A disastrous “makeover” at Makeover Studio Gholizadeh

by Maria

This is a text-heavy post about my experience at Makeover Studio Gholizadeh in Oslo. I would link to their website/Facebook page/twitter account/blog, but they don’t have any. I think they usually go by just “Makeover Studio”, but I’ve included the full name of the company to leave out any doubt about which studio this is.

A day in early February, I got a text message from my friend Ingvild. She’d received a phone call about a free makeup lesson at a place here in Oslo, and she was allowed to bring a friend, so would I like to come? Of course I would – I never say no to anything that involves makeup! A few days before the “lesson”, Ingvild got a second phone call from the same lady, who explained that we’d need to bring our own clothes for the photo shoot. Photo shoot? Ingvild wasn’t able to get a proper explanation, but was at least assured that everything was still completely free, except if we wanted to buy the pictures from our shoot. And so we went, just for the experience, and it turned out to be… quite the experience.

On the day, Ingvild and I found the address ok, and stood looking for the entrance when we were overheard by two girls. They had jet-black hair, too dark foundation and were both smoking. Apparently they worked at the Makeover place, and told us which buzzer to ring. We rang, waited, rang again, waited. After a couple of minutes, the smoking girls were going in as well, and this time someone actually buzzed us all in. We went up some stairs, and found a couple of open doors with lots of people milling around. There were no signs, nobody telling us where to go or what to do. I suppose we looked rather lost, for suddenly one of the guys running around told us we could wait “in there”.

“In there” was a room with two makeup stations, some couches and an enormous TV blasting a Victoria’s Secret runway show at full volume (perfect for boosting a girl’s confidence, don’t you think?). The other people there (all of them women or girls) seemed to be customers like ourselves, so there was no one there to welcome us or tell us what this was really about. The two smoking girls appeared and asked if they should do our makeup? By then Ingvild and I had figured this wasn’t so much a makeup lesson as simply “come and get your makeup done”, but we decided to stay anyway. I’ll admit I smelled a blog post in the making, and was determined to see what kind of place this really was, and fortunately Ingvild is such a good sport she stayed with me.

As many of you know, I am not a makeup artist. Still, I’m an educated fashion consultant, and work at a school that trains makeup artists, so I’m not a complete newbie. I know that makeup for a photo shoot is different from normal makeup, and I know that studio lights and the flash will wash out your complexion. That still doesn’t excuse or explain what happened. Firstly, the hygiene level was appalling. When applying mascara, she used the wand that came with the product itself (you’re always supposed to use disposable wands), and when she was done, simply gave it a few squirts of brush cleaner, then shoved it into the mascara again, to be used on the next client.

The other brushes were sprayed, too, and then somewhat wiped off, but everything still looked filthy and the foundation brush felt stiff and prickly with old makeup. The colours used on me were completely wrong for my skin tone. A yellow, shimmery eyeshadow was applied up to my eyebrows (great for slightly hooded eyes…), the brows themselves filled in so they looked like semicircles, the blusher/bronzer was orangey brown and the lipstick a brown, dull pink. When she was done, I had purple eyeshadow fallout all over my décolleté, and looked like this:

Absolutely everything about this makeup is wrong for me.

Ingvild had asked for an evening makeup with bright colours. Here’s what she got:

This is a colourful evening makeup..?

I can assure you neither of us have ever looked worse, makeupwise. Still, the makeup girls seemed satisfied, and pointed us over to a place where we “could do our own hair, if we wanted to”. Suffice it to say that the combs and brushes weren’t any cleaner than the makeup brushes, and the straighteners and curling irons were in the same state. I suppose nothing should have surprised me at this point, but I still found it unbelieveable that a place with the name “Makeover” in its name so thoroughly overlooks one of the most important aspects of a makeover: the hair. Then again, nobody there would have been allowed to touch my hair with those filthy things, so perhaps it was for the best.

Next up was the mysterious photo shoot. By this time we had seriously considered leaving many times, but decided to stick it out in the name of a good blog post. I’d already realized this wasn’t a place I’d send my worst enemy, and I needed to get all the facts. Our photographer was a Swedish guy who seemed bored to death and talked so quietly we could hardly hear him over the blaring music. He asked us if we’d ever done anything like this before. I said yes, and that I work in fashion, and the poor guy seemed rather paniced for a few seconds. Any sympathy I might have felt for him was quickly gone, however.

The shoot consisted of him talking us through a series of poses they must have found by flipping through a copy of Vogue, and then memorized fifty that looked good in the magazine. The problem was that some of these poses weren’t even possible for normal people, and only made us feel even more awkward and unattractive than before we started. Armes had to be lifted over our head, elbows pointing forwards, chins tilted so-and-so, shoulders pushed here and there… let me tell you, unless you’re as thin as Kate Moss and have Cookie’s flexibility and coordination, there’s no way you could have made those poses look good. Everything was done in a rapid-fire pace, and without the photographer looking at us at all except through the lens.

Afterwards, there was some more waiting and feeling overlooked, before we were sent to a room to look at the finished photographs. The technical level was good, I’ll give them that. Good lighting, sharp and clear photos and a good variety of backgrounds and styles. But none of that really mattered, because all we could look at were our uncomfortable expressions and (in my case) rather pasty overarms. As for the price? 550,- NOK per photo. At this point, I simply couldn’t help but laugh.

Before leaving, we found the lady who seemed in charge, and explained that we didn’t wish to buy any photos. She asked us if there weren’t any good ones, and I, trying to be tactful, said it wasn’t quite our style. She then looked me straight in the eyes and told me that “well, this is FASHION, so…”. I couldn’t utter a word in reply, it was simply too ridiculous. Ingvild and I laughed our way home, trying to ignore the people staring at our horribly made-up faces, before running to the bathroom for some makeup remover. It took a big pile of cotton pads, and a second cleansing with the oil cleansing method for us to feel completely clean again.

In conclusion, nothing awful or irreplaceable happened to Ingvild and I. But if we had been more insecure about our looks, if we’d trusted these people to make us look and feel good – which is, after all, the whole point of a makeover – the result would have been quite different. I can forgive people for not being able to apply makeup properly, even if it is their job. I find it worse to forgive someone jeopardizing someone’s health by not even keeping a basic minimum of hygiene. But worst of all is knowing how damaging an experience like this can be to a person’s self-esteem. Nobody there introduced themselves or even smiled at us, nobody asked us how we felt during the process. No part of the experience was individualized at all, and it mostly felt like we were mere things sendt along a conveyor belt. How they can have the nerve to actually charge people for such an experience is utterly beyond me.

In short, darlings: horrible makeup, rude and disinterested staff, appaling hygiene, unprofessional organization. STAY AWAY.