Many ready to let their hair down at beauty salons REOPENING: With precautions added, Houston parlors welcome patrons eager for some self-care
When her hairstylist called Lindsay Pearson earlier this week to see if she wanted her hair extensions tightened, the answer was a resounding yes.
“I said yes! Absolutely!” she said. “Please, for the love of God!”
Hair extensions, which make hair appear fuller, can be costly to install but last for months if properly maintained. For Pearson, waiting to get her hair done amid coronavirus closures meant more money in maintenance in the long run.
She was among the first to walk into the doors at Fringe, a hair salon off of West Alabama.
There were 48,566 licensed salons and more than 266,000 cosmetologists in Texas last fiscal year, according to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation; there were 9,986 licensed barbershops and nearly 23,000 barbers. All were to have stopped work for several weeks until a decision from Gov. Greg Abbott allowed salons across Texas to open for the first time since March.
Those longing for the selfcare found in taming wild locks and freshly polished digits flocked to Houstonarea salons.
Not everyone was in a hurry, however, and for owners with open doors it wasn’t all champagne-infused foot scrubs. The day
offered some financial relief, but rules around social distancing still mean fewer customers at a time for salons accustomed to churning through lots of customers at a quick clip.
A long line of customers waiting to enter at the start of the day meant the Premier Nail Bar in Missouri City lost some customers, said Blake Hollis, who coowns the three-store chain with his wife, Hong Le.
Inside, he said he placed customers at every other chair and installed plastic shields over the manicure tables.
Hollis said the salon could bring in around $100,000 a month in sales, and so the sevenweek closure dealt a blow to the business, which opened late last year. While sales suddenly stopped on March 20, he said, expenses such as rent and utilities kept coming.
While Hollis was anxious to reopen, his staff wasn’t. He said he had to replace some 30 staffers who did not want to return to work. They were scared, he said.
With a staff of 12, he said the team struggled to meet demand on Friday.
“We’re excited to be able to open. It’s just climbing out of a hole at this point,” Hollis said.
Weighing the risks
Two hundred responses poured in within two hours after Fringe sent out an email survey Thursday evening asking clients what services they were hoping to book and what their availability was like. By 6 a.m. Friday, every other chair in the salon had been removed.
The return of hairstyling and nail care may have been a relief to many, but Dr. Catherine Troisi, an epidemiologist at UTHealth School of Public Health, said it’s all too much too soon. Even if everyone is wearing a mask, she said, many of the cloth masks may not be filtering at high enough levels.
“The customer or the client has to weigh the risk versus the benefit,” she said. “To me, the risk is not worth it for vanity.”
Troisi said that she understands the push to reopen the economy but that until there is more widespread testing and contact tracing, the risk remains too great.
“We are not past the peak yet, and opening up too soon is going to increase the number of cases. And you know people will get sick and people will die,” she said. “That’s the bottom line.”
For Pearson, the return to the salon was about more than hair, it was about a sense of self-care she gets from spending time with her favorite stylist at her favorite salon.
“My fiancé goes golfing; this is my version of that,” she said.
Precautions ease return
Pearson wasn’t worried about safety, she said, because she trusted the salon not to reopen until it had taken the proper precautions, and it felt good to be back.
“It’s really a relief to have something new to do and someone to talk to face-to-face.”
Valerie Sandstrom only found out Fringe was reopening on Friday earlier that day as she was scrolling through Instagram and saw a post by her hairstylist, Janelle Jardin. She was surprised that salons were reopening.
“Seeing that there’s a lot of protocols about social distancing, I wasn’t sure if I could have someone be this close to me,” she said. But after seeing the safety measures put in place, she went ahead. Seeing colored and trimmed hair, she smiled at her reflection, concluding that the only difference she had noticed was the gloves — which she said caused static in her hair.
At the Look Salon in Meyerland, Tanya Taubin, a grandmother, was getting ready for Mother’s Day by having her roots retouched.
“It’s fantastic,” she said. “I feel like I’m getting younger.”
Taubin said she felt just as safe in a salon as when she went to a grocery store. Not only that, but the ability to go out of her house and treat herself lifted her spirits. “When you’re sitting at home, you can’t go anywhere — that makes you sad,” she said. “Going to the salon feels like there is a future.”
As she had the dye massaged out of her scalp at the washing station, her face relaxed into a smile.
In a seat on the opposite side of the salon, Jamila Ferguson was having her hair done. She also said she came to the salon on the first day they reopened because she was tired of being in the house.
“I’m ready for the city to get open, but we want to be safe,” she said. “We don’t want the governor bowing to peer pressure.” She chose to have a sew-in weave because the hairstyle can last for up to three months. “Just in case we have another lockdown.”
To be sure, not every salon was ready for prime time on Friday.
Maryam Naderi, owner of nail salon Paloma Beauty, which has three Houston locations, said she will wait until Wednesday to open. Cleanliness and public health are a big part of her brand, Naderi said, so was taking time to consult with medical professionals and provide ongoing training for her staff around new protocols.
“We would rather just make sure on our end that we’re 100 percent ready to go rather than just jumping into it,” she said.
‘Ringing … off the hook’
The first difference a customer will notice when walking into one of her shops at Heights Mercantile and on Post Oak Boulevard: They will no longer be able to thumb through polishes as they select their color.
Clients must come unaccompanied, she said — no children or significant others — in order to keep the head count low. Her team is also working to collect payment in advance so as to limit post-appointment gathering at the front desk, she said.
“Our phones have been ringing kind of off the hook,” she said.