While K-beauty is rocking all over the world, J-beauty has quietly been doing business as usual, providing efficient products to the demanding, hard-to-impress Japanese market. Whereas K-beauty is often seen as very trend-driven, with a strong appeal to younger people, J-beauty is more about high quality and discreet luxury that speak to women in their 30s and 40s.
My friend B is from Korea, but she works as a cabin crew in Dubai, and most of her flights are long haul flights. I think we all know what jetlag, dry cabin air, and sleep deprivation can do to your skin, but B’s skin looks great. What is her secret? I was curious to know, so we met last week to talk about frequent flyer skincare routines, and the beauty products that make you look superfly in several time zones:
Bodia Spa is a chain of luxury spas in Cambodia. It is one of the first stops I make after touching down in Phnom Penh, because their massages work miracles when it comes to fighting jetlag.
Ebenezer is a chain of salons specializing in high quality, Korean-style eyelash extensions. They are more expensive than other salons, but I’ve always been very happy with the result, so I don’t mind paying more.
I think I’ve previously told you how bad I am, when it comes to getting a haircut. I always come up with a million excuses and end up postponing and postponing, and last time I went to the hairdresser was in Seoul…in December 2016!
It’s just that I’m very attached to my hair, and I feel naked, when it’s cut off. Silly, I know, but no matter how little I ask the hairdresser to cut off, I always end up with shorter hair, than what I wanted.
The best hair salon experiences I’ve had, have been in Bangkok and Tokyo, probably because they know how to handle my coarse, Asian hair. So one of my main excuses for not getting my hair done, is that “I’ll get it done when I’m in Tokyo/Bangkok”, but yesterday, I walked by Brave, a Japanese salon in Upper East Side. A Japanese hair salon in New York, that would do, wouldn’t it? Turned out they had a 40% off for first time customers, so I decided that now was the time. The time for my annual haircut.
It was a really nice place and the staff was super friendly and seemed genuinely interested in understanding what I was after (please don’t cut too much off!). Regarding my hair, the tradeoff is between getting rid of the split ends, and not ending up with a much shorter length than I’m prepared for, and at Brave, they somehow managed to accomplish that.
When I left, they politely reminded me that it might be a good idea to not let it be 12 month until my next visit. Maybe, I would consider coming back in two months, to keep my hair looking healthy? And you know what? I think I might.
Brave, 138 East 61St #203 , Upper East Side, New York
Update 2019: There is no longer a Bobbi Brown in Dubai Marina Mall:/
Through the years, I’ve gone back and forth between scary bushy brows and over-plucked, permanently-surprised thin lines. Sometimes one of each. Nowadays I never touch my brows, because one of the things you learn as you grow older is to leave your eyebrows in the hands of professionals.
I really like the make up from BareMinerals, and I’m particularly in love with the blushers and foundations. BareMinerals is quite pricey in Dubai, so I usually stock up on products, when I’m in the US, where it’s almost half the price compared to Dubai.
I’m a big fan of Sephora, but in Dubai the service is often quite bad. On several occasions, I’ve walked into the Sephora branches in Marina Mall and Mall of the Emirates in Dubai, only to leave again empty-handed, because I got tired of waiting for the staff, who obviously couldn’t care less and seemed to pretend that the customers were invisible.
I’m not very good at getting regular haircuts and often, more than a year passes between my visits to the hairdresser. I don’t know why, because when I’m first at the salon, I usually quite enjoy it, but I guess it’s just me being cheap combined with an exaggerated fear of ending up with short, purple hair.
We had read about Bloomie Nails in a guide book, but we couldn’t find the place, so we asked for directions, but a lot of people thought we meant Bloomingdales, not Bloomie Nails:)