Penthouse Mens

Leon Taormina and his brother, Vince, learned how to cut hair back in their hometown of Sicily. It was 1965 when their parents brought the family to Toronto, and it wasn’t long after they arrived that the brothers went into the hair business together.

“In our early days here, before Vince and I opened our own shop, I worked as a hairstylist at the original Four Seasons Motel at Jarvis and Carlton,” Leon recalls. As his clientele built up, he and Vince decided they wanted to be their own bosses and it was time to strike out on their own.

“Many of my regulars lived in Forest Hill, so it made sense to bring our business to them,” says Leon, who, along with Vince, opened his first barbershop at Bathurst and Eglinton in 1972. Twenty-five years later, the brothers moved to the Eglinton West strip, near Allen Road, where Penthouse Men’s Hair Salon has become a neighbourhood institution.