🇲🇽 Mexico to Ghent for Level 2
Some careers drift into comfort. Others take a plane.
Daniel Lemenza didn’t stay comfortable.
Born in Mexico, now running a beautiful barbershop in Reims, France, he came to Ghent for two intense days at ROMAIN Barbershop & Academy for straight razor shaving and honing training with Scapicchio Academy and Master Barber Stijn De Sutter.
Not for a certificate. Not for a selfie.
For the craft.
Day one at ROMAIN Coupure started the way the good days usually do: a quiet shop, a bit of conversation, then straight to work. We stripped it back to the essentials of traditional barbering:
Preparing the skin so the shave starts long before the blade touches the face
Building real shaving lather by hand, not from a can
Holding and controlling a classic cut throat razor with confidence instead of tension
Stropping for consistency and edge maintenance
Honing on a natural stone from the Belgian Ardennes, learning to read sound, feel and feedback
Daniel wasn’t just a good student, he was a strong one.
He picked up free hand honing fast, both on a full wedge razor and on a Kamisori in the traditional way. No honing guides, no crutches. Just steel on stone, guided by focus and feel. Everything moved smoothly: the learning curve, the questions, the edges. You could see he was already thinking about how to plug this straight back into his barbershop in Reims.
Day two is where the theory stops getting a vote.
With his own razors freshly honed on Belgian natural stone, Daniel stepped behind the chair and took it to real faces, real beards, real pressure. Classic Italian-inspired straight razor shaving in the oldest barbershop of Belgium, with the end goal sitting more than 300 kilometers away in Reims.
Client by client, the service tightened up:
Cleaner angles and calmer hands
More structured stroke patterns
A slower, more deliberate shave that actually feels like something worth paying for
By the end of the second day, he wasn’t just repeating technique – he owned it enough to start shaping it into his own. The free hand honing, the full wedge, the kamisori, the straight razor shave: all ready to be implemented in his daily service in Reims.
This is what serious barber training looks like at ROMAIN Ghent and Scapicchio Academy:
barbers from Mexico, France, the UK, the United States and beyond coming to a small shop in Belgium to learn traditional straight razor shaving, honing on natural stone, and old-world techniques that still separate the average haircut factory from a real barbershop experience.
If you are a barber in Europe or beyond and you want to upgrade your straight razor shaving and honing skills, not just tick a box on your CV, you know where to find us.
The chair is here.
The stones are ready.
The rest is up to you.
Want to join the Scapicchio Academy at ROMAIN in Ghent, belgium?
Get in touch to plan your 1-on-1 training with Master barber Stijn De Sutter and take your straight razor, honing and shaving services to the next level. Send us a Email
Ready for the real thing?
If you want more than just a good story and you’re ready to sharpen your craft (or your own look), you know where to find us.
From straight razor training and honing on natural stone to classic shaves and serious beard work in the chair, ROMAIN Barbershop & Academy in Ghent is where it actually happens—no noise, no shortcuts.
Book a service in ROMAIN
https://booking.optios.net/6064/select-location
Follow the journey
ROMAIN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/romain_ghent
Stijn on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/desutter_stijn
Stijn on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@desutter_stijn
Academy info, courses or questions
Email: info@romainghent.be and we’ll take it from there.
Website ROMAIN: http://www.romainghent.be
Website Scapicchio Academy: http://www.scapicchioacademy.com
