How the beauty industry was affected by the Coronavirus Turns out it’d been preparing for years
Makeup artists, hairstylists, nail artists, and other professionals reveal how COVID-19 affected the beauty business.
When I last spoke to Miss Pop, the beloved nail artist behind dozens of magazine photoshoots and runway nail looks, she’d been inside her apartment for 12 days.
Amid growing concerns at the time about the novel strain of Coronavirus, COVID-19, in northern Italy, Miss Pop travelled to Milan fashion Week to do her job – creating nail looks for the Prabal Gurung and Jeremy Scott shows. She left Milan just as news of the Coronavirus outbreak hit, but as a precaution, she and her husband consulted their doctor, who advised them to self-quarantine.
Miss Pop’s job description includes sitting close to clients, holding their hands, and general physical contact. Nail artists and their fellow beauty professionals such as hairstylists, makeup artists and aestheticians were faced with a potential threat to their health or livelihood if the outbreak escalated. freelance beauty pros can typically create their own schedules; for in-house employees, workplace practices are as much of a concern as individual healthy habits. Then there are dermatologists – medical doctors who have a responsibility for their patients.
The information and status of the Coronavirus outbreak rapidly evolved, but we wanted to get a snapshot of how the beauty world coped with the unprecedented challenge.
makeup artists
A makeup artist’s job description includes many of the behaviours that we were warned to discontinue such as touching of the eyes and mouth. The inherent health risks meant that some makeup artists took hygiene concerns even more seriously.
Sébastien Tardif, makeup artist and founder of Veil Cosmetics, points out that the intimate nature of the job means that he was already practising healthy habits. He says his protocol includes washing his makeup brushes with shampoo each night and using an alcohol spray and alcohol
wipes to clean makeup tables and other surfaces. Rather than using the same lipstick, foundation, or skincare containers for each client, he scrapes small amounts of product with a metal spatula and transfers it to an individual palette and works using only that.
Sébastien also points out what not to do. “I’ve seen so many makeup artists – very high-profile ones, too – still to this day that blow on their brushes to get rid of excess powder before applying the makeup on someone’s eyes or face, which is unacceptable.” Instead of blowing on it, tap the brush to remove excess powder.
last March, Sébastien reported that “lots of events [were] cancelled.” He usually advertises his brand on TV, but he showcased previously aired items.
Gato, a makeup artist with Maybelline Spain, was under Spain’s mandatory 14-day quarantine, which meant his schedule was entirely postponed. “All the industry is taking a break. That’s the right thing to do,” he said at the time. “The best thing we can do now is to stay at home.”
Hairstylists
Many hair salons sent emails to their usual clients with the location’s updated health practices or closed entirely. Drybar, a blowout chain, temporarily closed all of its locations until further notice. The previous week, when it was open, Drybar made efforts to prevent the spread of infection, emailing customers with a list of increased hygiene measures, including frequent handwashing, hand sanitiser stationed around the salon, tools disinfected, and removal of unwrapped food such as biscuits or sweets.
Another salon, Whiteroom, made the difficult decision to close. A statement posted on Instagram read in part, ‘The health of our staff, clients, and the community that surrounds us is the most important thing to consider as this situation unfolds. We feel it’s our responsibility to do our part in protecting one another.’
Before the it was forced to close temporarily due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Whiteroom had actually seen an increase in appointments. “I have noticed we’re busier during the day because peoples’ offices are closed, and since they aren’t sick, they have free time to get things done that they would normally have to save for the weekend,” said the salon’s owner, leary. As the salon’s closing statement makes clear, leary decided to forego any similar further profits for the health and safety of her clients and staff.
“all the industry is taking a break. that’s the right thing to do”
While salons deal with many people per day, large-scale productions such as television or film shoots that put hundreds of people in close daily contact were largely shut down. According to Indiewire’s running list of closures, production on films like The Matrix 4, Fantastic Beasts and many more were suspended.
los Angeles-based hairstylist Jessica elbaum works on Modern Family, where she works closely with individual stars and is often surrounded by large numbers of cast and crew. “We work very closely with one another, as a family,” she says. “When one person gets sick, it seems to spread pretty quickly.”
Nail artists
Hygiene practices at nail salons are often quite varied. Hopefully, you’re already going to a nail salon where the technicians sterilise equipment, disinfect surfaces, wear face masks, wash their hands, and ask you to wash your own, all while taking other health precautions.
As a nail artist who works in close contact with her clients every day, Miss Pop was already vigilant about health. “especially since my chosen career has so much close contact, I don’t work even if I just have a cold,” she says. She washes her hands between each client, uses sanitiser on her clients and her table, and uses either brand-new tools or metal tools sanitised in disinfectant for each manicure.
Sundays, a nail salon with three locations, decided to close from 16 March. In an email sent to customers, founder Amy ling lin wrote: ‘This is definitely not an easy decision for us, as we want to continue being your oasis to get a moment of relaxation after your many daily stressors. On the other hand, your and our employees’ health and safety are the most important things to us.’
Working from home herself, Amy started a ‘7 Days of At-home Wellness’ series on Instagram to bring some of Sundays’ peaceful energy to her clients from afar.
aestheticians
Similar to makeup artists, the job of an aesthetician means spending hours close to clients’ faces. The intimate nature of the work should already involve intense hygiene practices such as pre-treatment handwashing and sterilised equipment.
even pre-outbreak, facialist Candace Marino had a flexible appointment policy: if a client’s sick, she allows them to cancel their service at no charge. “I know that if any of my clients were feeling sick, they would reschedule. The same goes for me, if I even have a tickle in my throat, I’m cancelling my clients, until it goes away,” she says. “I’ve had to do it before, and no one was upset. The response is always ‘thank you’.” ➻
Clients who do come in will find autoclave-sterilised tools, medical linen sheets and towels, and surfaces that’ve been disinfected with hospital-grade solutions.
Some facialists, like Teresa Tarmey, already wore a mask to go about their work. “The mask is something I’ve worn and make my staff wear all the time, purely for hygiene reasons. As a client, I find it uncomfortable to feel, let alone smell, someone’s breath on my face,” she says. “As a therapist, it also feels more comfortable to be so close to someone’s face.”
Before her salon closed on 16
March, she described her space as “couldn’t be a cleaner environment to be in,” and she’d been asking clients to use hand sanitiser when they entered the treatment rooms.
dermatologists
Government officials and hospital administrators urged doctors and patients to cancel non-emergency
“we’ll come out stronger on the other side”
appointments. Dermatologist Joshua Zeichner said that he was no longer seeing non-emergency dermatology patients. “for the next several weeks, we’ll be seeing only emergency cases in the office,” he said. “We’re in the process of developing a system to treat patients through teledermatology.”
Before his office closed to nonemergency appointments on 13 March, Joshua had noticed one side effect of COVID-19 fears: patients had gotten hand rashes from washing. “It’s important to treat these rashes, because inflamed or raw skin is at risk for developing an infection,” he said.
“[Closing down] is the least we can do to decrease the spread and flatten the curve,” said dermatopathologist Gretchen frieling, who decided to close her office for at least two weeks. “Was it a hard decision? 100%. But it’s the absolute right thing to do, and we’ll come out stronger on the other side.”
Dermatologists who did go into the office protected themselves with common practices such as handwashing, avoiding handshakes, and not touching one’s face. That said, doctors expected their patients to be considerate of their medical practitioners’ health as well: if clients were feeling ill or wary of visiting a dermatologist in-person, some offices offered virtual teledermatology visits instead of in-person appointments.
the rest of us
Those who used buying skincare products as a coping mechanism had to temporarily turn to online offerings. On 17 March, Sephora announced it would shutter all its stores. Previously, on 11 March, Sephora had announced that it would suspend all in-store services such as makeup application, skincare services and classes. Sephora waived standard shipping fees for online purchases and accepted in-store returns starting
30 days from whenever the store would reopen.
As many founders and beauty business owners pointed out, the move to shut down or modify practices was especially pertinent to beauty workers who saw many clients each day. “The risk is real for the operator,” said Catherine l Troisi, an associate professor in divisions of management, policy, and community health and epidemiology at the University of
Texas Health Science Centre at Houston School of Public Health. “Unless it’s a really big salon where there are lots of operators and clients together at the same time, both the operator and client should be able to practise social distancing from others in the salon. Since the client isn’t coming into contact with many people, the risk to him or her should be very low.”
That said, Catherine highly recommended that “everyone wash their hands frequently, cover their coughs and sneezes, and the operator should disinfect frequently touched surfaces like door handles several times a day.”
As the rest of us adjusted to 20-second handwashing and constant sanitising, beauty professionals had already long grown accustomed to the health risks of getting close to others. even amid the fears of losing work and threat of virus, every beauty professional we spoke to insisted that their commitment to health and safety was top-of-mind.
As a client or patient, beauty lovers can rest assured that their providers are aware of the latest health precautions. Only you can know if you should cancel that facial or press pause on booking a Botox appointment. Whatever decision you make, do so with your own health and the health of others in mind.