There's a definite tradeoff to going to a beauty/hair academy for a treatment which you sense almost immediately upon entering. Yes, you can get cheap manicures, pedicures, facials and the like at the Saks Academy, and the beauticians in training can do a bang up job on your nails, but personally I have a very hard time going to a beauty academy for a facial, or a haircut.
I thought I may as well give this place a try a couple weeks ago for a quick mani-pedi as they're right in Soho and I got a convenient appointment time. The following week when I arrived though they couldn't accommodate me, had failed to call to mention that they couldn't accommodate me, and had me waiting until 20 minutes past my appointment time before someone finally came to tell me I could not be accommodated. ??? Well naturally I wasn't having it. And the alternative non-descript eye treatment I was offered instead would not do, given my disposition to not do face with academies.
So I managed to get squeezed in for a mini-pedi after moaning and objecting and it was tolerable to be sat on a hospital-like bed with feet up and into a portable foot 'spa' basin, but it was very strange indeed to be separated by hospital-like paper curtains from one person's facial to another person's waxing amid a row of other such chairs. Not really something I see myself going through again, but my red-polished tootsies do look better than when I went in. read more