Hairdressers love to flaunt their coloured hair and daring haircuts but are now forced to kit up fully. And customers who make regular trips to the salon to keep their flawless skin flawless have to literally mask their good looks. Everything seems less glamorous in the world of beauty now. Still, covering up in this way seems like a small price to pay for both clientele and employees. The lockdown left an estimated one crore employees in the beauty business unemployed, and millions of women and men ungroomed and unpampered.
Most salons do not permit walk-ins, to avoid crowding, and ask that customers make appointments. Customers are being cautious, too, by either getting “safer” services such as pedicures or calling beauticians home. Others are busying themselves with DIY tutorials, avoiding the visit to the familiar parlour for as long as they can.
The use of PPE, disposables and gloves has become standard for both salons and at-home service providers. Urban Company, which offers a range of home services that include electricians and plumbers, says it has trained its beauticians for seven to ten days according to WHO guidelines. All are required to download the government’s Aarogya Setu app and take daily temperature checks. Compensation packages that will take care of health basics are in place too, encouraging beauticians to be transparent about their health. “There is no point stigmatising the coronavirus as it is here to stay,” says Mukund Kulashekaran, senior vice president of Business, Urban Company.
The limited availability of salon services across the country has led to an increase in demand for DIY grooming products. One such is Saheli’s Thread It, a tool that helps one remove facial hair with thread without depending on another person. There are also beauty kits for body polishing, complete waxing kits, professional bleaching kits, for both women and men, available on sites such as Amazon.in and Nykaa.com.
Along with the influx of products, beauty influencers and celebrity hairstylists have also devised tutorials for those desperate for a haircut or who want to try out different beauty treatments. Hairstylist and businessman Jawed Habib, for instance, has been posting entertaining and informative videos on YouTube for DIY men’s and women’s haircuts.
Kulashekaran and Dinger say that the current demand, both at salons and at home, is limited to basic services such as threading, waxing, pedicures and haircuts. The pampering will have to wait.
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