Introducting the new HQhair.com

There are plenty of wonderful beauty websites out there and HQhair.com is one I am a regular at. Much like red-nosed alcoholics have a bar they find themselves at every night, beauty junkies spend time cruising the same beauty sites -- our virtual bars -- routinely (our laptops, our virtual bar stools). HQhair.com, to be perfectly honest, was somewhat outdated visually until today. There was too much going on, too many words in too small a font, not enough pretty pictures, not enough sleek navigation. It was from a different era of e-shops, one where the developers decided what the sites looked like, not the ones with vision and style.

That has changed. HQhair.com just relaunched this morning and this (non-surgical) facelift is one of the best I've seen. It's a shame the same can't be said for human faces with lifts. And there's plenty to buy, plenty to do. No doubt it's sticky (a good term in the web world). I'm stuck on it right now... have been all afternoon.

My favourite parts: The thumbnails at the bottom, beauty talk, brand focus, ask our experts, hqdiscoveries is SO much easier to navigate.

Not so favourite parts: Drop-down brand selector menu, fluro-coloured navigation on top (and the hover effect).

Visit HQhair.com to see all their new features. To celebrate the launch, HQhair.com is offering £5 off your shopping with NO minimum spend from noon tomorrow so log in and save a fiver.

Liberty of London beauty hall expanding

Joy of all joys! I tweeted last week how Liberty was expanding the size of their superb beauty hall on the ground floor of their magnificent Tudor location in central London. After the festive season this winter, they're going to re-allocate 400 sq. feet of storage space to all things beauty. There are a couple things I hope happen here:

1. I don't want the ground floor of Liberty to turn into another terrifying gauntlet of beauty counters staffed by sales girls desperate for a commission a la Harvey Nichols. So much of the charm of Liberty's beauty hall comes from the fact that it's not the size of a football stadium. It's smaller... it feels like you've stumbled onto a hidden gem of a shop. It feels cobbled together in a good way; the perfume hall is tucked away behind the skincare and cosmetics with candles across the way, through the paper goods. It's a bazaar of high-end finery that has struck such a rich and wonderful balance, I would weep to see it turned into a slick, glossy tiled, minimalist beauty boutique. We already have plenty of those!

2. They keep rolling out the cool brands... they stock the big names like Shu Uemura and Aveda but they also carry less well-known ones like Olivinia from Napa valley. 

In any event, this is clearly such big news to most, but if you've dedicated so many hours of your life to that pleasing space on Great Marlborough Street, like I have, then you'll be giddy to know there will soon be 400 feet more of floor space to explore.

London's Blink Brow Bar reviewed

A dedicated eyebrow plucker since my teens (I do a good arch with no nasty tweezer disasters to speak of), I’m not sure an eyebrow threading will do a whole lot for me. However, I still find myself wondering through the Selfridge's Beauty Hall, hip to hip with the stationery section, towards the busy Blink Brow Bar, favoured by the likes of Harper's Bazaar, where it was voted best for threading in 2008, and Glamour.

Within seconds my threader welcomes me to my chair. From my vantage point, I note the other women being threaded have all brought along big sunglasses to cover up the resulting redness. “Oh, the redness only lasts half an hour to an hour,” my therapist Varsha reassures me. She goes on to tell me that the most popular treatment, aside from eyebrow threading, is lash tinting. And some get their whole face threaded, which makes me wonder about the downy hairs on my checks and chin. Assessing my brows, Varsha is confident I will be happy with the results and asks if I’d be happy for her to start with the top, which I never pluck. “It’ll give a cleaner shape, open your forehead and frame your face much better.” Well I can’t argue with that. My eyes water as she skillfully sets upon my upper brow with her twisted cotton thread.

[Editor's note: For those unfamiliar with the threading technique (quite a common form of hair removal on the subcontinent and the middle east), the therapist takes a long piece of thread, folds it once over itself and twists it. She then runs it over the hairs and moves the twisted bit of the thead up and down with the fingers on the looped end, catching individual hairs with razor-like precision.]

Once she moves underneath my brows I’m on more comfortable territory. Within ten minutes we’re done. My eyebrows swabbed with a soothing toner and moisturiser and I survey the result. Yes, there’s some redness, but that aside I note the pleasing symmetry and sophisticated groomed look I’m now rocking. As I whip out my Linda Farrow sunnies, the Blink girls tell me that some people come in every month, some every other week, depending on hair darkness and re-growth. A week later I haven’t needed to pluck any stray hairs and the strong shape means I’m really noticing my eyebrows every time I look in the mirror. I love the groomed result – for £17 this is money well spent.

Treatments run from £5 to £60.

Blink Brow Bar is located in London, Heathrow Terminal 5, Manchester, Tunbridge Wells and Birmingham in various Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Fenwicks, House of Fraser and John Lewis locations. For more details, see their Location page.

 Written by Julia Rebaudo for www.beautywoome.com.