Urban Legends: Elena Makhota And Her Beautiful (in Every Sense) Business

Business

I am a professional financier by education and have devoted many years to the banking sector. But at some point, I wanted to change, and all forces were devoted to the development of the Legend New York network. Why beauty salons? From childhood, apparently: my grandmother worked in a hairdresser and often took me to work with her. Those vivid impressions were passive for many years, but time passed and they turned into such a large-scale story. The theme of salons aimed at "business women" was also born from personal experience. If you look at the composition of our guests in the morning, you can easily hold a banking conference - so many professionals gather here.

Place of power

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You need to understand that business women, coming to a beauty salon, expect not only transformation and high quality services, but also speed: for them time is the most valuable resource. Thinking over the concept of Legend NY, I initially focused on the simultaneous execution of the maximum number of services. It was with this in mind that the space was created - and this is an open space, along which it is easy to move between workplaces - and furniture was designed that allowed several craftsmen to work at once. We train our specialists to act in the most extreme conditions - when a woman is constantly and actively distracted: she signs documents, dines, speaks on the phone … This is, in our opinion, the high art of service.

Classics of the genre

It is important for business women to be beautiful, the beauty that gives self-confidence and within which they feel comfortable. The main criteria are style, elegance and neatness. Nothing challenging. For example, the most popular shades of nail polish we have are red, black, beige (although, of course, there are other shades). Quite rarely, our guests do bright makeup, as a rule, we are talking about classics and nude style. Leaving the salon, our guest should feel not a barbie, but a queen. No rhinestones on the nails, eyelashes without "triple sable" … After all, she communicates in a male society, and she should be taken seriously and treated with respect.

Face

We recently opened a new face area in the salon - Face Lift. Especially for Legend NY, 4 facial workouts were developed, aimed at deep workout of the muscles. This can be done in parallel with the manicure, which means that there is no need to choose a special time for leaving. The massage lasts 20 minutes, and the woman leaves us not with a red face, but beautiful and completely ready to continue her day according to the plan. I myself do this "double combination", and I think it is very convenient.

My beauty rules

I have an 11 month old daughter, so now there is not much time left for myself. During pregnancy, I gained 10 kg, but somehow I easily got rid of them. Twice a week I was (and am doing) with a trainer in World Class. She did not give up classes even while she was expecting a baby (she trained until the 8th month), and returned to duty three weeks after giving birth. Perhaps this is what helped to quickly regain shape. Frankly speaking, I am not a big fan of physical education, most often I directly force myself to go to the gym, but then I feel such satisfaction! In order to somehow stimulate myself, I even came up with a life hack: I wear a uniform in a regular handbag in a silk bag (matching the color of the bag) so that it is not noticeable, and I keep my sneakers in the gym. The result is such a pleasant sporty aesthetic: lightweight, not stressful. I am generally for utilitarianism:simplification of everything to the smallest detail. It may be pretty, but it should be comfortable. Simplification is generally my topic.

Once every two months, I dye my hair using our proprietary Sun Touch Color technology. Its essence lies in the fact that after the procedure, the strands look like they were burnt out after a seaside resort. Everything is very natural - as if you went somewhere, burned out and everything is so natural after the resort. Moreover, this color layout looks equally good both on loose hair and in a tail with different partings.

Photo: Getty Images, press archives