The Blurb:
After an overzealous threader in the summer left my brows looking particularly forlorn, I resigned to grow them out, and many torturous months later, I was in need of an expert hand to tame them. Who better than Shavata Singh, the London brow guru who opened her flagship salon in Beauchamp Place this summer, just around the corner from her old stomping ground of Harrods. The salon is bright and welcoming, yet discrete – a far cry from the dreaded threading stations unceremoniously plonked in the middle of department stores.
The Process:
I was seated in a chair by a pleasant assistant and after a short wait, Shavata herself appeared. Polite and professional, though perhaps a little distant, she had the kind of calming voice that wouldn’t be out of place in a yoga studio.
After discussing how I like my brows, she got to work snipping the hairs down to size, before daubing wax along the bottoms to remove some of the excess hair. A little threading later and the process was done, taking remarkably few minutes. An oil was smoothed over my brows to calm the redness, and I was brought my coat.
The Result:
As I prepared to shoot the other half a quick bus-stop selfie, I saw that at the inner corner of my brows closet to my nose, one hovered an abrupt millimetre above the other, rendering it noticeably skinnier. It may sound inconsequential, but after the agony of growing them out and dreams of Delevingne-style beauties, it felt like about a metre. Whilst I admit this may well have been down to a lack of structural integrity on the part of my brows, I would have appreciated a word of warning.
I had a flashback to the quote decorating a wall in the studio: ‘eyebrows are sisters, not twins’. Perhaps I’ve become cynical after hearing this line championed like a gem of Eastern philosophy by half of the planet’s beauty bloggers, but for when paying for a premium service, let’s be honest: we want them to be as close to twins as possible. I also realised that my face was quite literally covered in stray brow hairs; a quick dusting off is something I’ve come to expect from threaders, whether they charge £35 or £3.50.
Otherwise, the shape was good, with every hair snipped neatly into line, though perhaps a little too perfect for my liking. I had told Shavata that I liked my brows to be bold and showed her a picture of them at their best, but began to wish I had asked her to keep them as full and natural looking as possible; I now realise that my definition of ‘bold’ is probably somewhat more ‘Brooke Shields’ than most people’s. As with hairstylists, when it comes to brows it’s important to make sure you’re on the same page as the therapist, which I’ll certainly remember for next time.
