My mother, sister and I went to Le Vant the other weekend to get manicures - kind of a "girls-day-out". My sister booked the reservation for us, choosing Le Vant because it was nearby and because they had the time available to take all three of us on somewhat short-notice.
I think Le Vant wants to be more of an upscale salon, rather than a local beauty-parlor. The services they offer and their prices sure make it look like they're more upscale. Hmmm. The space looks like someone started with a large open room, and got someone's brother-who-does-drywall to come put up walls to create little individual rooms for 'haircuts', 'hair color', and 'nail-services' (It's possible that someone else's brother may have come out to sponge-paint the whole place). Upon arriving I needed to use the restroom and found what you'd find at your neighbor's house: A single (slightly damp) hand towel hanging on a bar for you to dry your hands with - not the most sanitary of conditions. Ew. This was the first sign about what kind of experience we'd have. Walking back to the nail-services room, one has to wander around several random corners, through the area with the washer/dryer and within inches of the colorist's chair. Again, not anything horrifying, but if I'd been getting color done there I don't think I'd want to feel like I was having it done in a Laundry Room, and have everyone wandering right by my chair as if I were on display. The nail-services room is nice enough, quite roomy, with three stations for manicures and three pedicure chairs - nothing terribly fancy, but nice. They do have a lovely selection of nail polish colors - including OPI. I brought a bottle of OPI from home, just in case I didn't see anything I liked, and in the end went with it simply because I didn't want to spend any more time trying to make up my mind.
All three of the nail technicians seemed fairly young - two of them could have been very recent high-school graduates. Not that there's anything wrong with that, however the gal who worked on my nails seemed.... new at it? Okay, you know that feeling you get in your fingers/hands when you scratch your nails down a chalkboard? Not the sound, just the feeling. I think she was holding the emery board at a wrong angle or something - it felt a whole lot like that a good portion of the time. I should have said something, I know, but I thought: "Um, I think you're doing it wrong" would have been just kind of rude, huh? It was at this point that I noticed that we were all using reusable emery boards and that's something else that kind of bothers me. I also couldn't see any place where they might be sanitizing any of their other tools. Sure, that might have been just around the corner in another part of the salon, but if those things aren't within my line of sight (and there was plenty of space in this room for it) then I get paranoid that people are just using soap and water at the sink and are calling it a day.
The shape of my nails was decent, but no better than I could do myself at home, and the very tips were kind of jagged because the emery-board was one of those super-hard gritty ones that I think you're supposed to use on acrylic nails, not natural nails (which also may have contributed to that horrible chalkboard feeling). She did push back and trim my cuticles, but again, no better than I could have done at home. Hand massage was only really enough to slather on some super-sweet-smelling lotion, which I washed off when I got home (I don't understand places that don't use unscented products). The polish seemed nicely done (air-bubbles only on my thumb) but within three or four days it was all chipping.
The last thing that bothered me was while we were sitting there, a couple of gals from reception came back to let our techs know that their next hair appointments were already there (so not strictly nail-technicians) and proceeded to say something to the effect of: "I don't know, I think she cut it herself or something, and the color?? Is PINK." and then they all had a good laugh together. Not professional. I felt bad for the gal who they were talking about - I was embarrassed for her.
Okay. The final word is that although everyone was nice enough, and I got my nails done which is a nice treat, there isn't anything at all about this place that would make me ever want to go back. It's a local-yokel beauty-parlor masquerading as a Fine Salon - you can get the same quality of service at places that are much cheaper, and you can get much better service for the same price at much nicer places. I felt like I was at a teaching-salon. read more
