The winding drive up Beverly Glen Boulevard from the grit of post-rush hour Wilshire was an apropos prelude to Epitome Salon’s First Anniversary celebration in Bel-Air on Thursday night, where neighborhood, salon and attendees alike were perfectly coiffed and inviting.
If, like the beauty products being sampled, it could’ve been packaged for retail, the crowd itself would have warranted inclusion in Vogue’s best-of beauty guide. The salon’s head stylist showed off the versatility of the season’s long-hair look, with asymmetrical braids (a la Sienna Miller at the Golden Globes), while fashion’s latest flashback trend of flowing, hippie-chic dresses were the outfit du jour. Men wore Xubaz, utilitarian travel scarves, and the ladies’ bare arms marking the height of summer were toned and bronzed. Presumably all spray-on, of course. Epitome offers both the Dinair Airbrush tan, which tan-master Jade told me should last 7-10 days per application with proper skin hydration, and the Dr. Muller Elixir tanning bed that’s meant to “bronze instead of burn.”
And in typical L.A. event fashion, there was filming on the red carpet. Just as the salon’s owner, Stasi Hartwick, told me that she had become the de facto party planner for the shops at Beverly Glen Center, she was whisked away by a YouTube producer for a video. But not before Hartwick told me the comprehensive list of her salon’s service offerings and warmly introduced me to a handful of her family members and colleagues.
As she told the Beverly Hills Times earlier this year, Hartwick’s own acting background encouraged her to explore skin maintenance and in turn inspired her current salon iteration combining “health therapy with beauty routine.”
Epitome offers a host of treatments for body, face and hair, including star-obsessed products and services like Jane Iredale’s mineral make-up line, Madonna-scooped oxygen facials and international luxury beauty brand Rene Furterer. Perhaps best-known for its personalized approach to hair care – by treating the roots not just the tips – Rene Furterer offered complimentary scalp analyses for guests at the event. I must say the process was a bit unnerving at first, as a magnifier shows live images of your scalp up-close (make that jr. high science class dissecting up-close). But the philosophy makes sense: a plant can’t grow healthier just by nurturing its leaves; you have to start at the roots.
Several other shops in the Beverly Glen Centre were part of the night as well, like Sydney Michelle, where investment-banking looking boys chatted with shiny headband-clad young women and from which the event’s cocktails were served.
DJ Johnny Love spun inside the front corner of Epitome and looked out on a booth run by a “Freedom Fighter” sales rep for the new No Shows nipple-cover line and the PeepShow panty line. The latter, I was told by the actress-slash-nipple vigilante selling the lines, was designed with a shorter string so it doesn’t feel like it’s slicing into your, uh, nether regions. Or something like that.
The only complaint: the valet was full just into the start of the event (which led to near-altercations in the also full Beverly Glen Center parking lot). But, alas, that may be the necessary nuisance of a successful party. And when I asked Hartwick if this would be an annual event, she looked around at the crowd spilling out of her cozy salon and onto the red-carpet sidewalk, and a smile crept onto her face as she nodded, “Now it is.”
Epitome Salon
www.epitomesalon.com
Address:
2938 Beverly Glen Circle, Bel-Air, CA 90077
Phone:
(310) 441-8800
Hours:
Monday & Tuesday 10:00am-6:00pm
Wednesday – Saturday 10:00am-6:30pm
Sunday 11:00am-4:00pm
[email protected]
