Ace Jefferson, 2, needs to look good as he heads to preschool in a few weeks.

So his parents took him Saturday to see Brandus Mercadel, better known as Fatt da Barber, who brought his barber chair and dozens of hot dogs to the Culture Park event space on Franklin Avenue for a day of free back-to-school haircuts that he hopes will earn him a spot in Guinness World Records.

For his cut, Ace sat mostly still on the lap of his father, Ashton Jefferson, 20, moving to giggle at his dad only a few times.

“He’s just mellow,” Mercadel said. “That baby is chill.”

Mercadel’s bid for the record will continue Sunday at his Treme barbershop, 1900 Bayou Road, with a day that will start at 9 a.m. and go until the last head is cut.

But he didn’t get to every child Saturday because of a mandatory 4 p.m. wrap-up time at Culture Park. So at 4 p.m., when Mercadel looked at the written log carefully maintained by his cousin, Craig “Scooby” Marshall, 25, he saw only 38 names. Over two days of cutting, he had hoped to get close to 200 haircuts.

Mercadel, 31, wiped his forehead and exhaled. Sunday would be much better, he thought, since he would be in his own shop and would get a faster start, now that they had the Guinness process down pat.

“I got to take care of all of these nephews — because all of them feel like family to me,” Mercadel said, pointing to the chairs filled with squirmy boys waiting for haircuts.

+5 'He’s an artist': N.O. barber aims to set Guinness world record for free back-to-school haircuts Elijah Joseph, 13, walked out of the House of Fades barbershop on Bayou Road feeling on top of the world. He’d just gotten his back-to-school …

Saturday started slowly, as Mercadel and his handpicked team of Guinness-evidence gatherers waited first for his barber chair, toted from a pickup by a group of friends. Then they waited until a videographer arrived, since Guinness requires that all record attempts be filmed from start to finish.

“If we were just here to cut hair, we would have been moving much faster,” said Mercadel’s neighbor, Louis Ambeau, Jr., 42, as he fired up a crockpot filled with hot dogs.

So even though the first children and parents began arriving around 8 a.m., Mercadel’s clippers didn’t begin work until 10:16 a.m. He was a little vexed at the late start but was still gunning to set the record for Most Free Back-To-School Haircuts, a new category for Guinness.

Friends say that Mercadel has been hyped for the past few weeks, moving around the barber chair with a little extra panache, sweeping a little more vigorously with his brush, putting a few extra curlicues into his signature designs.

He and Ambeau even immersed themselves in what they called “the University of Sherwin Williams” earlier this week, to give the cozy barbershop a fresh coat of paint.

“His mood right now is push it to the limit,” said hip-hop artist Nuddie Piper, 28, who regularly stops by Mercadel’s House of Fades barbershop. “He looks relaxed; he makes it look easy. But it’s not easy.”

For his artistry, Mercadel has earned “celebrity barber” status. He’s also a classic New Orleans character, with a barber pole tattooed on his temple and the words “Barber Life” tattooed across his shaved head.

Over the years, he’s won elite barber battles for both style and speed, racked up more than 8,600 Instagram followers and been sought after by local and visiting movie stars, athletes, musicians and chefs.

Each fall for several years, Mercadel has been cutting children’s hair for free, to help them look stylish on their first day of school, after their parents have had to buy clothes and supplies.

Mercadel, who grew up in the 7th Ward, knows that in New Orleans, where 40 percent of kids live in poverty, haircuts are a way to present yourself well, despite other challenges. Plus, children give him insight into how they’re feeling. “They let me know how they’re rocking right now,” he said. “One child might tell me he wants a Nike swoosh; the next one might want a broken heart.”

As he packed his chair into the trunk of a waiting Honda sedan, he invited a few dozen children back to his shop so that he could give them the haircut they’d come for. By 5 p.m., a line was forming outside the shop, as Mercadel put the chair into place and fired up his clippers.

Ambeau sized up the line. By the end of Saturday night, they might get to 70 cuts, he said.

Darnell Collins, 32, had made the trip with his three sons because he wanted them to be part of the Guinness World Records bid. Plus, he is a Mercadel loyalist.

“You’re not going to get the same amount of love from other barbers,” Collins said. “There, you just get your hair cut and leave.”