My Experience at Anastasia's Brow Salon
So this post will be horribly uninformative as I accidentally deleted all my footage and pictures of the before and after. Regardless I'd like to share my experience at Anastasia's Brown Salon with you all in case you were as curious as I was about it. A little background on the company: Anastasia's is a famous brow salon located in Beverly Hills, and she's credited for taking care of many celebrity's brows. I'd always been curious about it, but was discouraged by the hefty price tag. I get my brows threaded for a measly $8 (and thats including tip) so $30 for a wax (pre-tip) is a bit off putting for me. However my brow salon of choice is considerably far from where I go to school, so I figured i'd give the Anastasia Brow Salon located in a Nordstrom near me a go.
The visit:
Despite not having made an appointment, she was able to graciously accomodate me about an hour or so after I arrived at the mall. So heads up! Make an appointment! Next she led me in to a small room where she gave me the normal small talk of where your brow should start, arch and end. Next she filled in my brow with a high arch (to preserve as much hair as possible) and waxed whatever didn't fit in the stencil. After that she put on whatever balm they use to soothe the freshly waxed skin. Then she used their brow powders to fill in my brow using their medium arch stencil.
Now here's where I started getting a bit uncomfortable. I have a pretty high pain tolerance (I don't ever take painkillers, not even novacaine) but I guess some of the wax was sticking to my brow and so she used a disposable mascara spoolies to try and remove it. No problem...it didn't bother me until thirty seconds or so. The skin became really raw there from all the scrubbing with the spoolie, and she didn't realize she was hurting me until my eyes started tearing. Not completely her fault of course, I don't like to whine to people who are doing me a service unless its absolutely necessary. Next she placed highlighter all over the ball of my eyes, underneath the brow bone, and in the inner corner (to perk up the brows, brighten the eyes etc). Now my only issue was...I was clearly wearing eyeshadow as I had wanted to film my before and after. I was a little upset that the emollient highlighters were now all mixed up in my eyeshadow, but figured it wasn't a huge deal.
Overall when I saw the end product, i'd have to say I like how my brows looked, but I didn't love it. I think i've only loved how I had my brows shaped once, but they were definitely far from the worst I've ever seen them. I do think the benefit to their stencils is they'll never overpluck, but I think its limiting as far as customizing each brow shaping. Also I'd like to note that whatever she used on my brows post wax made me break out horribly along my brows. Generally I'm not sensitive to products. In fact, the only thing that's ever broken me out badly is BB creams. I had 5-6 tiny pimples spring up in the next two days after my waxing session. I'd hope it's just a bad reaction from the ointment and not due to negligence or dirty tools. Looking back on it now, I really wish she had just asked if I wanted the cream highlighters or soothing gels (but the soothing gel is definitely more understandable...but I find all the highlighters pretty unnecessary).
PROS:
-No matter which location you go to, you can expect a tweeze that is relatively the same
-They don’t believe in plucking the brow too thin, and the stencils they use help to reduce over shaping
CONS:
-Expensive, and few locations
-I wish they just had eyebrow shaping and left out the highlighters, filling it in etc. I really think she should have asked before she applied it all over my makeup
-I didn’t feel these were the best and most appropriate brow for me, but it wasn’t awful either.
-I had a horrible reaction to the soothing balm they use post waxing
Overall I don't think i'd return and try it again. The shapes just weren't overly flattering to my face shape, but they weren't horrible either. If not for how painful the extra wax removal was and my bad reaction to the creams I might have considered going back, but I don't think Anastasia's is for me.
