My hair has always been long and unmanageable. I’m notorious for going six months without a trim (because I hate when I ask for an inch off the ends, and suddenly four inches of my precious mane fall to the stylist’s floor).

But to maintain healthy tresses, you can’t just use an everyday conditioner. Here are my favorite treatments (and some not so good ones) that have helped (or hindered) my quest for lengthy locks. (more…)

Tuesday night, we primped and preened for the opening party for the new Mizu salon at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The local elite squad was out in full force, dressed to kill, and showing off their most fabulous fall numbers with the chic coifs to match.

Once through Mizu’s entrance, we tunneled into a bright white cavernous space that made us think of an Arctic igloo. Evocative of the Swedish Ice Hotel, the futuristic aesthetic and minimalist decor is like no other salon we’ve ever seen in town.

Mizu is the first of two new salons by Elan Sassoon—one here, and one in New York—and yes, he’s the son of Vidal Sassoon. He takes after dad, for sure. Reknowned architect Niall McLaughlin designed the place, which is equipped with incredible technology like eyewear that allows guests to watch TV while getting revamped in the stylist’s chair. As for the services, they offer cuts, color, and makeup application—all of which promise to compliment each customer’s bone structure and individual style. (more…)

As Madonna was gearing up for her concert last week, her long-time makeup artist Gina Brooke, who doubles as Shu Uemura’s artistic director, took time from a very busy tour schedule to teach a master class at Shu’s Newbury Street location. Here, she weighs in on a few of our most pressing beauty Qs:

Bostonista: We’re junkies suffering from true makeup addiction. Should we weed down our beauty products to a few basics? 

Brooke: “There are no rules to makeup. And there’s nothing wrong with have a whole trunk full of it.”

Bostonista: Good answer! So, when should we wear false eyelashes?

Brooke: “Everyday! Why should we wait to look our very best for a special occasion?”

Bostonista: Hooray! Well, in that case, we want to look just like the Material Girl! How do we do it???

Brooke: “It’s flattering for people to want to imitate Madonna’s look, but what will work for her won’t work for you. Every woman should approach makeup as an individual because everyone has different complexions and skin tones.”

Bostonista: Yeah, yeah, fine then. Earlier, you really drove the point home that “beautiful makeup starts with beautiful skin.” Is it okay for us to just use inexpensive drug store facial cleansers?

Brooke: Sorry! There’s no comparison between regular cleansers and Shu’s cleansing oil. I even use the oil for shaving and as a hair product substitute.

Bostonista: Wow– that’s serious devotion. What else in your makeup bag?

Brooke: Phyto-Black Lift Renewing Firming Night Cream, Drawing Lip Pencil in Red 192 liquid eyeliner, High Performance Balancing Cleansing Oil (Advance Formula), Brightening Cleansing Oil, eyelash curler, Face Architect Remodeling Cream Foundation
– EMILY A. BROWN

Shu Uemura, 130 Newbury St, Boston, 617-247-3500, www.shuuemura-usa.com

At last week’s Best of Boston Style party, magazine staffers, winners, and guests swigged scrumptious gin martinis as they indulged in topnotch shopping and pampering. Inside the Back Bay Events Center, beauty pros from Mario Russo Salon, Emerge, Moore Massage, and Ardan provided complimentary services including mini-facials, hairstyling, and chair rubdowns.

Though models showed off fall styles from award-winning boutiques like GrettaLuxe, Stil, and LuxCouture, which offered a selection of their wares for sale, they weren’t the only ones strutting their stuff:

Click here to check out the fashionable crowd, sporting looks from rocker chic to country club cool.

—STEFANIE TUDER & EMILY A. BROWN

Newbury Street salon Umi has launched a very good line of haircare products. Nine tools include hair powder, wax, volumizing spray, and creme. Sure, we’ve got beauty products stuffed into every corner of the bathroom, and there’s that bin under the bed, too. But what’s nine more?

Owner and mastermind Jeffrey Dauksevich is known as something of a perfectionist, whether the objet d’art is a client, the hand soap in his (very clean) salon bathroom, or a hair powder. Unlike most in-house salon lines, which are created for a company, Umi Products were created by Umi, from scratch, and with JD input every step of the way. Which is why it’s taken the line more than a year to develop a shampoo and conditioner after the initial three-product launch last year. (more…)

Recently, in the name of service journalism, we lifted our self-tanner ban to test faux-glows. At first we worried that, because this story has been done maybe once or twice before, we might be flat out of incisive tanning insights.

But we were wrong!

We learned so much from our self-bronzing odyssey, in fact, that we had enough info to create a special web preview. (To find out our favorite lotions, you’ll have to wait for the next Weddings issue.)

Without further ado, we present…Bostonista’s Favorite Self-Tanning Accessories:

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One of our fellow Bostonistas cuts her hair approximately every third day. (She claims it’s every six weeks.) We’ve become so inured to the sight of her rolling into the office with significantly changed hair that sometimes we forget to comment…or, um, notice.

But the last time she came from a cut, all of our heads swiveled. Her always-cute short hair had become…way cuter. It was a little edgier, a little more noticeable, and a lot more her.

The man behind the amazing handiwork, it turns out, is Dean Mellen. Though a newbie to the Newbury salon scene, he has 20 years of experience coiffing the likes of Claudia Schiffer and Christina Aguilera. (more…)

Hypothetically speaking, if we were obsessed with Mandy Moore, the single entitled “Crush” from her self-titled 2001 album in which she coos, “Ooh, I wish I could tell somebody / But there’s no one to talk to, nobody knows / I’ve got a crush on you / A crush on you, I got a crush” would sum up exactly how we feel about the popstar.

And if that was the case, we would gloat just a little bit because we share hair colorist extrordinaire Jeffrey Lyle with the A Walk to Remember star, who frequents Boston because she’s from Nashua, New Hampshire. (more…)

So… it goes without saying that we weren’t quite looking our best yesterday. And when we’re feeling particularly, um, not-well-presented, we sometimes like to turn our attention to people who are exceedingly put together. It’s our own particular brand of shaming/motivation.

And thus our topic today is the lovely Bobbie Thomas, with whom we chatted last week as she swung through Boston.

You may know Bobbie if you stick around the house long enough to veer into those dangerous third and fourth hours of the Today Show. (You know, the ones that prevent you from running errands or effectively “working from home” by offering a stream of mesmerizing Kathie Lee-and-Hoda montages.)

She’s the show’s beauty and style editor who is a) gorgeous and b) apparently routinely asked by her friend Justin Timberlake, “why does your face look like it’s glowing?” (Answer: Because she dusts a boomerang of Stila #9 All-over Shimmer from the outer edge of her eyebrow to the top of her cheekbone.)

In any case, that’s beauty authority enough for us. Here, Bobbie’s top five* tips: (more…)

Last Thursday, in the spirit of the holiday, I decided to gain some independence of my own. Independence, that is, from split ends, blow-dry burn, and weak, straggly tresses. My hairstylist had been hinting for a while that my long blond locks weren’t so much locks as lank threads of over processed straw. And, after taking a few turns on the beer wheel at Bukowski’s—Bostonista’s happy hour dive of choice—I finally agreed.

A few hours later, duly shorn and sober, I left the salon with a Sienna Miller-esque shoulder-length ‘do. Did I miss my pony tail (which has now been replaced by what a co-worker aptly termed “the nub”)? Sure. But not over-much, considering I also left the salon with a preview sample of the newest yet-to-be-released hair “It” item from Kerastase.

(more…)