(Please excuse the shoddy, weird photo at right. It's going to have to do for now, as I can't really post this without some photographic evidence of the results of my experiments.)
The last three times I've had my brows done, I've gone to Shavata's salon at Harrod's fifth floor Urban Retreat.
My first time, I had Shavata herself wax and pluck my eyebrows. I was annoyed at being made to wait 15 minutes without explanation (not all of us are ladies who lunch - some of us sacrifice lunch to get our brows done), and Shavata didn't seem overly sympathetic about it. "I need to spend time with each client," she explained, as if this somehow made sense of the fact that no one had told me she was running very late, and as if it somehow extended my lunch break by a quarter of an hour. I also had to ask to have the tops of my brows waxed. "I don't normally do that," Shavata said. Well, since I was paying £29 (about $50 US), I wasn't shy about asking her to do so anyway. When I told her about a major brow brand in the US with whom I used to work - before the brand's figurehead's legal troubles set in - and offered comparisons between their set-up and hers, Shavata asked many questions, took notes, and did not thank me for the help. As for my brows, the arches were a little overdramatic but still looked great. I knew I'd be back: My eyebrows, sadly, mean too much to me to take many risks with them.
The second time I went to Shavata's salon, I had one of her trained brow therapists instead of the woman herself. The therapist in question told me that she didn't know how to wax the tops of eyebrows (huh?), but that she could thread them. I told her to go ahead and do everything by threading. Egads, it was painful, but the results were beautiful. The therapist was delightful, and I enjoyed that session as much as one could possibly enjoy having hairs ripped out of ones eyes for fifteen continuous minutes.
My most recent visit to Shavata's was last week, when I had a different therapist. I was in a hurry and not up to the pain of threading, so opted for a wax and pluck. Everything looked fine when she finished, so I was satisfied, despite being shot quizzical, wordless looks from Shavata, who was tending to another customer in another chair. She did not smile or say hello to this repeat customer, much to my relief. I just couldn't bear pretending to like someone who isn't very bothered about wasting my time - especially when I'm spending so much money with her on a regular basis.
I'm going to keep going back to Shavata's salon, but only to see her therapists. From what I've experienced, their work is as good - if not better - than their boss's, and comes £8 less expensively.
As for the Brow Perfector product, I won't be buying it again. I asked my therapist last week if they had a brow powder, and she told me that they did, handing me the Brow Perfector. As my pot of brow powder broke and shattered to dust in my makeup bag some time ago, I was pretty desperate for a new supply. So I was not thrilled to open the Brow Perfector after leaving and discover that it is not a powder at all, but more like dark coloured foundation. It is rather fiddly to apply it evenly, and the dinky brushes provided are too poor in quality for a product that costs £19.50.
Can you tell that I'm not overly thrilled with the whole Shavata experience? If anyone has any recommendations for friendly, expert brow artistry in London, please do let me know at once.
I've been having a love/hate relationship with my MAC Studio Fix powder foundation of late--it is great for evening out my red, blotchy Norwegian complexion, but can also cling unattractively to patches of dry skin, emphasizing their scaliness, and I often seem to get too much of it on during the blending process. Solution: The MAC Duo Fibre Brush, which is far less densely furred than the kabuki brush I've been using, has made it easier for me to blend just a little bit of powder on my cheeks, where it does the most good, and blend it imperceptibly and avoid my nose and chin, where I can live without it. 
