One of my friends messaged me about last week’s post and reminded me of the worst treatment that I've ever had.
And I had it because she recommended it.
And this is the conversation that we had:
So this one is for SONAM DESAI, who is an untrustworthy source of lash extension recommendations1.
And I'm going to tell you this partly because it is pretty funny, but also to illustrate that I do understand how difficult it can be, once you're in the chair and receiving a treatment, to do the right thing and get the fuck up and leave.
Any time that you find yourself feeling uncomfortable in the course of a procedure: remember this story.
To set the scene, it's 2019 and I am about to go and hike Annapurna Base Camp23. It was a 2-week trip, much of which would be in punishing conditions and I wanted to prettify my suffering by getting eyelash extensions.
At this time, I got my lashes done pretty consistently, a habit that I developed when I lived in New York, 2015-2017, where there was a prevalence of lash studios that were relatively cheap.
Sidebar
I frequently looked like absolute dogshit when I lived in New York, so I needed all the help I could get.
2 things that I learned:
It's not safe for me to live in a country that has infinite flavours of mayonnaise.
I put on a lot of weight in the US 😬.
My skin got horribly dehydrated from all the air con
In New York, you're essentially either in freezing cold air con all summer or you're in boiling heat indoors during the winter.
It proper, proper fucked my skin up. I ended up having a little portable humidifier on my desk at work and one next to my bed and that sorted my skin out.But for the first easily year or so that I lived there, I had giant scaly face down the right-hand side, which was mortifying and that I picked at compulsively.
So I needed those eyelashes done.
Anyway, back to the scene of the crime. Which is a lash studio in Forest Hill4.
I've written about how much I love lash extensions multiple times, but I have also said that the maintenance and admin of them can take over your life.
At the time, my lash studio of choice was in Hackney. They were fully booked and took forever to get to5. So, I ended up booking this place in Forest Hill that Sonam had recommended.
She'd been there once before and said they were good and really cheap6.
I arrived on time for my 17:30 appointment and met the two sisters who owned the salon. We'll call them Nancy and Nikki because those were very much *not* their names.
The place felt pretty chaotic. There were 2 small yappy dogs roaming about the place and I petted them whilst I waited.
Both sisters were lashing7 other clients but waved at me, saying “Babe, it’ll just be five minutes, babe” and they carried on as they chat, chat, chatted.
Dear lord, those ladies could chat.
I think my 90-minute appointment started about 25 minutes late.
I settled into the chair and Nancy started taping me up8 then started applying the lashes, talking 19-to-the-dozen the entire time, regaling us with tales of her catastrophic forays into internet dating.
The stories were funny, but each one was punctuated by her getting her phone out to play us voice notes or to show photos.
The thing is, I and the other girl getting her lashes done can't see anything, so Nancy’s just showing the photos to her sister, who’s already heard every story five million times.
This does not stop Nancy.
It's fun, but I started to get concerned about how much time had passed.
I was due for dinner two and a half hours after my lash appointment start time. Which should have been more than enough time.
I lay there, trapped under Nancy’s hands, anxiety rising with every tweak of her tweezers.
Then the door bell chimed and a new client came in.
Nancy called over to her, “I'll be 20 minutes, babe. Just take a seat.”
I inwardly sighed with relief that I was 20 minutes from the end. I was ready to leave these sisters behind.
Cool. I'd probably still be slightly late, but it was going to be all right.
I was still a little bit apprehensive, because just from the feel of my lashes, it didn't feel as though I had a full set yet, but maybe Nancy was going to hurry up and bring it all together in a triumphant final chapter9.
She carried on lashing, and after what felt like more than 20 minutes, she called over to her waiting client10 and basically commanded her to go to the takeaway next door and order her some food.
"Get me some steamed vegetables. Spicy!"
Emma came back a couple of minutes later, stammering that the takeaway people didn't understand the order.
Nancy sent her straight back, thundering: "TELL THEM STEAMED VEGETABLES, SPICY".
Before reattempting the order, Emma (whom Nancy didn’t seem to know especially well) asked for the money to pay for the food.
“I haven’t got any cash, babe,” said Nancy nonchalantly, her hands suddenly too conveniently full of my lashes to deal with the situation.
After an excruciatingly awkward pause, Nikki intervened and gave Emma a tenner. Emma left for a second attempt with Nancy bellowing “SPICY!” at her.
Emma came back with SteamedVegetablesSpicy and I wondered again how much time was passing here exactly. I’d arrived at 17:30 and I was sure it was way past 20:00 now.
Whilst she’s still doing my lashes, I can hear and smell that Nancy has started eating her SteamedVegetablesSpicy.
And then she starts feeding the dog by hand. The same hands that she's using to do my lashes.
Now, some of you at this point would have already got up and left. And if so: I'm so fucking proud of you.
I did NOT leave, because I thought, “Well, I'm in this now”. I also didn't want to leave and have to fly to Nepal with half/two-thirds finished lashes11.
I’d like to make clear that I’m explaining rather than defending my position here, but it felt easier to stay in the chair and just tolerate this now that I was this invested.
Rather than getting up and leaving at the point at which a woman was putting her hands into her takeaway, then into her dog's mouth and then putting those hands directly on my eyelashes.
Finally, finally, it was over. I was untaped and my eyes were my own again. It had been daylight when I arrived and it was now pitch black outside.
It was 9:30pm. I had been in that Chair Of Mayhem for nearly 4 hours.
Nancy was still going to do Emma's lashes.
Nancy handed me a mirror, to show me the results of her labours.
There were gaps - i.e. she hadn't covered every one of my natural lashes with a false eyelash. She'd also gone with Russian volume, which is very dense and was not really the look that I was going for to go and climb up a fucking mountain.
And yet, I paid and left, relieved to be allowed to return to real life.
I messaged my friends, who’d been querying my whereabouts for the last 2 hours and told them of the insanity that I had lived through.
Two days later I got on a flight to Nepal with insane lashes and a nasty eye infection.
The former problem resolved itself relatively quickly - the lashes had all fallen off after 5 days. The infection lasted a little longer
What I would love you to learn from this
So, I did, in fact, do the things that I tell you to do when looking for a treatment provider.
I got a recommendation from a friend12. Neither she nor I ever went back.
I checked the reviews.
But I ignored my gut telling me to get the fuck out of there from the moment I arrived and for most of the ensuing 240 minutes.
DO NOT IGNORE YOUR GUT.
If the venue or the practitioner makes you feel uneasy, just leave. You’ll figure the rest out later. I guarantee it.
A quick note on reviews
At time of writing, this place is somehow still in business and has an overall 5* rating from nearly 2,000 reviews.
There are a handful of one-star ratings of people who had the experience that I had where it took hours, but otherwise, hundreds of people are lavishing praise on this Salon Of Doom where the lashes and application were low quality and the hygiene was non-existent.
So whilst reviews can be a useful indicator, don’t assume that everyone with a keyboard shares your standards.
I’m off to lie on the beach and recover from the strife of reliving this past trauma. Have a delightful day!
And makes typos when she is laughing immoderately about my past misfortunes. She’s pretty great otherwise though. You should check out her jewellery insta.
As I type this, I can't run up a flight of stairs. I can't even run down a flight of stairs because I'm still in recovery from the accident I had in January. It is almost comical to me that hiking to Annapurna Base Camp was a thing that I was able to do.
I'll be back. *sighs*
That trip was not a great trip. When I was researching itineraries (between Annapurna Base Camp/Annapurna Circuit/Everest Base Camp), the advice was it doesn't really matter which one you choose because you're going to have such an amazing time that you'll come back and do the others as soon as you can.
Reader, I did not go back and I have no plans to ever go back.
That, though, is definitely a story for another day.
South-East London.
Whatever your starting point, anywhere in Hackney is always at least an hour away by bus.
I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THIS WAS A RED FLAG.
Full declension of the verb “to lash” is available on request.
If you've never had your lashes done: you have to have your eyes closed during the whole procedure because of the glue that they use and so that you’re not blinking and disrupting your technician's painstaking lash work.
They tape the bottom lids down and some lash technicians also tape your upper eyelids. It's actually a decent indicator of skill; the best lash technicians that I've been to don't tape the top.
Nancy was a top lash taper. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN.
Spoiler: of course that’s not what happened.
My bewildered post-appointment messages to my friends say that her name was Emma.
I am aware of how much of a first-world problem this is.
Thanks for nothing, Sonam.