I Tried an App That Sends a Hair Stylist to Your Apartment. Here’s How It Went.

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New York City can be exhausting. Snow piles up. Trains get delayed. Heels break. And, yet, everyone seems to be working harder than you while also looking fabulous.

That’s why I’m not surprised by the recent launch of Glamsquad, an app that sends a hairstylist to your home or workplace to make your ’do look nice.

The service, which launched Jan. 1 in New York, delivers stylists who will give you a blow-out, braid or up-do wherever you like. All you need to provide is a location (like your home), wet hair, a chair and an outlet. It’s meant to be a time-saver for busy executives, moms and other chic New York ladies who just can’t find the time to make it to a salon (poor things).

When I contemplated this “Uber for hair care,” I was immediately skeptical. It’s one thing to trust a complete stranger to operate a vehicle for you; it’s another entirely to let some random person touch your precious locks.

But I braved the unknown world of startup hair-care services for you, dear reader. This is the story of my journey.

The Glamsquad experience starts with an iOS app. (Or, alternatively, a website). I downloaded it, opened it and tapped Register.

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Once I created an account, I was greeted by a woman with gorgeous hair (not unlike a typical salon experience). Nested in her tresses were two options: Book and Styles.

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I started by surveying Glamsquad’s range of looks. Their styles are categorized by persona, the online equivalent of that binder of photos your personal hairstylist might reference when he asks you what look you’re going for. Your options range from from the Demi Moore (slick and straight) to the Callista Gingrich (D.C. chic) to both new and old Taylor Swift (fishtail braid, various types of waves).

When you evaluate your options by price, they are distilled into three simple categories: blowout ($50), braid ($75), and up-do ($85–$125). I chose the midpriced braid category, because, c’mon, I’m not made of money.

Next up, appointment times. You enter in what works best, and the app will tell you if that slot is open.

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As I booked my appointment for that Thursday morning at 9 a.m., I wondered: Will this startup capitalize on, say, prom night by upping the price with demand (like Uber gouges its customers the second a snowflake drops)?

“I don’t know if we’re going to do that,” Glamsquad co-founder Victoria Eisner told me, “but we always want to keep an eye on affordable pricing.”

I assume that means Not now, but, if we’re popular enough, yes. I entered my payment info and confirmed. Get it while it’s new and cheap, folks.

Cut to Thursday at 8:30 a.m. I’ve just walked out of the shower, and my buzzer rings. It’s the Glamsquad stylist. She’s early, but it’s 20 degrees outside, so I just roll with it. Her name is Amanda Soto, and she’s a 27-year-old freelance stylist who took a train to my place in Brooklyn Heights from Bushwick, where she lives. She very kindly allowed me to snap her photo.

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Soto wheeled in a bulging purple travel suitcase behind her. She laid down some towels on my coffee table and began to unload its contents: brushes, clips, bobby pins, hairspray, blow-dryers — everything.

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I pulled up a chair in front of the mirror I have propped on my dresser.

“Oh, a mirror!” she said excitedly. “Usually I have to do this without one.”

After plugging in her blow-dryer across the room, she asked me what kind of braid I wanted. I pointed to a fishtail in my book of braids (yes, I have a book of braids). She glanced at it for a sec, said, “Oh sure,” sat me down and got to work.

First came the blow-out, which left my hair fluffy and dry. When she spritzed my ’do with some hairspray, I cringed a bit. I hadn’t anticipated how sticky this was going to make my hardwood floor.

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Next came the braid. While Soto separated my hair into sections, we chatted about how she starting working at Glamsquad. She’s been a stylist for four years, two of which she worked at a salon on the Upper East Side. Soto began at Glamsquad in September. The application process, she recalled, was extensive. First came a verbal interview, then a styling test on an actual model, and then a training session, where she was tested on her ability to recreate the 10 styles displayed in the app. Once the company decided it wanted her, she underwent a background check.

Eisner and her co-founder Jason Perri entrusted former Frédéric Fekkai senior stylist Giovanni Vaccaro to consult for Glamsquad during the hiring and training process last year. He joined the team full time in December just before the app launched to oversee the expansion of the team.

Soto is a freelancer for Glamsquad, meaning that she is paid per appointment but is not technically employed by the company. In addition to Glamsquad, she works a few other gigs on the side. She prefers having a flexible schedule. “I don’t know if I’ll ever go back,” she said of working in a salon.

Still, employing an army of freelancers to jump from house to house, styling as they go, brings up issues of safety, health and liability. Though every stylist Glamsquad hires is a licensed cosmetologist, it’s still unclear how each stylist can clean her equipment throughout the day if she has no base facility to do that in. At least that’s what Myra Y. Irizarry Reddy, director of Government Affairs at the Professional Beauty Association, wonders.

“Not that I want to be a downer on this idea, but there definitely could be a safety and sanitation problem with it,” Reddy told Yahoo Tech. “You don’t know how that person is cleaning their own tools, if they’re going from one house to the next house to the next house to the next house. Are they picking anything up along the way?”

Though a Glamsquad rep says New York State does not require the company to carry its own salon license, the company says it carries all necessary insurance to guarantee that both clients and stylists are covered in the event of a problem. Clearly there’s a gray area that hasn’t quite been tested in real life yet. But the thought of Soto, lugging her purple suitcase through eight inches of dirty New York snow just to do my hair, is neither hygienically nor ethically palatable for me.

Anyway, back to my braid. Soto finished and photographed it, per my request.

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I’m no Kate Middleton, but it’s lovely, and it remained lovely for the entire day at work. I proceed to take a selfie for journalistic purposes. Sorry.

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Later that day I received an email receipt with the final cost of the service. In addition to the $75 that the braid cost me, I was charged $3.38 in taxes and a default $15 tip. That brought my total to $93.38, which is a lot to pay just so I could resemble T. Swift for a day. (But it should be noted that locales like Dry Bar will bring the blow-out to you starting at a whopping $95.)

But for anyone willing to fork over the dough, Glamsquad is a completely lovely service: professional, quick and — as far as I can tell — lice-free. If this disgusting winter keeps up, they might just be on to something.

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