Have you all tried Drybar yet? I've been reading about the only blowouts salon chain for so long, and ever since an outpost opened in Washington, I've been curious to experience the cult of blowouts. This is the longest my hair has EVER been, so now seemed like an ideal time to try it out before I chop it in the spring.
So this past Friday, I hoofed it to Glover Park/Burleith for an early morning appointment. Note: it may say Georgetown on the website, but that's a bit of a stretch. If you don't have a car, the location is inconvenient, but buses do run up Wisconsin every 10 to 15 minutes. Here's a rundown of my Drybar experience:
The design is beautifully done. It looks appropriately posh, and makes that $40 a pop seem like a bargain. (Joe, you might want to stop reading here.) The place is huge too, there's a whole back room with styling stations near the shampoo room. I didn't wait at all for my appointment. I met my stylist, got my hair washed, and chose the Mai Tai from Drybar's "menu" of hairstyles, and drank some lemon-flavored water. No champagne as it was 8 a.m., but maybe I should've gone for it.
As seems appropriate in the girliest place ever, flat screen televisions played The Devil Wears Prada without the sound on. I caught the tail end of this, and then the first 5 minutes of Mean Girls. Again, of course they played those movies.
Actually, I barely watched any of it because I took my glasses off and the screen turned into vaguely-Anne-Hathaway-shaped blurs. This is where my guide stops being a service to readers, because I can't see at all without my glasses and I have no idea how the stylist created my hairstyle.
But this is how it turned out:
Ignore the overgrown bangs, please. I really liked the job she did, and enjoyed the overall experience as a girly treat, but I don't know if wavy done hair feels like me. I know that's more about my own issues and way beyond the purvey of Drybar, ha. My friend Alex said, couldn't you have done this yourself? Maybe if I really tried with the curling iron.
No, looking at this picture I realize that there is no way I could do this myself. The back looked really pretty. It stayed this way pretty much all day, looking a little less "done" by the evening, then turned into very loose waves the next day and was pretty much gone the third day. But your milage may vary.
On the way to the salon, I read the Yelp reviews and some people were really unhappy. Women are just so picky about their hair. And everyone's hair is different, so it seems even more difficult to fit everyone into a "Cosmo-Tai" or "Mai-Tai" or whatever. That's a lot of hurdles for drop-in blow-out places like Drybar to jump through. I feel like I have a level of trust with my own hairstylist that is difficult to replicate with a one-off appointment. I also wonder if the stylist positions here are a difficult job to fill in general, since your tips have a cap on them without cut or color? Do most people who love doing hair want to cut hair as well?
But I can see why these styles of salons are hitting it big. If you have a special occasion or maybe you want to get your hair did and feel pretty, this does the trick. I'll probably just stick to my normal hair appointments and try to get better at doing my own hair, but it's nice to know that it's in the neighborhood. Curious about trying Drybar DC for the first time? Want to tell me about your experience? Comment below!
