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Short on time? New salon offers simultaneous blowout and mani

Wish you could get all your beauty errands done at once? New York City’s new Fix Beauty Bar is specifically designed to allow for a blowout and manicure at the same exact time.
/ Source: TODAY contributor

Leave it to New York City to cater to every beauty niche.

From the town that brought you a luxury doggie day spa and a ponytail hair bar (yep, they just do ponytails) comes a new salon that solves the age-old time question: how can I get my hair and my nails done without taking up my whole day — and my budget?

Enter the recently-opened Fix Beauty Bar, which is specifically designed to allow for a blowout and manicure at the same exact time — at an affordable price. Add in drinks, snacks and socializing — all in the time it takes to get from the office to meet a date for drinks.

Friends, New Yorkers and now entrepreneurs, Michelle Breskin and Karol Markowicz both loved to have their hair and nails done. But making time in their busy schedules for both was a problem.

“There are places you can get your hair done and nails done, but you pretty much end up paying a fortune,” said Breskin, 34, who worked in finance and real estate. “I’d rather have it all done at one time in an hour [in one place] and I’m done.”

Markowicz, a 35-year-old freelance writer, said their venture is the answer for legions of Manhattanites who like to take care of themselves but don’t want to make a day of it. “We feel all New York women are pretty busy. Busy women are our clientele — stay-at-home moms, working moms, non-moms and everyone in between,” she said.

“It’s a very New York kind of thing where we’re all crunched for time but we still want to look good."

While some salons have offered the option of pulling up a portable manicure station to someone getting their hair done, this seems to be the first salon to have specifically designed a two-in-one capability. The blowout bar is arranged with a cube-shaped table that seats eight and includes built-in nail dryers and room for the nail artists to sit in the center. Four other chairs allow for blowouts and pedicures.

In addition to coffee, snacks, muffins and mimosas, wine is offered all day, every day. “If someone wants a glass of wine with their 11:00 A.M. appointment,” Markowicz said, “We’re not going to judge anybody.”

Blow outs are one price, $40, regardless of hair length or texture. Customers can add a simultaneous manicure for $15, pedicure for $35 or all three services for $85.

With reasonable prices (for New York City, at least), Breskin and Markowicz still made sure not to skimp on the basics. They invested in the Rolls Royce of hair dryers — the Sedu Icon Privé — which retails for $700, reaches air speeds of 93 mph and greatly reduces drying time. “I didn’t know that existed,” Markowicz said.

Specialty salons are quite popular these days, with DryBar (“no cuts, no color, just blowouts”) rapidly opening new salons nationwide, and establishments such as the John Barrett Salon at Bergdorf Goodman opening specialty treatment bars (braids, ponytails).

With vocal jazz piped in to complete their atmosphere though, Fix Beauty Bar owners hope to distinguish themselves by recreating an era when women congregated and socialized at their beauty salons — just in a New York minute.

“We’re in this for the long haul,” Markowicz said. “It’s definitely something we want to see grow and succeed and become something that New York women relate to and know about.”

What do you think? Would you want your hair and nails tended to at the same time?

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