October 4, 2007

Café Hair turns into Slim-ply Beautiful Salon and Spa

Grand opening set for Sunday, Oct. 7

By Carol Rosen
Editor

Although most of Café Hair’s stylists remain, Jalel Welby has sold the salon, which is now a full-service salon and spa.

The new Slim-ply Beautiful Salon and Spa has long been a dream for retired registered nurse Song Lee. After spending nearly 30 years taking care of heart and vascular patients that had just left intensive care, she traded gauze bandages for ace bandages and works with women who want to lose weight.

Her methods are simple and slimming and there are no knives involved. Slim-ply Beautiful uses wrap treatments to help its customers trim weight and inches from their bodies.

Lee’s salon and spa uses only natural ingredients to ensure that customers get rid of both weight and toxins. Besides several kinds of wraps, she offers natural form-fitting bras, Fat and Carb Stops as well as ground-up flax seed and other natural products to eliminate toxins as well as other external and internal pollutants that can harm the health of our bodies and our skin.

“Everything is natural; we don’t have to deprive our bodies. These methods give women hope unlike starvation diets that only work as long as you’re starving,” Lee says.

Lee also works with customers to improve their diets and offers a number of health-spa-type services. These include ion foot cleansings, like a foot bath, but toxins and metals are pulled from the body; galvanic “non-invasive” facelifts, which remove wrinkles and revitalize hair growth for those with Alopeca or who are being treated for cancer; as well as facials, microderm abrasion, massages, hair styling and extensions, natural mineral makeup, manicures and pedicures. Wrap costs start at $139, but people can buy more than one at a time and receive a discount.

Victoria Morton, who sells licenses to do the wraps, developed the wrap method 38 years ago that Lee uses. Lee provides several different types, including slender-tone, lay down, power wrap and anti-aging. These different wraps have been shown on television on the “Tyra Banks” and “Ellen DeGeneres” shows.

Too much responsibility
Welby, who owned the shop in the Via Valiente Plaza for 19 years, started working for Alain Pinel about two years ago. “It got hectic doing both,” she said, although she continues to style hair a couple of days per week in the salon. “My time in the salon depends on my customers. I now do my own booking and I generally am taking care of my longtime customers,” she said.

The renowned hair stylist has been doing hair for 35 years and felt the need to make a change. “It’s a lot of responsibility to own a shop because you have to do bookkeeping, payroll, etc. This way I don’t have all those responsibilities,” she said.

As a realtor, she is selling homes in Los Gatos, Sunnyvale, Cupertino and of course, Almaden. “I sell all the way to Half Moon Bay to the north and as far south as Gilroy.”

Another part-time worker at the salon is Homa Taghipour, who lives nearby and spends Mondays and Tuesdays at the shop, although she will take clients by appointment. She provides facials and waxing.

Her facials include anti-aging, European, glycolic and enzyme peals and acne treatments. Her facials are based on skin type and she typically will combine a European facial with anti-aging or firming to work best for her clients. She hopes to include photo facials in the near future. Customers can choose between individual treatments or packages.

Facial prices start at around $90 and run up to $135. Basic massages are priced at $85 to $95 per hour.

“I was always interested in make-up and facials as a teenager,” Homa said. “I used to make homemade masks.

Some of the stylists that worked with Welby remain in the shop. Sherry Shan, who specializes in color and trained in England with Vidal Sassoon, still works there as does Angel Hashemi and Lydia Villenueva. Connie Moree does make-up and Vicki Lampert provides manicures and pedicures. Each stylist does her own booking.

The shop will hold its grand opening and open house Sunday, Oct. 7 from 3 to 7 p.m.

Slimply Beautiful Salon and Spa is located at 6930 Almaden Expressway in the Via Valiente Plaza, next to Round Table Pizza. Lee works Tuesday, Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Wednesday and Thursday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., but will take appointments outside those hours.