Men and women are cutting back on salon visits to save cash
Try this at home
Stylists Tolintan and Anderson dish on home beauty treatments.
DIY Dye: If you’re going to dye your own hair, skip Rite-Aid and buy a professional brand at a beauty supply store. Ask your stylist what type of color to look for: “I’m sure your stylist will be kind enough to advise you,” says Tolintan.
Trim it up: If you must attempt a trim at home (“Noooo,” wails Anderson), follow these rules: Do not grab random pieces that look uneven and snip at them.
“Cutting hair is about geometry and tension,” says Anderson. “One technique, if you have longer hair, is to pull it back into a ponytail. Make the pony as smooth, symmetrical and tight as possible, and pull it away from your head. Trim the ends; when you release it, your hair will be shortest from wherever the midpoint was, and graduate down evenly.”
If you’ve been ruining your bangs with kitchen scissors in an attempt to save money, you’re not alone. Salon-goers across the country have been reining in their pricey beauty habits — and salon owners are feeling it.
“Subconsciously, consumers think that because hair is not a necessity — you’re going to live even if you don’t get your hair done — [they] tend to hold off,” says Joy Tolintan, 33, a stylist in New York. Tolintan has noticed a 20 percent decrease in autumn revenues and attributes the slump directly to the struggling economy.
But customers are unmoved. “A year ago I would get highlights every six weeks, a manicure every week, and every two weeks I’d get a pedicure, but I’ve drastically cut back,” says Lori Folino, a 36-year-old executive assistant. Now Folino does her own nails and switched to a single process, darker hair color that’s “closer to my normal color” and only requires touch-ups every two or three months.
The results aren’t always pretty. “I used to get waxed at this [expensive] place, and now I’m going somewhere it’s half the price,” says Meghan Korn, 26. “It’s terrible. It’s more painful, less healthy, and I get in-grown hairs.”
Visions of botched wax jobs aside, the situation isn’t entirely dire — most salon owners are confident that they’ll start seeing clients soon. “I hope that with the election results, in a couple weeks things will level out,” says Erin Anderson, 31, owner of Fringe Salon in Philadelphia. Anderson has seen a 30 percent drop in sales, but is using the downtime to reorganize her business. “There’s always something to do,” she says. “I look at it as an opportunity.”
