This fall has seen a resurgence of the up sweep. Modified French twists, beehives, and chignons are all popular again. These feminine, ladylike looks are reminiscent of the 1950s and ’60s. Inspired by this trend, we created a unique line of hair jewelry in collaboration with Modern Design. The pieces are both antique and vintage, created from details removed from hats, coats, dresses, and brooches of those decades. They are great as bridal accessories and can be mixed with veils or fresh flowers. They can be left in the hair after the ceremony, as well. Not only do these pieces make a great compliment to wedding hair, but they can also be dress up a more casual hairstyle. These pieces are also very reasonably priced, from $35 to $300. Each piece is hand-made, an original, and one-of-a-kind. They are available at our 50 Bond Street salon. Here are some examples. After selecting a photo to view, you can click on it again for a close-up.

Since that fateful day of Friday, April 18, 2008, when the fire occured above our former salon at 632 Hudson, we have received so many questions asking what really happened. People have assumed everything from the entire salon burning down, to a small roof fire on the neighboring building. The truth lies somewhere in between, and this was certainly one of the most crazy and bizarre days of our lives.

We had just started to take clients at our new flagship salon on 50 Bond Street earlier that week, although the space was far from completely ready. I was on Bond when at around 5:30pm – one of the busiest times in the salon – we began receiving frantic phone calls and text messages from our staff at 632 Hudson. Everyone was saying something about a fire, but no one seemed to know the severity of the situation, except that the fire department was forcing everyone to evacuate the building while the salon was packed with clients!

My husband, Arik, hopped on his Vespa and headed across town, while I continued to work on my clients. About 15 minutes later, cab after cab began pulling up to Bond with our stylists and their clients (some with color, plastic, and foils in their hair) piling out and making a b-line to the shampoo stations to rinse out the color! It was a scene like I’ve never witnessed before (and hope never to again) – like something out of a refugee movie if refugees were transported in yellow cabs.

The best line of the afternoon came from our Senior Stylist and salon manager, Antonio. He had three clients going when the fire started, two of them with color in their hair. When one of them expressed concern about the color not being rinsed out in time, Antonio replied cool and collected, in his Trinidad accent: “Don’t worry darling, it will take us ten minutes to get to Bond Street by cab, and by then you’ll be a perfect blond!” And a perfect blond she left later that evening.

It turned out that an electrical fire started on the roof of the townhouse during a wedding that was taking place there (the top two floors of the house were regularly rented as an event space). As distraught as we were about the extensive water damage that occurred throughout the salon from when the fire was put out, we felt really bad for the bride and groom who also had to evacuate with their entire wedding party! The whole block was closed off for about 2 hours, until the fire was completely put out and the fire department felt like it was safe to walk past our building again.

632 Hudson Fire-article

This is the roof of our former salon building at 632 Hudson

Click on this link to see the Eva Scrivo gold braided hairband featured as a recommended gift in Cosmopolitan.com’s “Gifts For The Glam Party Girl” (if you don’t see it right away, scroll through the gift recommendations): http://www.cosmopolitan.com/style/beauty/fabulous-gifts-for-women

These beauty diagrams were created with Eva’s careful guidance and featured on NBC’s “Martha” during Eva’s beauty segments. The diagrams demonstrate how to give yourself a daily facial massage to help tone facial muscles; how to shape your eyebrows, and how to make your face appear slimmer with makeup. We hope you enjoy them!

Click picture to view pdf.

Facial Massage

Eyebrow Shaping

Highlighting and Contouring Makeup

Daily Candy - May 2008

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Here are photos of some of the haircuts done at our salon. We will be regularly updating this gallery with new pics!

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Take a look at some of our recent lovely brides! This gallery will be updated with new photos on a regular basis.

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When growing up, I was surrounded by beauty, fashion and design. My mother was a professional model, my father an interior decorator who had attended but never graduated beauty school, and my grandfather a barber. By the time I was six years old, my favorite pastime had become watching my mother get ready for the day – applying makeup, doing her hair, and putting on beautiful clothes. The transformation seemed magical to me. While other girls my age were playing with dolls, I was fascinated with things like hair curlers. My aunt who has had chronic back problems for most of her life, likes to retell how I used to insist, “Why don’t you let me curl your hair, it will make you feel better.”

While a fabulous hairstyle may not be the panacea that I made it out to be, the correlation that I so naturally saw between how one looks and feels was not at all juvenile. After all, I witnessed nearly every day how my mother became a different person after putting herself together – not only in how she looked but also in the way she carried herself. She went from a tired housewife to a glamour queen in the hour or so that it took her to leisurely style her hair, apply makeup, and put on beautiful clothes.

One could say I was bread for this line of work. While nearly every female relative and close family friend succumbed to my hair curlers, my parents made sure that the baby beautician was not neglected either. At age three I had fashionable dresses, hats, purses, even jewelry. I even had my own little wine glass at the dinner table (with real wine in it), and absolutely refused to sit at the “kids table” throughout my childhood. It is thus not surprising that as a child I was not only a diva in the making, but one who related to adults much more than to other children. I wanted to do all of the things that adults do, and by age seven I was also doing much of what the adults did not want to do – cooking, baking, cleaning, and consoling my mother during her bouts with depression. I also began painting and sewing at a very young age – something that helped me to hone my eye as a colorist and cut straight lines as a hair cutter later in my life, which turned out to be at around age ten. It was then that my mother bestowed me with a hair color brush and a mixing bowl, and directed me to her ever-budding roots. My father gifted me a pair of my grandfather’s barber shears, fully exposing their plan for the diva they so carefully crafted – they were raising a personal family beautician. Which can be a lot of work when one’s extended Italian family consists of well over a hundred relatives – most of who lived within a several mile radius of us.

After my father gave me a few lessons on cutting hair based on what he could remember from his own days in beauty school (which was not much since he attended it before being drafted into the armed forces during WWII), I continued to do so purely on instinct and my ability to cut a straight line. A common phrase when we were being invited to a relative’s home, had soon become, “Make sure Eva brings her scissors!” This resulted in several traumatic experiences as I got to see my family like never before – everything from exposed comb-overs to seeing my grandmother for the first time with her hair down. Grandma Scrivo always wore her hair up in a bun. One time, when I came over for dinner with my parents and sister, scissors in my bag, we found her sitting in a hair cutting cape and facing away from the door. Her grey hair hung down to her waist, and being eleven, I thought she was a ghost! It was a traumatic experience at the time, and all she said was, “Honey, could you give me a bit of a trim?”

By the time I entered beauty school at seventeen, I had already been doing hair for about seven years. I also continued to do both cut and color, as well as makeup. In those days in Michigan people typically didn’t specialize in just one thing like many do today. Therefore, my career choice came quite naturally and I certainly never agonized as a teenager over what I wanted to do with my life. Having been in this business for so many years, I can now state other reasons that I likely could not have articulated at seventeen: I perform a craft that I love, creating an ever-present art; I make people happy on a daily basis; I make them feel more beautiful, sexy, and confident; I get to meet and bond with many wonderful individuals, some of whom have had a profound impact on my life; and for the past few years I have also been teaching numerous others how to do the same. I cannot think of a more gratifying career.

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Hair color is truly a fashion accessory and on September 8th, it was incorporated with fashion on the runway. My salon color team and I prepared over twenty hair pieces for the Catherine Malandrino Spring 2009 Collection. Human hair pieces were baliaged using permanent color from the Wella Koleston Perfect line. “Balayage” is a French term that means “hand sweeping,” which creates a natural effect for highlighting with different dimensions and variations of tone. Senior colorist Donna Tripodi and I, assisted by Gwynne Mims, colored the pieces before stylist Odile Gilbert shaped them for the runway. The extensions were individually colored in an array of warm chestnuts, auburns, and coppered highlights mixed with golden blondes. The extensions were wrapped around the models’ own hair and swept up into a ponytail on top of the head. A feminine pompadour shape was then created. Malandrino’s 2009 collection is reminiscent of the 1940s and 1950s, with brightly colored prints and classically designed pieces. Catherine Malandrino loved what we created and felt that the color was a perfect integration with the collection and a great icing on the cake for the runway.

View a clip of Eva at the show!

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Here are a few tips to make sure your special day is perfect:

• IMAGES OF HAIR & MAKEUP LOOKS

Bring images of hair & makeup looks, including those that you do and do not like. This allows for more clear communication with your stylist and makeup artist, as well as material for brainstorming on custom looks for your special day.

• IMAGES OF WEDDING DRESS

Providing your stylist and makeup artist with a full color visual of your dress will give them a better understanding of the complete look they will help you to create.

• HAIR ACCESSORIES

The purpose of your bridal trial is to create the look as it will be on your wedding day. If you have pre-selected any or all of the hair accessories you plan to wear (i.e. veil, hair pins, fresh flowers), please bring them to the trial. The addition of your chosen hair accessory adds the finishing touch to your bridal look. If you do not have a hair accessory selected and would like to try one, this is also a great opportunity to consult with your stylist for ideas.

• COSMETIC FAVORITES

Most salons and makeup studios that offer bridal makeup trials retail the line(s) of cosmetic products used during the services. If there are specific products that you love and would like for your makeup artist to use, please bring them to your trial. Your makeup artist should be happy to incorporate them.

• CAMERA

This is an important component of your bridal hair & makeup trial. Once your trial is complete, have your stylist or makeup artist take pictures of the finished look(s). You may want to try several different looks. Keeping a record of what you did and did not like will help to make your special day go more smoothly and stress free.