Aquebogue woman opening ‘The Beauty Bar’ in Southold
During a recent evening in the makeshift beauty studio located on the second floor of her Aquebogue home, Allison Rappa was hard at work applying a full set of silk eyelash extensions to a female client.
“I feel like I’m performing surgery,” Ms. Rappa joked as she used special tweezers to dip the silk eyelashes into a medical-grade adhesive before gluing them onto her client’s eyes at a ratio of one synthetic lash to one natural lash.
“There’s a lot to know when doing lashes,” she said of the process, which gives clients the look of mascara, no effort required. “It’s not just grabbing a lash and sticking them on. It’s very meticulous.”
The increasing popularity of eyelash extensions, whose legions of followers reportedly include the eternally doe-eyed Kim Kardashian and pop singer Katy Perry, is one of the reasons Ms. Rappa, a licensed cosmetologist, has decided to launch The Beauty Bar, a new spa she plans to open in Southold by the end of this month.
Located in a roughly 1,200-square-foot space above Salone Dei Capelli on Main Road, in what was previously a psychiatrist’s office, The Beauty Bar, Ms. Rappa said, will offer customers a variety of cosmetic and therapeutic services, including eyelash extensions, professional makeup application, waxing, facials, body wraps and massage therapy.
In addition, Ms. Rappa said, her friend Michael DeRosa, a nurse practitioner, will likely stop into The Beauty Bar once or twice a month to give clients injectable facial fillers like Botox and Juvéderm.
“Minimally invasive procedures are in great demand ,” Mr. DeRosa said of the popularity of facial fillers.
As for Ms. Rappa, whom Mr. DeRosa has known for years, “she’s somebody who knows what patients and clients need,” he said.
For nearly seven years, Ms. Rappa, 34, has operated her small business, Artistry by Allie, out of her home in Aquebogue, where she lives with her husband, Adrian Feliciano, owner of My Butcher in Wading River, and her two children.
“I definitely outgrew my home,” Ms. Rappa said of her decision to open a separate business in Southold, an area where she said a fair number of her current clients live. Ms. Rappa said she’s currently on the lookout for a nail technician and certified aesthetician.
“I wanted a space where I could have a store that everybody could come to for services,” she said of the new location.
A lifelong Suffolk County resident, Ms. Rappa studied makeup artistry at the New York and Los Angeles campuses of Make-up Designory, a professional makeup school. She was trained in eyelash extension application by NovaLash, a leader in the burgeoning lash extension industry.
“Lash extensions are probably the most innovative new technique in the beauty industry,” Ms. Rap-pa said. “You don’t need makeup and you can throw away your mascara. You basically wake up looking beautiful.”
“I’m into beauty,” she added. “I love bringing out everybody’s features.”
“She’s very familiar with the face, and aesthetics,” Mr. DeRosa said of Ms. Rappa. “It’s exciting to see somebody like that opening a business to serve our community.”
