At the age of twelve, he moved to the capital, Lisbon, to work at an office. From 1964 to 1967, he served the compulsory army duty in Angola during the Portuguese Colonial War, returning home safe, but almost immediately departing to London, to work as a dishwasher at a school, for the duration of a year. Returning once again to Portugal for a brief time in 1976, António Variações roamed to Amsterdam where he took up hairdressing, which he would continue to practice when returning to Lisbon in the following year, opening the first unisex salon in the country and afterwards a barber shop downtown (among his clients there would be several people from the music industry, who would help launch his career).