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Posted:04/08/07
La Fashionaria’s fifth annual makeover: The work begins...
Saturday, April 8, 2007
By Phaedra Haywood
The New Mexican
About Epiphany: When chosing a salon for the makeover project I look for several things. I want a full-service salon, so we can get hair, nails and makeup done all in the same place. I want a warm, friendly staff that will make our makeover winners feel pampered and special. And I want people who know what they are doing so our people look great.
This year, I found all these qualities in Epiphany.
Epiphany has been open for five years. It is a full-service salon that offers hair, skin, nail and makeup services. Epiphany is owned by Camille Aragon Montoya, a cute, sweet, native Santa Fean who comes from a family of five beautiful daughters (one of whom happens to be television newscaster Carla Aragon). And you didn't hear it here, but Camille is the mastermind behind Gov. Bill Richardson's new, short do. She also sits on the New Mexico Board of Barbers and Cosmetologists.
At the time of our project, two of Camille's sisters -- Michelle Amarmion and Dora Anaya -- ran their mineral-based cosmetics business Cosmetic Artistry out of Epiphany. They did the makeup for this project.
Both business are moving.
Cosmetic Artistry's new location is 900 W. San Mateo Ave., Suite 200. The phone number is 982-9307.
Epiphany's new home will be at 300 E. Marcy St., but not until April 21. The phone number, 988-9787, will remain the same.
Meet Gillian
Every year, I recruit a stylist, personal shopper, or image consultant of some kind to help spiff up our winners and distract them while I take notes. These professionals are not in huge supply in Santa Fe, and I don't like to repeat, so I was delighted to learn Gillian Armour, image consultant extraordinaire, had just moved to town.
Gillian moved here from Hawaii, where she and her husband owned a gallery and botanical garden on the windward side of the island of Oahu. She opened Gillian Armour Image consulting in 2001 and for six years tackled the formidable challenge of sprucing up the tres casual Hawaiians.
Gillian is 6 feet, 2 inches of tact (her height prompted a diminutive salesclerk at Dillards to ask her if she was the tallest woman in New Mexico), enthusiasm and style. And she loves to shop. Truth be told, she bought something at almost every store we went to.
She has a smashingly hip studio in the Marquez Place Lofts, where she'll be offering summer wardrobe and color classes soon. For more information on classes or to check out some of the jewelry this Gillian-of-all-trades' designs, visit her two Web sites: gillianarmour.com and armourgallery.com, or call her at 820-2824.
Francine: Grace under fire
If I have half the energy Francine does when I'm 60, I'll be grateful. We started our shopping day at 9:45 a.m. and Francine started her running commentary at around 9:46. First, she did a stellar job of vibing in some good parking spots in front of our first stop at Cold Water Creek, or as us townies like to call it, that place where Banana Republic used to be. Or as real townies liked to call it, the place that used to be the El Paseo theater.
Francine had practically memorized what cuts looked good on her from the book stylist Gillian Armour prepared and, since I share her "peasant body" proportions, we were soon ensconced in a dressing room with dozens of outfits. Several of them were quite good. We didn't end up buying anything there (it's the sad fate of any store that is a first stop) but I think Francine can go back and shop there in the future and know it carries stuff that suits her.
Next it was on to Origins where they made a big fuss over us, offering up dozens of delightful (and a few horrible) options that Francine gamely tried on. Sadly, most seemed to have a bit too much going on to complement Francine or (like a lovely $300 blouse made out of an antique sari) they were too rich for our blood.
Utilizing our prime parking spot in front of Starbucks on San Francisco Street, we hit Uli's (where Francine got a cute bustier-style tank in lavender for $5 in their back/sale room); Chico's (they have pants sized by length, ladies!) and Spirit of the Earth, before collapsing for a cuppa at the corporate coffee spot.
"I just wanted to warn you," Francine said as we settled in with our drinks. "There is a before and after Chai in my personality."
What, I wondered, could that mean?
All morning she'd kept up an energetic stream of new-age tinged chatter. She told us how Mercury in retrograde "crazies up the energy between people" and where she gets some of her fashion tips. "My massage therapist says, 'Red makes you look alive, Francine; black makes you look dead,' so I figured I should go with alive," Francine said.
As the former stepdaughter of a psychic healer, my patience for this kind of talk isn't in great supply. But I gotta say, Francine's massage therapist is right. Francine looks great in red.
Next it was over to Underpinnings where we ran into last year's makeover recipient Marti Otten, whom, I'm happy to report, is maintaining her look. She was even wearing the top we bought her. Alas, the undergarment store didn't have much selection in Francine's size, which I thought was odd; though Francine is busty, she's not freakishly so.
Over lunch, Francine regaled us with tales of her family trips abroad (she really should write a book); her experiences with online dating and the challenges of living in a world where older men want younger women.
Post lunch, having purchased only a pair of pants on which to build an outfit, we headed south to Dillard's.
Francine needed a new bra. There, smashed in one of the department store's tiny little dressing rooms with Francine while she poured herself into bra after bra, was where I developed the most respect for her.
She had been on her feet for hours. She'd been stared at and talked about like she wasn't there for hours. She was crammed in a space the size of a Santa Fe closet, naked from the waist up, letting a virtual stranger see her that way, yet she maintained a smile and an upbeat attitude. It's when people are strong when they are most vulnerable that I think of the word grace.
Sure she was saying things like, "Are we still in Santa Fe, or have we gone into another dimension?" but hey, we shopped until we almost dropped. And didn't stop until 7:54 p.m., when we celebrated the last of our accessories purchases at Target with a gourmet meal of cheese pretzels.
At the salon, we had Francine's hair lightened and trimmed just a little. She got a manicure and pedicure, got her makeup done and all the while teased Tom, telling him that he was starting to look like a Chippendale's dancer.
Tune in next week when Francine's after pictures will make you say, "If that's a 60-year-old woman, there must have been been a lapse in the space-time continuum."
Out of Annie's comfort zone
Shopping for Annie was hard. Mostly because I've never seen anyone who is as comfortable in her mind as Annie is, while simultaneously being so uncomfortable in her own skin.
She didn't make a peep in the car, and when I teased her about it she said matter-of-factly, "I don't really talk. I just look out the window." No forced chatter. No explanations. No self-depreciating humor. Just the fact: "I don't really talk."
Trying on clothes was another matter. She seemed loath to come out of the fitting room to show us the garments we tossed so cavalierly in for her to try on. When she did emerge, she often covered whatever she seemed to think was her most offending body part with her hands. And who could blame her, really? Seeing it through her eyes, I thought, "My lord, I can't even stand to look at myself in the dressing room sometimes -- much less to have two 'helpers' and a photographer tagging along. What a nightmare."
When Annie did speak up, it was to rein in our hoochie tendencies.
"That's too sheer," she said. "That's low-cut. I don't really like that."
As a result, I was probably too easy on her. We shopped mostly at the mall (though we did check out some stuff at Cupcake) mainly because a lot of downtown shops don't carry her size. Which is pretty pathetic, if you ask me.
We bought her tons of accessories at Hot Topic, one of her favorite stores, and once we found an outfit she seemed semi-comfortable in, I didn't press for another three hours of shopping, as I'm sometimes prone to do.
That's not to say we didn't push Annie out of her comfort zone.
In the afternoon, we took her to the salon to get some prep work done for the final salon visit, scheduled two days later. She needed some color correcting on her hair because she'd bleached it and then dyed it black.
I also wanted to get her thick, dark eyebrows shaped and some facial fuzziness she has on the sides of her cheeks waxed.
She'd never been waxed before, but I felt comfortable leaving her at Epiphany salon while Gillian and I dropped her jacket off for alterations. I'd spoken to the owner about just doing what Annie was comfortable doing.
But in the car on the way to Express Alterations, I fretted internally. What we were doing to this young woman? Were we sending her a signal at 16 that for the rest of her life she wouldn't be acceptable unless her face was waxed bald?
It brought to mind my friend Yasmin, who used to joke about how the women where she got threading done were forever saying "how about here? should I do some here?" while pointing to the fuzz on her jawline. Making her feel that places she'd been fine with before were now not fine.
I should have listened to that inner voice.
We returned to the salon to find Annie on the verge of tears and feeling a little "traumatized."
The aesthetician had dripped hot wax in one of Annie's eyes -- she wasn't seriously hurt, though -- and one eyebrow was noticeably shorter than the other.
Note: The aesthetician in question was new at Epiphany, has since been fired (for reasons unrelated to this project) and is in no way representative of the gentle, high-quality services I have experienced there by the rest of the staff at Epiphany.
Disaster barely averted, we put the kibosh on any further waxing and got Annie into the capable hands of Epiphany owner Camille Aragon Montoya for her color correction. A few minutes of Camille's ministrations soon had Annie saying, "You can go now. I trust now."
But we stayed with her, and watched as Camille cut and colored her beautiful hair.
Soon Annie's mood was back on track, at least enough for her to say "I have bangs, so it should cover it," about her stunted eyebrow and then: "It better cover it."
Tune in next week, when Annie's after pictures will make you say: The same, only better.
Tom: Closet hottie
Tom House has a problem most of us would love to have. Everything looks great on him! We have to shop for hours with most makeover recipients just to find something that looks great. With Tom we shopped for hours, but it wasn't about shape or fit or color -- it was about money. We could have/would have bought him the very first outfit we put on him at Chimera on Old Santa Fe Trail. Unfortunately, the shop (which has a stated mission of keeping prices affordable for locals) must have had some other locals in mind when it priced the items we wanted to buy for Tom. He looked great in slim, dark-rinse jeans, a rich green and blue stripped button-up and a black T-shirt, but the shirt was $140 and the jeans were $190 so .... we had to keep looking. But just for fun we had him try on some more of the hip duds at Chimera, because he just looked so darn cute in all of them. Especially a pair of skin-tight, black stovepipe jeans that stylist Gillian Armour pronounced very "forward."
Plus, I was having fun just observing as the newly fashion-conscious Tom emerged. By the time we went shopping, he'd had his colors done and had been given a book with all the correct cuts for his body type (basically everything) and he was falling right in step with Gillian and me as we considered our various fashion options.
"I don't know about the flares," he called from within the depths of the shop's canvas swaddled dressing rooms, "they are a no-no."
Emerging in a pair of pre-distressed jeans he pointed to an artfully placed hole and mumbled "I must have fallen skateboarding." When we voted to veto a hoodie we'd added to the ensemble, Tom said he was "down with that."
His real opinion on $190 jeans with holes in them?
"I'd never go out and buy myself a $190 pair of jeans," he declared. "It makes me mad when they wear them out before you even get a chance to wear them. I hate that."
All and all, it was good fun traipsing around town with Tom, trying on clothes and knowing that in the back of our minds if time ran out, we could just cut his hair and put him in a paper sack and he'd still be the most dramatic makeover candidate we've ever had.
The real challenge was deciding whether to go for sort of an urban cowboy look (which Gillian favored) or a Sid Vicious look (which I favored) for Tom. Tom said he liked the idea of being a rocker. "That sounds exciting," he said. "Darlene would like that; she's an old punk rocker."
In pursuit of the perfect look for Tom, we shopped from 10 a.m. to 6:33 p.m. and we visited nearly every men's store in town including:
Chimera
Corsini: Where we ogled seersucker suits and Tom tried on cashmere polo shirts.
Uli's: Where the saleswoman suggested a sort of Sgt. Pepper-ish velvet jacket, which alas, was not in the cards for Tom.
Santa Fe Dry Goods: Where we purchased a $160 shirt. We had to wake up smell the coffee and return that to stay in budget.
Ross Dress for Less: Where we bought a three-pack of undershirts that contained only two shirts.
Unity: Fashion For All
Santa Fe Leather Works: Where the Harley-geared-out salesclerk (who owns two soft-tailed Harleys) told us, "Leather works for most things, not all things," and we bought a tuff pair of boots I think Tom's wife, the aforementioned Darlene, is still coveting.
Retrospect The Gap
Zumiez: where we got a knockoff of the same style shirt we'd wanted at Santa Fe Dry Goods for $20.
At the salon, Tom joined the ranks of other makeover recipients who have left the salon with most of the hair they came in with, in a Ziploc bag. He'll be sending it to Locks of Love, an organization that makes wigs for children who lose their hair because of disease.
Tom also got his hair lightened -- not Billy Idol style, but enough to make him look 10 years younger -- and enjoyed a manicure, which Darlene tried to usurp by sneaking her hand in on the table in place of his when no one was looking.
Tune in next week when the after pictures will make you say: "I see that hot young blonde dude, but where's Tom?"
La Fashionaria’s fifth annual makeover: The work begins
By Phaedra Haywood
The New Mexican
About Epiphany: When chosing a salon for the makeover project I look for several things. I want a full-service salon, so we can get hair, nails and makeup done all in the same place. I want a warm, friendly staff that will make our makeover winners feel pampered and special. And I want people who know what they are doing so our people look great.
This year, I found all these qualities in Epiphany.
Epiphany has been open for five years. It is a full-service salon that offers hair, skin, nail and makeup services. Epiphany is owned by Camille Aragon Montoya, a cute, sweet, native Santa Fean who comes from a family of five beautiful daughters (one of whom happens to be television newscaster Carla Aragon). And you didn't hear it here, but Camille is the mastermind behind Gov. Bill Richardson's new, short do. She also sits on the New Mexico Board of Barbers and Cosmetologists.
At the time of our project, two of Camille's sisters -- Michelle Amarmion and Dora Anaya -- ran their mineral-based cosmetics business Cosmetic Artistry out of Epiphany. They did the makeup for this project.
Both business are moving.
Cosmetic Artistry's new location is 900 W. San Mateo Ave., Suite 200. The phone number is 982-9307.
Epiphany's new home will be at 300 E. Marcy St., but not until April 21. The phone number, 988-9787, will remain the same.
Meet Gillian
Every year, I recruit a stylist, personal shopper, or image consultant of some kind to help spiff up our winners and distract them while I take notes. These professionals are not in huge supply in Santa Fe, and I don't like to repeat, so I was delighted to learn Gillian Armour, image consultant extraordinaire, had just moved to town.
Gillian moved here from Hawaii, where she and her husband owned a gallery and botanical garden on the windward side of the island of Oahu. She opened Gillian Armour Image consulting in 2001 and for six years tackled the formidable challenge of sprucing up the tres casual Hawaiians.
Gillian is 6 feet, 2 inches of tact (her height prompted a diminutive salesclerk at Dillards to ask her if she was the tallest woman in New Mexico), enthusiasm and style. And she loves to shop. Truth be told, she bought something at almost every store we went to.
She has a smashingly hip studio in the Marquez Place Lofts, where she'll be offering summer wardrobe and color classes soon. For more information on classes or to check out some of the jewelry this Gillian-of-all-trades' designs, visit her two Web sites: gillianarmour.com and armourgallery.com, or call her at 820-2824.
Francine: Grace under fire
If I have half the energy Francine does when I'm 60, I'll be grateful. We started our shopping day at 9:45 a.m. and Francine started her running commentary at around 9:46. First, she did a stellar job of vibing in some good parking spots in front of our first stop at Cold Water Creek, or as us townies like to call it, that place where Banana Republic used to be. Or as real townies liked to call it, the place that used to be the El Paseo theater.
Francine had practically memorized what cuts looked good on her from the book stylist Gillian Armour prepared and, since I share her "peasant body" proportions, we were soon ensconced in a dressing room with dozens of outfits. Several of them were quite good. We didn't end up buying anything there (it's the sad fate of any store that is a first stop) but I think Francine can go back and shop there in the future and know it carries stuff that suits her.
Next it was on to Origins where they made a big fuss over us, offering up dozens of delightful (and a few horrible) options that Francine gamely tried on. Sadly, most seemed to have a bit too much going on to complement Francine or (like a lovely $300 blouse made out of an antique sari) they were too rich for our blood.
Utilizing our prime parking spot in front of Starbucks on San Francisco Street, we hit Uli's (where Francine got a cute bustier-style tank in lavender for $5 in their back/sale room); Chico's (they have pants sized by length, ladies!) and Spirit of the Earth, before collapsing for a cuppa at the corporate coffee spot.
"I just wanted to warn you," Francine said as we settled in with our drinks. "There is a before and after Chai in my personality."
What, I wondered, could that mean?
All morning she'd kept up an energetic stream of new-age tinged chatter. She told us how Mercury in retrograde "crazies up the energy between people" and where she gets some of her fashion tips. "My massage therapist says, 'Red makes you look alive, Francine; black makes you look dead,' so I figured I should go with alive," Francine said.
As the former stepdaughter of a psychic healer, my patience for this kind of talk isn't in great supply. But I gotta say, Francine's massage therapist is right. Francine looks great in red.
Next it was over to Underpinnings where we ran into last year's makeover recipient Marti Otten, whom, I'm happy to report, is maintaining her look. She was even wearing the top we bought her. Alas, the undergarment store didn't have much selection in Francine's size, which I thought was odd; though Francine is busty, she's not freakishly so.
Over lunch, Francine regaled us with tales of her family trips abroad (she really should write a book); her experiences with online dating and the challenges of living in a world where older men want younger women.
Post lunch, having purchased only a pair of pants on which to build an outfit, we headed south to Dillard's.
Francine needed a new bra. There, smashed in one of the department store's tiny little dressing rooms with Francine while she poured herself into bra after bra, was where I developed the most respect for her.
She had been on her feet for hours. She'd been stared at and talked about like she wasn't there for hours. She was crammed in a space the size of a Santa Fe closet, naked from the waist up, letting a virtual stranger see her that way, yet she maintained a smile and an upbeat attitude. It's when people are strong when they are most vulnerable that I think of the word grace.
Sure she was saying things like, "Are we still in Santa Fe, or have we gone into another dimension?" but hey, we shopped until we almost dropped. And didn't stop until 7:54 p.m., when we celebrated the last of our accessories purchases at Target with a gourmet meal of cheese pretzels.
At the salon, we had Francine's hair lightened and trimmed just a little. She got a manicure and pedicure, got her makeup done and all the while teased Tom, telling him that he was starting to look like a Chippendale's dancer.
Tune in next week when Francine's after pictures will make you say, "If that's a 60-year-old woman, there must have been been a lapse in the space-time continuum."
Out of Annie's comfort zone
Shopping for Annie was hard. Mostly because I've never seen anyone who is as comfortable in her mind as Annie is, while simultaneously being so uncomfortable in her own skin.
She didn't make a peep in the car, and when I teased her about it she said matter-of-factly, "I don't really talk. I just look out the window." No forced chatter. No explanations. No self-depreciating humor. Just the fact: "I don't really talk."
Trying on clothes was another matter. She seemed loath to come out of the fitting room to show us the garments we tossed so cavalierly in for her to try on. When she did emerge, she often covered whatever she seemed to think was her most offending body part with her hands. And who could blame her, really? Seeing it through her eyes, I thought, "My lord, I can't even stand to look at myself in the dressing room sometimes -- much less to have two 'helpers' and a photographer tagging along. What a nightmare."
When Annie did speak up, it was to rein in our hoochie tendencies.
"That's too sheer," she said. "That's low-cut. I don't really like that."
As a result, I was probably too easy on her. We shopped mostly at the mall (though we did check out some stuff at Cupcake) mainly because a lot of downtown shops don't carry her size. Which is pretty pathetic, if you ask me.
We bought her tons of accessories at Hot Topic, one of her favorite stores, and once we found an outfit she seemed semi-comfortable in, I didn't press for another three hours of shopping, as I'm sometimes prone to do.
That's not to say we didn't push Annie out of her comfort zone.
In the afternoon, we took her to the salon to get some prep work done for the final salon visit, scheduled two days later. She needed some color correcting on her hair because she'd bleached it and then dyed it black.
I also wanted to get her thick, dark eyebrows shaped and some facial fuzziness she has on the sides of her cheeks waxed.
She'd never been waxed before, but I felt comfortable leaving her at Epiphany salon while Gillian and I dropped her jacket off for alterations. I'd spoken to the owner about just doing what Annie was comfortable doing.
But in the car on the way to Express Alterations, I fretted internally. What we were doing to this young woman? Were we sending her a signal at 16 that for the rest of her life she wouldn't be acceptable unless her face was waxed bald?
It brought to mind my friend Yasmin, who used to joke about how the women where she got threading done were forever saying "how about here? should I do some here?" while pointing to the fuzz on her jawline. Making her feel that places she'd been fine with before were now not fine.
I should have listened to that inner voice.
We returned to the salon to find Annie on the verge of tears and feeling a little "traumatized."
The aesthetician had dripped hot wax in one of Annie's eyes -- she wasn't seriously hurt, though -- and one eyebrow was noticeably shorter than the other.
Note: The aesthetician in question was new at Epiphany, has since been fired (for reasons unrelated to this project) and is in no way representative of the gentle, high-quality services I have experienced there by the rest of the staff at Epiphany.
Disaster barely averted, we put the kibosh on any further waxing and got Annie into the capable hands of Epiphany owner Camille Aragon Montoya for her color correction. A few minutes of Camille's ministrations soon had Annie saying, "You can go now. I trust now."
But we stayed with her, and watched as Camille cut and colored her beautiful hair.
Soon Annie's mood was back on track, at least enough for her to say "I have bangs, so it should cover it," about her stunted eyebrow and then: "It better cover it."
Tune in next week, when Annie's after pictures will make you say: The same, only better.
Tom: Closet hottie
Tom House has a problem most of us would love to have. Everything looks great on him! We have to shop for hours with most makeover recipients just to find something that looks great. With Tom we shopped for hours, but it wasn't about shape or fit or color -- it was about money. We could have/would have bought him the very first outfit we put on him at Chimera on Old Santa Fe Trail. Unfortunately, the shop (which has a stated mission of keeping prices affordable for locals) must have had some other locals in mind when it priced the items we wanted to buy for Tom. He looked great in slim, dark-rinse jeans, a rich green and blue stripped button-up and a black T-shirt, but the shirt was $140 and the jeans were $190 so .... we had to keep looking. But just for fun we had him try on some more of the hip duds at Chimera, because he just looked so darn cute in all of them. Especially a pair of skin-tight, black stovepipe jeans that stylist Gillian Armour pronounced very "forward."
Plus, I was having fun just observing as the newly fashion-conscious Tom emerged. By the time we went shopping, he'd had his colors done and had been given a book with all the correct cuts for his body type (basically everything) and he was falling right in step with Gillian and me as we considered our various fashion options.
"I don't know about the flares," he called from within the depths of the shop's canvas swaddled dressing rooms, "they are a no-no."
Emerging in a pair of pre-distressed jeans he pointed to an artfully placed hole and mumbled "I must have fallen skateboarding." When we voted to veto a hoodie we'd added to the ensemble, Tom said he was "down with that."
His real opinion on $190 jeans with holes in them?
"I'd never go out and buy myself a $190 pair of jeans," he declared. "It makes me mad when they wear them out before you even get a chance to wear them. I hate that."
All and all, it was good fun traipsing around town with Tom, trying on clothes and knowing that in the back of our minds if time ran out, we could just cut his hair and put him in a paper sack and he'd still be the most dramatic makeover candidate we've ever had.
The real challenge was deciding whether to go for sort of an urban cowboy look (which Gillian favored) or a Sid Vicious look (which I favored) for Tom. Tom said he liked the idea of being a rocker. "That sounds exciting," he said. "Darlene would like that; she's an old punk rocker."
In pursuit of the perfect look for Tom, we shopped from 10 a.m. to 6:33 p.m. and we visited nearly every men's store in town including:
Chimera
Corsini: Where we ogled seersucker suits and Tom tried on cashmere polo shirts.
Uli's: Where the saleswoman suggested a sort of Sgt. Pepper-ish velvet jacket, which alas, was not in the cards for Tom.
Santa Fe Dry Goods: Where we purchased a $160 shirt. We had to wake up smell the coffee and return that to stay in budget.
Ross Dress for Less: Where we bought a three-pack of undershirts that contained only two shirts.
Unity: Fashion For All
Santa Fe Leather Works: Where the Harley-geared-out salesclerk (who owns two soft-tailed Harleys) told us, "Leather works for most things, not all things," and we bought a tuff pair of boots I think Tom's wife, the aforementioned Darlene, is still coveting.
Retrospect The Gap
Zumiez: where we got a knockoff of the same style shirt we'd wanted at Santa Fe Dry Goods for $20.
At the salon, Tom joined the ranks of other makeover recipients who have left the salon with most of the hair they came in with, in a Ziploc bag. He'll be sending it to Locks of Love, an organization that makes wigs for children who lose their hair because of disease.
Tom also got his hair lightened -- not Billy Idol style, but enough to make him look 10 years younger -- and enjoyed a manicure, which Darlene tried to usurp by sneaking her hand in on the table in place of his when no one was looking.
Tune in next week when the after pictures will make you say: "I see that hot young blonde dude, but where's Tom?"
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