Bargain Rates on Beauty : Students’ Services Offered Cheap

At Girard’s College of Beauty in Santa Ana, Cathy Thomassen of Newport Beach settles into a salon chair and awaits the royal treatment.

“I’m getting a full set of acrylic nails, a French braid and an eyelash tint--all for $24.75,” she says as a student combs through her long, wet hair. “It would cost me about $50 in a salon.”

Those who like to be pampered don’t have to be rich to indulge in such luxuries. Beauty schools offer the same services as professional salons at much lower prices. The catch: Customers must be willing to trust their tresses and faces and nails to novices, and they don’t enjoy the ambience of a designer interior or the benefit of the state-of-the-art equipment of a trendy salon.

Girard’s interior, for instance, consists of concrete walls painted an off shade of mauve, a matching linoleum floor and a dozen well-worn vinyl chairs.

It matters little to Thomassen that her surroundings are less than regal, so long as she leaves the place looking like a queen.

“The ambience is not as classy, but I’m not paying for ambience,” says Toni Rogan, a 38-year-old Mission Viejo resident who had stopped in at Lake Forest Beauty College in El Toro to have her brown hair trimmed. Here, customers sat in mismatched orange and brown vinyl chairs while students in white lab coats painted their toenails, rolled their hair in curlers and went at them with scissors and blow dryers.

“I hate walking into a snooty salon where everyone actually looks at what you’re wearing or what you’re driving,” Rogan says.

The colleges offer every service performed in professional salons, including hair coloring, facials, make-overs, pedicures and eyebrow tints. Colleges charge about $5 for a haircut alone, and $8.50 for a cut with blow-dry. Salons can be expected to charge $35 or more for a cut and blow-dry. A manicure done by a student costs about $4, whereas one by a professional is around $12. The students work for college credit and for tips.

“They can get a major overhaul for under $20,” Pat Follis, supervising instructor at Girard’s, says about the school’s customers.

Adding a labor-intensive treatment such as a permanent or color weaving to a cut-and-style will push the fee to about $25. Permanents and color weaving are among the most expensive services professional salons offer. Rogan, for instance, said she recently paid a professional stylist $150 for a haircut and color weaving.

But because all of the work is done by students, some customers are reluctant to risk a more advanced procedure at a beauty college.

“If it’s something more complicated like a weave, I’ll go to a regular salon,” Thomassen says. “But if it’s a simple thing like a braid, I’ll do it at the college. The service is always good, and with the money I save, I can get it done three times a month instead of once.”

Joanne Kandare, a 27-year-old El Toro resident, has no such qualms. On a recent weekday morning at Lake Forest, she was willingly subjecting her long brown locks to a spiral perm.

“They wouldn’t be doing perms if they didn’t know how,” Kandare says. “I’ve always gone to beauty colleges. It’s cheaper, and usually the students are more conscientious. And the instructor’s right there” to guide them.

School directors say that no one will walk out of the college with a coiffure resembling a green Brillo pad.

“Patrons are never guinea pigs,” Follis says.

Before they snip a single strand of a customer’s hair, Follis says, the students have spent hundreds of hours practicing on school dolls’ heads, on their friends, on their relatives and on each other.

Still, accidents do happen. Lake Forest student Diana Discenzo, 20, said that when she performed a color weave on her first customer, she discovered that the highlighting shade had bled into the surrounding hair.

“There were a lot of little blotches where it leaked through,” Discenzo said, “so we put a toner in. I fixed up my mistake, and she was happy.

“I learn by my mistakes,” says Discenzo, who hopes to work as a cosmetologist on a cruise ship after she graduates later this month. “But the customers are more understanding because they came to a school.”

Indeed, says George Nadeau, owner of the Lake Forest college, “patrons have to understand this is all student work.”

“The students have different degrees of performance, but once they’re on the floor, they’re already prepared to work on customers. And these students do some great work.”

“They aren’t paid, so they’re more apt to take their time,” Follis says. “It’s a more relaxed atmosphere.”

Students aren’t watching the clock, she says. They don’t care whether the customer has long hair that takes four hours to perm.

Most beauty colleges are under a contract with a community college, Regional Occupational Program or adult education program. These pay the colleges out of state education funds to act as their cosmetology schools.

Students who register for the Lake Forest beauty school through Saddleback College, for instance, pay $50 a semester to Saddleback and $300 to the beauty school for their supply kits. They graduate from the beauty college after four semesters and 1,600 hours. Then they take a state exam for a cosmetology license.

Although patrons can make several appointments with a favorite student, they know they can’t become too attached because graduation is never far away.

“I’ve already seen two students graduate,” says June Adsit, 68, of Laguna Hills, a regular at Lake Forest. “I figure: ‘Good for her. She’s done it.’ I feel like I’m a granny to them all.”

The colleges have a large following among people over 50--especially the Lake Forest school, which draws heavily from nearby Leisure World in Laguna Hills.

In fact, many older patrons make their visits to the beauty college a weekly ritual. The low prices appeal to those on a fixed income. Others simply like the slower pace. They also get a chance to mingle while they have their nails painted and their hair washed and set.

“I love seeing the young people,” says Elizabeth Frederickson, 84, of Leisure World. “I come here every week.”

As a young student finishes cutting her hair, he holds her hand and gently pats her shoulder. She clearly likes the attention.

“My husband’s not well,” says a white-haired woman at Girard’s who asks not to be identified. “It’s good to get away and get some tender loving care. It’s like therapy.”

For vanity’s sake, some patrons don’t want others to know they go to a beauty school. Beauty colleges still carry a stigma.

“I don’t want my friends to know I come,” says an elderly woman who would not give her name. She has been coming to the Lake Forest college for four years.

“They’d think it’s terrible,” she says. “But otherwise, I could only get my hair done once a month.”

The economics of it have prompted many people, young and old, to swallow their pride.

“I go to two colleges, and both are getting busier,” Thomassen says. “More people are catching on.”