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The "Southern Comfort" style from Drybar gives hair lots of volume.
boom The "Straight Up" is the signature blowout from Drybar—straight with a little bit of body.
Photos: Courtesy of Drybar
With blow dry bars gaining popularity around Buckhead, every day can be a good hair day By Elsa K. Simcik
A
fter working in the beauty industry for more than ten years—first as a shampoo girl and later as the manager of Carter Barnes in Phipps Plaza—Brookhaven resident and hair stylist Melissa Methier was ready to open her own business. “I wanted to do something a little bit different rather than your everyday salon,” she says. So last July she started Blo Beauty Bar, a place where women can get their hair professionally blown dry. “It’s almost like doing a throwback to the beauty parlor days,” she explains. “Women would come every week. They would get their hair blown dry; they would gossip, they would have fun.” A professional blow dry (also known as a blowout) involves a shampoo and then 30 to 45 minutes of a stylist blow drying and styling the client’s hair. Why do people pay $35 plus tip for something they could do at home for free? “A lot of times it’s just better to have a stylist do it rather than doing it yourself,” Methier says. Plus, she says when hair is blown dry by a pro, it can stay that way for three to four days. It’s common for women to come to her salon on Fridays to get their hair blown dry for the weekend. Buckhead’s demand for blowouts became evident when Drybar opened on West Paces Ferry Road last fall. The Los Angeles-based chain—which is said to be the original blow-dry-only concept in the U.S.—chose Buckhead as their
first Southeast location because its demographic was similar to that of L.A. and New York, according to Alli Webb, Drybar’s founder. “We were getting a lot of requests in Atlanta, in Buckhead specifically,” Webb says. “It’s a young sophisticated woman that is in Buckhead. They want to get pampered; they want their weekly or bi-weekly blowout. It just seemed like a natural fit.” Over at Blo, which sits in a house on Apple Valley Road, Methier was getting requests beyond the blow dry. She’s since added cut and color services, but she maintains that it is still primarily a blow dry bar. “We’re kind of giving the importance of [the blow dry] back. I think that everyone’s so busy nowadays that they don’t really take as much time for themselves,” Methier says. “They can come here, get their hair blown dry and relax. They’ll get the attention that they need.” n
Blo Beauty Bar 2565 Apple Valley Road Atlanta 30319 678.927.9203 www.blobeautybar.com Drybar 102 West Paces Ferry Road N.W., Suite B Atlanta 30305 404.382.5310 www.thedrybar.com
Confessions of a
Blowout Junkie Allison Herndon of Buckhead wasn’t always a blowout junkie. “I am the girl who always left the typical salon with a wet head because I never wanted to pay the extra cost of a blow dry,” says the 30-year-old teacher. But since Blo opened last July, Herndon has been a regular, showing up twice a week. “I justify the cost of going to Blo because it saves me time since I work a lot. It allows me to sleep in a few extra minutes in the morning because I don’t have to worry if I may have a bad hair day or not,” she says. For Herndon, it’s also a stress reliever. “It is relaxing. I especially love the scalp massage I receive with every blowout,” she says. In between her twiceweekly sessions, she applies a dry shampoo to her hair. Now she hardly ever has to wash it herself. “It’s a perk for me,” she says. “It’s something nice I can do for myself.”
March/April 2012 | Simply Buckhead
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