for the pool, the landscaping, the maintenance. So when the lockdown happened, everything stopped all at the same time and we had $1,200. We’re really good at — as long as the machine is going — living like ballers. But we’re not great savers.”
“You can’t take it with you,” Gibson adds.
They recalibrated their game plan. “We had a hundred thousand dollars on credit cards from opening the salon and starting Shooting Star Texture Meringue,” Backe says. “We moved out to Palm Springs because we couldn’t rent the house. We stayed there for three months. We brainstormed and we strategized. We decided the priority was the house. So whatever we had to do to make sure that that was maintained, because we knew that eventually that would be another revenue stream.”
Shortly after, they held a Zoom meeting with fifty other influential hairdressers throughout the country to compare notes and create a unified message.
“We were really, really disappointed in the professional beauty industry with their lack of response to COVID-19 shutting down all of our businesses,” Backe says. “It was the hairdresser that built [and lent credibility to various] multimillion-dollar, billion-dollar [beauty] corporations and they did nothing [to help]. We could only compare it to the food and beverage industry that from day one, their messaging was ‘Buy gift cards.’ Day two, they were like, ‘Curbside delivery.’ Day three, they’re partnering with DoorDash. … It was really frustrating for us that there wasn’t a unified voice in the beauty industry to send out a message.”
Backe says the group worked together to brainstorm how they could “send a positive message to the whole industry to let hairdressers know they’re going to get through it. They’re going to be able to bounce back.”
As a result, Backe and Gibson launched Worth Up, a nonprofit that aids beauty businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs through business education and mentorship opportunities. They’re also creating a webinar video library featuring interviews with top entrepreneurs and leaders. “It’s focusing on beauty, but this will be valuable information for anyone who wants to open their own business,” Backe says. “We’re going to pair people up to get coaching with some of these people and then ultimately give cash grants as startup capital. We’re calling it ‘dream capital’ for entrepreneurs to start their own business.”
BOUNCING BACK
Eventually, as vaccination rates increased across the country, Gibson and Backe were able to safely reopen their salon while Gibson got back to doing what he does best — celebrity tresses. Despite his all-star track record, Gibson has a modest philosophy. “I’m not the best hairdresser; I’m not the worst hairdresser,” he says. “But what I believe is that I can help [individuals going through major life changes or who are new to fame]. It can be uncomfortable — going from that place of nobody knowing who you are and then instantaneously you’re being photographed and you’re in every single rag all over the world. You’re not prepared for it. It’s just like having a baby, you know? You don’t have a manual that tells you that you should do this and you should do that.”
Gibson thrives in that environment, but says his approach isn’t limited to celebrities, actors, or influencers. “My job as a hairdresser is to find something beautiful in a woman that maybe she didn’t know was in herself and make that a part of who she is,” he says.
Backe adds, “Ted always says, ‘A woman never talks about having a bad skin day or a bad clothing day. She has a bad hair day.’ We know that hair changes everything. It can be her armor when she’s stepping out into the world.”
FINDING HAIR (& EACH OTHER)
Growing up in Texas, Gibson initially resisted his instinct to do hair. “As a kid, I had an affinity for it, but my dad would not allow it,” Gibson explains. “Being in the army and the service, he didn’t want his only son to do hair. I [was a] high school athlete — football, baseball, track, all of that kind of stuff.”
A friend of his had become a hairdresser. “He drove a great car and had a fantastic apartment and had great clothes. ... And the next thing I know I was in [hair] school. I remember how I felt when I picked up hair shears and a comb. I tingled from the top of my head to my toes. Knowing that that was where I was supposed to be was a pivotal moment.”
Meanwhile, Backe says, “I didn’t go to beauty school until I was twenty-four, which at the time felt really old. In hindsight, it doesn’t seem that old. But I think I was one of the older people in my class.”
Gibson was teaching at cosmetology school in Minneapolis when he met Backe. “I would see him walking around the school,” Gibson remembers. “He had a beard that was dyed fire engine red. His eyebrows were fire engine red. His hair — he had a little bit of hair then that was red as well. He wore platform shoes and big jeans.”
“I was as club kid as you could be living in Minneapolis,” Backe says with a laugh. “Me and my friends dressed up in costumes and went to clubs — that whole thing.”
“I was like, ‘Who is this weirdo?’” Gibson recalls.
Backe was a student.
“He walked out of my class twice because I pissed him off,” Gibson says. “And I can remember it like it was yesterday where he got up walked out and I’m laughing and all of the students — probably about twenty-five students in the class — were like ‘Ooooh,’ and I’m laughing because I thought it was so funny.”
Backe says he challenged Gibson because he thought Gibson was being hypocritical. “He was always saying and still says to this day, ‘It’s not about the color of the skin, it’s about the texture of your hair. It’s curly, it’s straight, it’s very curly — whatever,’” explains Backe. “He’d said, ‘Everyone needs to bring in a Black model.’ I was like, ‘Well, if it’s not about the color of the skin and it’s about the texture of the hair, why does the model have to be Black?’ And that was the discussion and I was like, ‘Fuck this.’ And I got up and left.”
Gibson says: “He said, ‘Why does it matter?’ I said, ‘Because it matters. Make sure that you bring in a Black model.’”
“In hindsight, it was really because he knew that most of those people would never work with a Black person,” Backe says. “And that white people have a hangup about Black hair. So he was pushing people to do something that might be uncomfortable for them — to approach someone and find a model.”
Their paths kept crossing outside of school. They eventually hung out and watched Gibson’s favorite movie, the 1975 drama “Mahogany” starring Diana Ross. “He’d never seen it before,” Gibson says. “The next morning, we went to breakfast and he told me that I was his boyfriend and I said, ‘No way.’ I’d just found a new job. ‘You’re not my boyfriend. I don’t want a boyfriend. You can tell your friends whatever you want to.’”
Backe clarifies: “I said, ‘You can introduce me to your friends however you want to. But I’m introducing you to my friends as my boyfriend.’”
Shortly after, they each went on a trip, separately, but they continued running into one another at the same clubs, the same after-parties.
“At that time, I was really hot,” Gibson says, chuckling.
“He was like 195 pounds,” Backe says. “Dreads. And shredded.”
“I used to compete in bodybuilding. So I was cut.”
“And all of his friends were that kind of gay. They were all, like, hairless, muscley. And all my friends were dressing up in costumes and being crazy. So I saw him at Crowbar in Chicago and I went over and was like, ‘Heeeeeey,’ and I was probably in some kind of costume. And he was probably with his eight gay friends and he totally ignored me.”
“I didn’t ignore you. I said hello.”
“He snubbed me. And my friends were like, “He’s a dick.’ … And then at the end of the weekend, Ted missed his flight back to Minneapolis and me and my friends drove, so he asked if he could ride with us.”
“And that was the moment [that I realized he was the one.]”
“Yeah, that’s when he said he loved me.”
COUPLING UP
Gibson and Backe married twice. They often joke that the first time was for love and the second time for money, a take on the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis quote.
“The first time was 1996,” Ted says. “In Minneapolis.”
“Illegally,” Backe adds. “When gays weren’t really getting married. They were just starting to have civil unions. It was such a foreign concept to most people that even our gay friends were like, ‘Who’s wearing the dress?’”
“It was such a weird thing to think about two gay men getting married.”
“We jumped the broom. Do you know jumping the broom? It’s a slave tradition because it was illegal for slaves to marry, so to symbolize that they were going into a household together, they would jump over a household object.”
“And it was the broom.”
“So we did that because it was illegal for gays to get married.”
They married one another again in 2014 along the Hudson River in New York City in front of their dog Spencer as well as seventy-five friends, family, and colleagues. The New York Times covered the affair.
WHY IT WORKS
In many ways, Gibson and Backe are polar opposites of one another (“I want him to be me,” Gibson says, “but I wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with me”). But they say they have a lot in common when it comes to what matters most.
“We laugh a lot,” Backe says.
“We come from similar backgrounds,” Gibson adds. “Our parents are still together. I believe fundamentally and morally we’re the same, so I think that makes a big difference. And what I liked about Jason so much was the fact that he’s still such a kid at heart and he was from the moment that I met him. I knew that he would be the same person the moment I met him until the time that we’re not together anymore, when we go, when we leave this earth. It’s not very often that in a lifetime you can meet people who you can be with 24/7.”
WHAT’S NEXT
Gibson and Backe’s entrepreneurial interests aren’t limited to hair. In a post-pandemic world, the couple is already looking ahead and considering new endeavors in unchartered territory.
“I wish that I had enough money to open a big dance club,” Gibson says. “I wish that I had a few hundred thousand dollars to put [a club] together. … We’re going to need all of these interactions that we haven’t had. It would be like Studio 54 where it would be gay and straight and Black and white and Latina and drag queens and fashion. Los Angeles is the place to do it.”
In the meantime, Gibson and Backe’s STARRING salon is flourishing. “It’s a creative space,” Backe says. “It’s the incubator for our ideas. And the people who rent chairs from us are inspired and creative. It’s good for us to be around other entrepreneurs.”
HOW THEY LIVE…
“This is twenty-seven years’ worth of collecting stuff,” Backe says. “Moving from New York where we had our apartment and a four-bedroom house and then consolidating everything into this apartment, we weeded out a lot of stuff. We got rid of everything.” And yet they still have quite a few special objects that hold special meaning for the couple Take a look…
PORTRAITS
“There was a photographer, Chiun-kai Shih,” Backe says. “He was doing an exhibit at one of the galleries in N.Y. All in the same day I think he did like a hundred people. It took two seconds. We loved them, so we framed them and kept them. My mom was like, ‘Oh, so you’re the kind of people that hang pictures of yourselves?’ I was like, ‘I guess we are.’”
“It’s not a boudoir picture!” Gibson adds, laughing.
“We took that one down!” Backe teases.
PAINTED PORTRAIT
When the couple first moved to New York, a neighbor approached Backe. Backe recalls him asking: “Are you, like, rock stars or something?’ I was like, ‘No. We’re hairdressers.’ In the first five minutes, I found out that he loved cocaine, that he was a prostitute, and then he was like, ‘Do you want to come with me to Brooklyn to see my gallery?’ And I’d never really been to New York before I moved there. So I was like, ‘I don’t think I’m ready on my first day to go with a cokehead prostitute on the train to Brooklyn.’ But anyway, we became really good friends. He would be finishing his shift when I would be getting ready for work in the morning. He would come over and we’d hang out and I’d put him on a two-drink limit at like 7:30 in the morning because otherwise, he would drink all my booze. But he painted this picture of Ted and I and I’ve always loved it and we kept it.”
GEORGE WASHINGTON
“During the pandemic, I figured what was really, really, really important was to find out where I came from and my ancestry,” Gibson says. “My astrologer told me that that’s probably what was going to happen, but I was like, ‘I don’t care about that,’ then I ended up really caring about it during the pandemic. So I decided to go on ancestry.com and do my history on my mom’s side and my dad’s side. And what I discovered is that George Washington is my seventh great grandfather and luckily, Jason has had this photo of George Washington ever since we’ve been together. And we’ve been together twenty-seven years.”
“I bought it for like $9 for my first apartment in Minneapolis,” Backe says.
“And then we come to find out that we’ve had this picture of my seventh great grandfather on our wall,” Gibson says. “My mom being ninety, she doesn’t necessarily remember. But you know, there were so many secrets in that time of family and slavery. So many secrets. But I traced it back to my mom’s side. … There are so many nuances of ancestry, so I was like, ‘Did I make a mistake? Was it something I did wrong?’ And I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t know if [I’ll stick with researching my ancestry], but it was a fascination for a few months.”
GIFTED BY LUPITA
“Did you see the movie ‘12 Years a Slave?’” Gibson asks. “When Lupita [Nyong'o] was making the [corn husk doll] … that’s one of them. She gave me that. She gave me a Kenyan tribal comb too. I did her hair pretty much throughout that whole ‘12 Years a Slave’ press tour period. I think she made a few of them and gave them to people that she, hopefully, loved.” He laughs. “She made that for me.”
THE WELL
“I’m proud of this photo,” Gibson says. “We have been fans of an organization called the Thirst Project for a long time,” Backe adds. “They invited us to their gala and they were auctioning off the chance to build a well. So I had a couple glasses of wine and thought, ‘Let’s do this.’ We were supposed to go to actually help build it, but the way the timing landed, when they were going, we couldn’t go. … These little kids would walk I think five kilometers each way with ten-gallon drums and twenty pounds worth of water and so with the time that would take — there was no going to school. Having clean, fresh water completely changed their lives. That means school now, that means family, not to mention all the water-borne illnesses that they are saved from now.”
ENTERTAINING
“I love to entertain,” Backe says. “Even though we haven’t been entertaining [since COVID-19], I’ve tackled some things that I was nervous to do — like baking bread. I started with the sourdough craze at the beginning of the pandemic. My cousin in Oregon sent me some starter recipes and so I started with sourdough and then after I made the sourdough, I was like, ‘This is kind of complicated and time-consuming. I’m going to try other ones.’ So I’ve tried a whole bunch of different kinds of bread. I like to bake in general. And I like to cook. So I’ve been cooking. We’ve been eating like kings. Actually, now we’ve stopped it because both of us gained twenty pounds. So that’s what we’ve been working on now — is not baking every day. Although I did today.”
THE EXPENSIVE, FREE RUG
“Ted got this rug for free at a job,” Backe says. “He was like, ‘Should I take that rug?’ I was like, ‘Sure.’ And so that inspired us [to redo everything in our home]. We were like, ‘We need to get rid of all the rugs.’ So we got all new rugs, new chairs, new lamps — everything’s color now.”
THE COUCH
“That was another thing that we got for free,” Backe says, explaining Gibson brought it home after doing a catalog shoot for Torrid. “We paid $150 to have it moved here.”
“I’ve worked with [Torrid] a lot during the pandemic,” Gibson says.
“That’s one of the crazy jobs that wouldn’t have been on Ted’s radar before the pandemic,” Backe adds. “That turned out to be a regular, every-month gig.”
SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION
“There is a picture in the bathroom,” Gibson says.
“It’s our ‘six degrees of separation’ picture,” Backe adds.
“That’s all I’m going to say…” Gibson says. “Don’t say [who gave it to us, Jason]. It’s our ‘six degrees of separation’ photo of Bette Davis. I do someone’s hair and I commented on the photo and she gave it to me. You can say ‘six degrees of separation’ and let someone else come up with their idea of who it is.”
“I didn’t know the name was a secret,” Backe says. “It’s funny because we’re not those queens that love Bette Davis, but we were like, ‘Well, we have to hang it.’”
THE LEIBOVITZ
“Ted’s shot with Annie Leibovitz,” Backe says, referencing a large image of Anne Hathaway. “It was for Bono’s AIDS awareness [project].”
SNOW IN L.A.
“We were going to Ashley Greene’s birthday and we were trying to find a gift for Ashley, and we ended up going into this Peter Lik store and we got totally sucked into buying this giant piece [called ‘Sunlit Birches’]. And then the sofa Ted designed with a client of ours in New York. And we had that made for our house in upstate New York and we decided to keep it. Everything’s got a story.”
HERB RITTS
“This was the first thing that Ted bought. An Herb Ritts photograph,” Backe says.
“Jason thought I was crazy,” adds Gibson.
“When Ted bought it, we had just started dating and I was like — I think it was like $1,100 or something,” Backe says.
“He was like, ‘You paid how much for it?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah.’”
“$1,100 to me at the time was — I was waiting tables. … I was like, ‘$1,100 for that?!’”
BUDDHA
“Our mornings are important for us,” Gibson says. “We both each have a morning practice. We read, we write, we meditate, and I really think about the law of cause and effect. I’m spiritual. I believe in God. I believe in a spirit. I believe in something greater than myself. And that morning is really important for me.”
Backe adds, “He usually gets up a little earlier than me. But we’re both usually up and at it by 7, 6:45 a.m. I’ll sit out on the balcony and do my reading. He sits on the couch and does his reading. Before COVID, my morning practice was maybe seven minutes. Then there were points during COVID when it would be two hours of reading and meditating.”
THE JACKET
“I went to the military surplus store because I wanted to create this kind of military jacket,” Gibson says. “I went and bought all the things that I wanted to put on it [at M&J Trimming in New York] and then I asked a friend of mine [Kemal Harris] who is a fashion stylist — who styles ‘House of Cards’ and Robin Wright — if she would do it for me. She put it all together for me.”
THE ACCESSORIES
Backe is big on hats — to go along with jeans and a T-shirt. “I have some [more elaborate] looks, but this is my go-to,” he says. “I think I have a decent aesthetic. But I could easily wear the same thing every single day.”
