No pole dancing drag queens
A hairy reality: Houston salon holds up under Tabatha's Salon Takeover
Salon Vendome came through the takeover as a better business.Photo by Shelby Hodge
Salon Vendome held up under the Tabatha Takeover glare.Photo by Shelby Hodge
Tabatha Coffey whips salons into shape.
Honestly, it's hard for me to understand why any salon would go on Tabatha's Salon Takeover.
In exchange for some tough love and a renovation from the eponymous tough-talking Aussie, salons generally show themselves at their worst — unclean, unprofessional, disorganized and and often with subpar skills.
For drama, it's great. For inspiring new business, I can't imagine it has a positive effect.
But Monday's episode at Houston's Salon Vendôme was a little different. For once, everyone passed Tabatha's styling tests with flying colors, showing that the issues with the salons weren't with the results, they were the result of a downward spiral of mismanagement.
The five owners (minus poor Jack) won't own up to their responsibilities, and everyone seems to pass the buck on the state of the salon. With tunnel vision on their own work, the space grows shabbier, the customer service is abominable (No receptionist! Really?), customers stay away and there's less money to fix the problems.
They bicker, don't pay rent and are too embarrassed to admit they own the salon. So far I'm not booking an appointment.
But the star of the episode is Janiece, a classic slacker with $6,000 in debt to the salon and a bad case of verbal diarrhea who wants everyone to just relax and stop taking this salon stuff so seriously. Come on, Tabatha, if Janiece wanted to work hard, she'd have gone to college.
To combat the selfishness and in-it-just-for-myself-ism of the owners, Tabatha throws a curve ball and makes the owners renovate their own salon. More fighting ensues, but eventually everyone figures out how to work together.
Vendôme's problems are significant, but they seem relatively easy for Tabatha to fix by assigning each owner an area of responsibility and giving the space some TLC. Janiece gets fired, but everything seems to come together quickly, and the follow up shows general cohesion. Compared with the pole-dancing drag queens in the "next episode" teaser, it's practically sedate, though Tabatha gets in a few cracks about "hillbillies."
In general the impression the viewer gets is that the quality of the stylists has always been good and that the salon was being held back by other external factors — possibly the best result of a show about how bad a salon is. If Vendôme could hold on to customers with terrible service and a crumbling salon, one imagines it could do quite well with those problems resolved.
Did you watch Tabatha's Salon Takeover? Do you kind of wish Janiece had her own show? (I do.) Will you be booking an appointment at Salon Vendôme?
Ghurka's appointment-only River Oaks boutique is located at 3701 W. Alabama, Suite 185. Appointments are available online. Photo courtesy of Ghurka
