"Permanent Makeup is Not Tattooing": A Visit to Xinyuanli's Beverly Hills Beauty Ink

The idea of permanent makeup for your brows is understandably intimidating and often receives its fair share of flak when it's distastefully or poorly realized. Nadia Fomenko, the owner and artist of Beverly Hills Beauty Ink, which specializes in permanent makeup treatments, is, however, confident in her work – and often finds herself correcting other artist's mistakes: "I've helped girls that had crooked and uneven tattoos on their face, that they received wanting to get permanent makeup," she tells us.

We're surprised to hear that there is actually so much more that can be achieved with permanent makeup than just shaping the eyebrows. Simply put, it's like a coloring crayon for your face and body – whether you're concerned about an unevenly colored scar, dark undereye circles, blemishes or dull lip color, permanent makeup can brighten it up. Permanent eyeliner is one of the most popular procedures at the moment (wave goodbye to shaky, hand-drawn lines on your eyelids).

The permanent tag is also a bit of a misnomer – once the pigment has settled in, and the skin has healed, the color normally lasts for between 18-24 months. You also don't have to worry about quality – all the pigments used in Nadia's salon are natural and imported from Germany. 

In order to debunk the myths of permanent makeup, we overcame our small fear of needles and a big fear of having tattooed eyebrows for life and headed to the salon to test it out ourselves.

The procedure usually takes two visits, requiring a lighter initial application to see how your skin takes to the ink and so that you "can see what the shape and color look like," says Nadia, which helped us relax a little – it's not in anyone's interest to have you leave with a smear of black ink above your eyes. The first visit lasts around two hours and includes a consultation where you can layout your expectations, style, and other deciding factors.

Lo and behold, two visits and a few weeks later, I happen to have great eyebrows that don't look tattooed or clearly drawn and are not pitch black or fiery ginger. What about the price? "It's negotiable," Nadia says, waving the question aside (but think in the RMB 2,000-3,000 range).

Find Nadia Fomenko on WeChat (ID: nadiafomenko) for more information or to make an appointment.

Beverly Hills Beauty Ink
Open for bookings. 20 Xinyuanli West, Chaoyang District
朝阳区新源里西20号

Images courtesy of Nadia Fomenko