The blurb
The first Shavata studio opened at Urban Retreat Harrods in 2004, and the brand hasn’t looked back since, with studios opening in Harvey Nichols, Debenhams and House of Fraser nationwide. Shavata Singh, the woman behind the brand, has 25 years of experience in the beauty industry and ‘is the definitive go-to guru for grooming the most important feature on your face’.
“Eyebrows aren’t there to be complimented. It’s like when you go into an art gallery, you never say ‘Wow what a beautiful frame’. The frame is there silently to make that painting look its best. My job is the same—to help complement the windows of the soul. A lot of our clients always say people ask them if they have done something different after they’ve had their eyebrows done by us because they look so well. It’s almost like a mini face lift or making someone look like they’ve had a perfect night’s sleep!”
Shavata encourages a ‘unique combination of threading, waxing and final tweaking with tweezers’ that is meant to ensure a polished, finessed, perfect arch to frame your face. This sounds good to me! An admitted brow philistine until about two years ago, I used to leave my short, sparse ends to peter out somewhere at the sides of my face and only really viewed my brows as a random patch of extra hair above my eyes.
Using some brow products I had on hand one day was a revelation, the better definition and neater, more symmetrical look an amazing frame—as Shavata says—to my face, and something that actually further highlighted my eyes, rather than overpowering them, as I had assumed it might.
I’m pretty wary still about tweezing or reducing the actual hair though, as I naturally have sparse brows that I tend to need to fill in more than anything else. But some hairs that were very much out of line around my brow line and a slight dissatisfaction with the overall shape made me decide it was time: to the brow studio!
The process
My brow tending journey didn’t start well—but nothing to do with Shavata; my literal journey was a bit of a disaster, with the uber that was to deposit me at Shavata’s latest studio in Chiswick taking the most convoluted, frustrating route possible through every patch of pre-rush-hour traffic he could find. So far so stressful. I arrived half an hour late, dreading being told I’d completely missed my slot and had made my trek over for nothing.
The lovely girl front of house, though, was the picture of helpfulness and charm; not blaming or rebuking me at all for my tardiness, she brightly said I could have my appointment after their next customer if I didn’t mind waiting a few minutes, and offered me a drink and a plug socket for my now-dead mobile. In combination with the calmingly minimalist look of the studio, a sleek, clean white cocoon away from the street bustle, I immediately relaxed.
My appointment itself happened what felt like moments later, and was over in no time at all. The sweet brow therapist listened to me carefully and swiftly got to work, using the combination of waxing, threading and tweezing promised in the Shavata manifesto. She completely understood my preference for a fuller brow and didn’t seem thin them down at all, despite making the line of my brow much neater and more fluid with threading. At the end she also snipped the ends of a few hairs to keep them in the brow but still integrate them into the shape, which I appreciated, as I can’t afford to lose any of my brow hair!
Finally she advised me to brush my brows up more when I do them in future—which has actually been really helpful—and subtly filled them in with a brow pencil herself in small, light strokes.
The results
I thought over the last couple of years, and a few brow events by various brow product companies, that I’d got pretty good at my brow artistry by now. But it’s easy to keep doing the same thing without taking a step back, and the brow shape and fill that I received at Shavata was a revelation—softer, longer arches and more focus on the inner brow rather than creating long tails to them made them look so much more suited to my face.
It’s the best brow shape I’ve ever had, for sure, and between that and the helpfulness of the staff and efficiency of the whole process, I can’t recommend it enough. If you’re not sure what to do with your brows, or have had brow disasters in the past and want a safe pair of hands, it may well be a revelation.
