When I was a kid we lived in a multi-entrance tall building which had a variety of shops on the first level. One of these was a hair salon. When I got my hair cut for the very first time it was the highlight of my year.

It was a tiny little hair shop, with two tiny rooms, one for men and the other for women, with one hairdresser in each. As I sat on the little wooden shelf on top of the chair arms and watched a stylist do a hair cut I was the happiest person in the world.

I can only imagine how happy kids must be nowadays. It seems to me that the hairstyling business is directly related to a happier childhood. Picture for a moment how happy kids are nowadays, when they don’t have to sit on a shelf on the top of the arms (there are chairs that kids can fit in as well nowadays) and don’t have to get a haircut in a tiny room. Furthermore, nowadays they don’t have to limit themselves to a couple of choices of what to do with their hair. Kids don’t just see hairdos on TV and dream about them (as we did in my childhood), but can wear their hair any way they like, as there are hair salons in Tbilisi (Picollo and Otsneba) that specialise in kids' hair solely.

As kids once improved their childhood thanks to the rise in the hair salon business adulthood also became much more comfortable and fancy as well. From having little beauty shops Tbilisi reached the point of having hair care, nail care, skincare and body care establishments. These highlighted, downlighted, toned, decorated, highlighted roots, gave your hair a pigmentation, extended, straightened or curled it, gave you African or European braids, regenerated the structure of your hair, offered a variety of massages and body, facial and nail care. All this you could get in Ici Paris, the beauty salon in Tbilisi. Time brought the need and money (for a lot of people) to take care of their looks. Appearance became so important that beauty shops were fairly expensive, but business went pretty well.

As you got closer to the twenty-first century you could see this business expanding at lightning speed. You could see a variety of beauty shops in town. Some offered fewer services, but hardly any shop went out of business. Getting hair and nails done, taking care of face and body became an inseparable part of the Georgian female's lifestyle no matter what their age. It did not take a wedding or a prompt to make us visit a hair salon, it became everyday life for many in our city.

Nowadays being a client of a certain salon indicates the “grade” of a person. As snobbish as it may sound, Georgians pick the salons and even hairdressers following the latest fashion. The question often asked is “Who’s in style now?!” Not what haircut is hot at present, but what shop and what stylist? Unfortunately a number of Georgians still haven’t reached the point where they can invest time and money in their looks for pleasure, but you should look as good as you can afford, it’s simply showing off. The beauty salon you visit is almost equal to the school you graduated from or the work you do. The fancier the salon you go to the higher the grade of person you are (sad though that is). People ask, “Where is it expensive to get a hairdo?” and whatever the answer is, quite a number of people will visit that establishment for that reason alone.

The significant aspect of the rapid growth of the beauty shop business is that this may be the only field in which you can get a good service. By 'service' I mean treatment by the personnel. They offer you coffee and tea, they have very comfortable waiting rooms with a flat screen TV and a number of fashion magazines and I have noticed that the employees are very friendly and communicative. I recall American hair salons where you have to pay a tremendous amount of money for a haircut but providing that they (most of the male stylists are gay) talk to you about your hair long enough you feel happy to pay that money and you leave satisfied, with higher hair esteem and a big smile on your face. Yet there are shops where they offer a discount for students, and often give out further discounts or complementary cards for fancy salons, as opposed to Tbilisi. Georgian prices are quite high, but that’s the way to get a Georgian clientele. The higher the prices the more interest there is in a salon.

The other upgrade in this business is that people don’t just walk in to the hair shops anymore, they make an appointment, yet they still experience (as I like to call it) “Welcome to Georgia” quite often. It doesn’t matter how fancy the salon is or whether you have an appointment, there is till a huge chance you will be left waiting for your turn. That’s what the happy and talkative employees are hired for.

Back in 2006 when my friend Tati got back from Moscow (where she had lived for several years) with nail extensions she couldn’t get a refill. She did find a salon offering this, but it was everything but a refill she got. Now salons in Tbilisi offer you highly-qualified masters who can do whatever you can possibly get done with your hair, body, face and nails. Salons in Tbilisi hire qualified people, some of them even send their employees to get a higher certificate and pay for their classes. Beauty treatments are in such high demand at this point that the owners of the shops don’t only think about the exterior or the interior (unlike club owners in Tbilisi) but actually invest a lot of money in employing qualified masters.

Today you can have the comfort of taking care of your entire self in one place, although there are very few places like this. So if anyone ever decides to spend money on themselves, there are places where they will obtain a wonderful return for their investment. Beauty salons like Ici Paris, Aldo Coppola, Natali and Lutecia can offer you quite a few things to spend your money on and feel fabulous.