After trying to write a profile of \u2018Grishma in Newtown\u2019 for 10 years, Mad Chapman settles for writing this review.<\/p>\n
Grishma is not impressed. She\u2019s peering closely at my face and shaking her head. I haven\u2019t been to see her in 18 months and she doesn\u2019t like what the various technicians of Auckland have done to my eyebrows.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve taken too much off the top,\u201d she says, pointing at my left eyebrow. \u201cThis right one is not so bad but this one\u2026 no.\u201d<\/p>\n
She directs me to the seat and works for a few minutes, then I\u2019m standing up again for her assessment. After another long stare, I\u2019m back in the seat for more tweaking. We do this three times before Grishma is satisfied.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen are you back in Wellington?\u201d She asks.<\/p>\n
Next month, I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cOK come back to me then. And don\u2019t let anyone touch them.\u201d<\/p>\n
As I\u2019m getting ready to pay, a full five minutes after walking through the door, I steel myself for our usual dance. \u201cWill you let me write a story about you now?\u201d I ask, yet again. I\u2019ve wanted to write about Grishma for nearly 10 years but she always shoos me away. First she was simply reluctant, then, in 2021, she was too busy. Don\u2019t write about me, she said, I have enough customers.<\/p>\n
The next year, she said no again but told me she was about to retire and I could write about her then. She just needed to train two more women to thread to her standards before she stepped away.<\/p>\n
Now I\u2019ve got good odds, I think. It\u2019s January 2026, Grishma has two other women working with her \u2013 one of whom watched intently as Grishma critiqued my botched eyebrows \u2013 and with more staff she could handle more customers if I profiled her. But still she declines, as always with a laugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I die, you can write a story,\u201d she says this time. I tell her people want to know about her now, while she\u2019s still alive and still the best eyebrow threader in New Zealand. She laughs. \u201cYou can write a google review. Not the whole story, just a review.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
So this is my review.\u00a0<\/p>\n
New signage at Grishma\u2019s in Newtown (Photo: Madeleine Chapman)<\/p>\n
Grishma is an artist. Her instrument is a piece of cotton thread and her canvases walk the streets of Wellington every day. Her work can be seen in parliament, in the Supreme Court, in operating rooms and throughout school grounds. She is meticulous and a perfectionist and, as I\u2019ve learned many times over, Grishma always knows when someone has tampered with her work.<\/p>\n
For the past 25 years, Grishma has threaded (and waxed and plucked) hair in Newtown. Her business\u2019s name is Sai Beauty Care, but none of her clients would know this. \u201cGo to Grishma\u2019s\u201d is always a top comment when a new resident asks for threading recommendations. \u201cGrishma in Newtown\u201d is another. She\u2019s particularly recommended by and for those with thicker brows, including men. If you need to find her, just search \u201cGrishma Newtown\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first time I ever saw Grishma was the first time I ever had my eyebrows done. I was 16, had a healthy monobrow and was about to shave my head. My older sister insisted on taking me to see Grishma because \u201cwhen you\u2019re bald, all anyone will look at is your eyebrows\u201d and my brow was deemed a task too great for tweezers. My sisters went to Grishma because their flatmate went to Grishma. Their flatmate went to Grishma because her friend went to Grishma. With no website, no advertising and no signage, Grishma was all word-of-mouth among Asian and Polynesian women.<\/p>\n
We walked into what I think was a fabric store but may even have been a restaurant on Riddiford Street and were directed upstairs to Grishma\u2019s makeshift salon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was instructed to lie down and \u201cpull\u201d \u2013 use each of my hands to pull one eyelid down and the forehead skin up, making the brow taut. In other words, I was to be an accomplice in my own torture.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Grishma wound a piece of cotton string between her fingers and pressed it across the bottom of my eyebrow. She leaned over and I saw that she had the end of the string in her mouth. That\u2019s strange, I thought, I wonder what that\u2019s- and then her head tilted back and I saw stars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As the twisted thread was pulled tight, it snagged all my hairs, hairs that had probably been there since birth. I pulled my eyelid as tight as I could while tears pooled in my ears. Grishma moved the string a millimeter and pulled again. And again. And again. After what felt like hours, she switched to the other eyebrow. Eventually, with an aching jaw from tensing my entire face the whole time, I thought I was done.<\/p>\n
\u201cUpper lip?\u201d Grishma asked. I had come this far and figured if a bald head meant everyone would look at my bushy eyebrows, a bald head and sleek eyebrows meant everyone would look at my moustache. \u201cOK,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
The upper lip was much, much worse.<\/p>\n
It was my first time meeting Grishma and I hated it. But boy did my eyebrows look fantastic.<\/p>\n
The day I shaved my head, eyebrows very much pulling focus<\/p>\n
That was 16 years ago and despite my scepticism, my sister\u2019s insistence that \u201cit hurts less and less the more you go\u201d proved true, though I quickly chickened out of the upper lip threading and my go-to order became \u201ceyebrow thread tidy up, upper lip wax\u201d.<\/p>\n
A few years after that fateful first meeting, Grishma moved less than 100m up Riddiford Street to her own space, where she has now been operating for 12 years.<\/p>\n
I have moved out of Wellington a number of times in those 12 years and each time I return to Grishma whenever I\u2019m in town. Despite trying both cheap and expensive salons all over Auckland, none come close to the care, attention and precision of Grishma.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I first visited her, an eyebrow threading was $6, possibly the cheapest option in the whole city. Today, it\u2019s $17.00, nearly a 300% increase but still one of the cheapest options.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Grishma\u2019s eyebrow salon is as pragmatic as she is. The storefront is frosted glass with a heavy aluminium sliding door reminiscent of a prefab construction site office. Step up into the small waiting room with eight chairs, a water cooler and no receptionist. Instead, a set of small laminated numbers determines your place in the line. On the wall is a laminated Listener article published in 2003, explaining this strange new eyebrow technique and speaking to two threaders in Auckland. Every 7-10 minutes, a client emerges from the back room, brow smarting red and gleaming with aloe vera. Always satisfied.<\/p>\n
The full extent of the \u201cdecorations\u201d at Grishma\u2019s, including a scan of a 2003 Listener article about threading<\/p>\n
\u201cHello my friend!\u201d<\/p>\n
Grishma is feeling better about my eyebrows. It\u2019s been a month since my last visit and I haven\u2019t let anyone near them. \u201cThey\u2019re growing\u2026 slowly,\u201d she says. She\u2019s once again peering into my face, tilting my chin up and side to side as she explains to her staffer what happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one, don\u2019t touch the top,\u201d she says, tilting my cursed left brow up. \u201cAnd this one\u201d \u2013 around swings my face \u2013 \u201cactually, don\u2019t touch the top on that one either. Just a little tidy on the bottom. Then I\u2019ll check.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grishma\u2019s new worker, who has been in training for six months, moves meticulously. She\u2019s much slower (a whole six minutes to Grishma\u2019s two) but when she finishes, Grishma is impressed. \u201cShe\u2019s done a very good job,\u201d she says, a little proudly. But still, I\u2019m instructed to lean back and the two of them lean over my face as the new girl slowly (\u201ctiny, tiny, tiny,\u201d coaches Grishma) removes exactly two hairs from the top of my left eyebrow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re looking much better than last time.\u201d She then asks after my mum, as she always does even though I haven\u2019t brought my mum to her in half a decade, and says, \u201cupper lip?\u201d<\/p>\n
I muster all the self-confidence I\u2019ve gained in the past five years and say, \u201cI don\u2019t do that any more.\u201d She just nods. \u201cGood choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
I already know Grishma will never agree to a sitdown interview \u2013 I think I\u2019ve always known, but the game of asking is part of the fun. Instead I ask for a single photo, \u201cfor my review\u201d. She looks at me sternly then laughs. \u201cMy hair is not good!\u201d<\/p>\n
I beg her, please just one photo of her in her salon with her two trainees and then she won\u2019t ever have to answer any of my annoying questions. She looks ready to tell me to piss off when the one other customer \u2013 a friendly and ancient woman \u2013 says something to Grishma in a language I don\u2019t recognise and she softens. \u201cOK let me speak to the girls,\u201d she says and shuts the door on me. A moment later she reappears in the reception to declare that no, all three of them have bad hair and can\u2019t take a photo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNext time,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019ll be prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I won\u2019t be back for two months!\u201d I plead, knowing full well we\u2019ll have the exact same conversation in two months. I\u2019m so so close and surely can\u2019t publish a review of Grishma without showing Grishma herself.<\/p>\n
\u201cWrite your review now and in two months you can take a photo.\u201d<\/p>\n
I know better than to argue.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After trying to write a profile of \u2018Grishma in Newtown\u2019 for 10 years, Mad Chapman settles for writing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1244,492,111,43,139,69,762,2935,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-306413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-beauty","9":"tag-comments-enabled","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-review","15":"tag-society","16":"tag-wellington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}