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Department stores are like mythical worlds straight out of Roald Dahl’s imagination. But instead of chocolate rivers, mountains of fudge and lickable wallpaper à la Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we have private treatment rooms, dedicated areas devoted to the brands on the cutting-edge of beauty and a bespoke curation of personalised experiences ranging from fragrance spritzing to lipstick swatching.
Well, that is the case for Australia’s premiere shopping destination, David Jones. The iconic retailer unveiled their reimagined beauty floor on the ground level of its Bourke Street flagship to an intimate crowd of industry leaders and beauty founders last week. An investment of $15 million was put towards the mindful renovation, with an estimated nine million visitors projected to visit the new level per year.
As for what consumers can expect? Customised zoning areas focused on makeup, skincare, haircare, fragrance and wellness categories guide the experience like an odyssey of discovery. From each specific counter, including everything from Chanel Beauty to La Mer, we’re invited to learn more about the brands and product offerings by highly-trained staff. Immersive brand experiences like luxurious on-site facial facilities at signature pavilions for the likes of Rationale and Aesop round out the new layout.
Having been privy to a few makeovers in her 30 years working in the industry, Anastasia Soare, founder and CEO of cosmetics company Anastasia Beverly Hills, travelled from Los Angeles to Melbourne in celebration of the highly-anticipated reveal.
Dressed in the heritage houndstooth print emblematic of the 186-year-old store and a crimson red rosette, Soare tells GRAZIA she picks one up from Saint Laurent in every city she’s in, the bona fide “eyebrow queen” also marks an exciting milestone of her own—the first ever Brow Studio in the Southern Hemisphere.
Plucking, tweezing and filling the eyebrows of the celebrity style set ever since she first landed in Rodeo Drive in 1989, Soare has literally carved out a niche for herself since introducing the concept of brow balance to the masses. As Soare says herself, she was once a “victim” of the narrow yet rounded eyebrow shape popular in her native Romania. After an art lesson about Leonardo da Vinci’s golden ratio, she was profoundly shaped by a casual line thrown away by her art teacher in class: When drawing a portrait, if you want to change an emotion you change the shape of the eyebrow.
This principle became the defining feature of her salon and subsequent product offering. Opening a boutique in 1997, (Editor’s note: Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Stephanie Seymour were amongst her first clients) before expanding into eyebrow cosmetics in 2000, Soare patented a sculpting technique she claims the eye is encoded to find beautiful.
Creating this ideal shape began with her mixing her own formulas of eyeshadow and vaseline to create the perfect pomade her clients could achieve salon-worthy results at home. Now, for Australian beauty aficionados, it’s as simple as booking a service at David Jones. (You can book your appointment here, with their signature brow wax starting at $52 for 30 minutes.)
Given the recent chatter on social media about eyebrow blindness, which is the inability to recognise how unflattering your eyebrows appeared at the time, we couldn’t speak to the Hollywood heavyweight without picking her brain on the trend. “Of course, I’ve heard of it,” she laughed, subtly acknowledging the role her products had to play in some heavy-handed applications.
“At the time [2014 – 2016], our customers were too excited. They would take and put it all over the eyebrow,” she began. “I used to tell my daughter Claudia all the time that this [method] is wrong! I’d say it shouldn’t be like this. She said, ‘Mom, this is how they like it. They will figure it out at the end,’” she said before adding, “I am always right”.
Looking through Soare’s crystal ball, she doesn’t predict the laminated brow trend of the 2020s or the resurgence of the 90s-era skinny brow to be the styles we look back in 15 years and shudder about. Rather, she thinks it’s the over-bleaching of brows that people might regret, purely because of how finicky the style is to correct.
“People want to explore, but we have eyebrows for a reason!” she explains while telling us about a time she had to dye Kendall Jenner’s eyebrows back after an editorial shoot. “The human eye recognises harmony when you create the perfect eyebrow shape that perfectly balances your features. So I think that my golden ratio technique will still be used 15 years from now because the outcome will always be seen as beautiful.”
The secrets to good brows according to Anastasia Beverly Hills are as follows; never trim your brows too short as you will lose your arch shape, apply your products from the ends first to build up coverage, use your Brow Gel as the final step to hold shape rather than placing your brows first then filling in, a touch of highlighter under the eye never goes astray and always wipe away excess product on your brush or Brow Pen before it reaches your face.
The most important? Help is never out of reach. Even Soare admits she still has bouts of over-tweezing. So, if you ever feel as if your current technique doesn’t suit your complexion, remember booking a consultation at the David Jones ABH Brow Studio is only a click—never a pluck—away. A world of pure browfection awaits.
The Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Studio is located at David Jones, 310 Bourke St, Melbourne VIC 3000
