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[Wellbeing]: Studio Ebony

Boom! It's Shanghai's first hair salon specializing in cornrows, extensions, fades, weaves and treatments for people of color.
Last updated: 2015-11-09
Shanghai has its first salon catering to people of color: Studio Ebony. It’s in a cute little lane house on Maoming Lu, and they specialize in cornrows, braids, weaves and fades. Check the goods:



The studio was set up by Byronie Richards, an MBA from Jamaica, and her partner, who moved to Shanghai three years ago and struggled to find anyone with experience cutting, styling and caring for Afro-centric hair. “I didn’t have anywhere to do my hair for the past three years,” she says. “Then this opportunity popped up and so I took it.”

Richards has hooked up a team of four stylists who have a combined 35 years of experience working with Afro-Caribbean hair. The chief stylist, Melanie Phillips, spent more than 20 years working on hair and is licensed in Mississippi, Memphis and Minnesota.




Services for women include relaxers, coloring, weaves, braids and locking. Men can get trims, fades, locking and texturizers. Braids, dreds and cornrows: they offer all those services for Chinese hair, too, or white hair, or whatever hair you’ve got. “I also want to target the Caucasian market,” says Richards. “Because nobody in China does extensions for Caucasians well.” Right now she’s working on importing blond hair from Russia and Canada.

When we went down, everyone was sitting around talking and laughing. Seemed like a real nice social spot to gossip and shoot the shit.

Richards says many of the customers who come in have really damaged hair because it’s been treated with the wrong type of products, or by people who don’t have experience cutting this type of hair. “We’re focusing on hair maintenance and getting your hair back to being healthy,” she says. “So we’re using all top-of-the-line products and we’ve got treatments from all the best brands.” All the products they use are imported from the US. Nice.





Prices: Perms start around 450rmb. Waves and braids from about 400rmb. Men can get a line-up for 70rmb or a cut for 200rmb. Kids prices are cheaper and if you want you can bring your own products and they’ll knock down the price.

If you don’t know what you want but just have a hankering for something new, they’ll give you a consultation and walk you through the options.

Right now the salon is only open Sunday and Mondays, 9:30am-7:30pm. You need to book, too, so phone first. Find their full info here.

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