Translation and additional reporting by Olenka Martynyuk. Scroll down to listen to Martynyuk read this story in Ukrainian.
On January 2, like many Kyiv residents that morning, salon owner Ludmila Chepizhko woke up to the terrifying sounds of missiles and drones overhead. Russia rang in 2024 by launching its largest air attack on Ukraine since the start of its full-scale invasion two years ago, killing at least five people and injuring 127 others. Residential buildings in the Solomianskyi district of the capital were hit, including one near Chepizhko’s LuChe Beauty Salon. The blast — early enough in the morning that staff hadn’t arrived yet — blew out the glass facade of the salon at a time when temperatures in Kyiv dipped far below freezing.
Chepizhko was back in business the next day. “We started to work behind wooden panels; there was light, heating, and water in the salon. However, the situation was different in the building hit,” she says, keen to highlight who was more severely affected in the aftermath of the strike. A photo of her storefront with “WE ARE OPEN, BEAUTY SALON” spray-painted in black across the boarded-up windows went viral on social media among Ukrainians and the Ukrainian diaspora, proud to show off yet another example of the country’s unfathomable strength. “We have to support each other,” says Chepizhko. “Our salon gives people a feeling of beauty and of calm for just a bit.”
The story of LuChe Beauty Salon is remarkable, but not unique. Over the last two years, we’ve been reminded frequently of the bravery and resourcefulness of Ukrainian civilians. There was the farmer who de-mined his field with a remote-controlled tractor, the grandmother who downed a surveillance drone outside her window with a jar of pickled tomatoes. For many, though, the image of LuChe’s boarded-up storefront was the first time that they considered the struggles of Ukraine’s beauty industry. Its resilient spirit came as a surprise to some. But not to me. After reporting on the state of the country’s salons for the last five months, a beauty parlor reopening the day after it's nearly been obliterated by a missile strike seems — and I can’t believe I’m typing this — par for the course
Press play to hear Olenka Martynyuk read this story in Ukrainian.
It may seem frivolous to be talking about beauty in the context of a country that’s in a fight for its very existence. But for the people who work in salons across Ukraine, continuing to offer beauty services is their act of resistance in a time of war. Every day, they show up to work despite the soundtrack of air-raid sirens and the very real threat of missile strikes. Every blowout, every massage, every pedicure they provide is a statement of defiance against an enemy that wishes to see them destroyed.
Ukrainian salon owners have persisted and adapted while facing financial struggles, a depleted workforce, power outages, and even enemy occupation. In the days after February 24, 2022, many salon owners thought it was the end of their businesses. On that day, after almost eight years of war in the east of Ukraine, Russia invaded the rest of the country with hopes of capturing Kyiv in a matter of days. Russian tanks crossed into Ukraine from north, east, and south, and millions of Ukrainians fled as far west as they could, whether that meant to Kyiv, to western cities like Lviv or Lutsk, or across the border into Poland and the rest of Europe.
“When the war started, it seemed to me that we would never work again,” says Lera Borodina, cofounder of G.Bar, one of Ukraine’s largest salon chains with franchises all over the country and across Europe (there's also one in Los Angeles). “I suddenly found myself in a place where a rocket can fly over my head, where a city I was in three days ago, approving a new salon space, has gone under occupation. It was such a shock. No manicure, no dye job made any sense anymore.” As the weeks passed, it became clear to salon owners like Borodina — who had closed all of her locations in Ukraine on February 24 — that the war wasn’t ending any time soon. They were faced with tough questions: Do they reopen? If so, how? Does beauty even have a place in a society at war?
As an American beauty editor of Ukrainian heritage, I’ve wanted to find a way to write about Ukraine since 2022, but nothing seemed appropriate. That changed as I began to learn from friends in the country about all the ways beauty professionals have adapted to the war — including moving services underground and doing manicures by headlamp — and to contemplate what that says not only about the resilience of the Ukrainian people but also about beauty’s unexpected role in wartime society. Perhaps because I grew up surrounded by the language, foods, and traditions my grandparents brought with them when World War II forced them out of Ukraine in the 1940s, Russia’s most recent invasion shifted something inside of me that I don't think will ever shift back.
The Russians never took control of Kyiv in February 2022. For months, though, suburban districts around it, like Irpin and Bucha, fell under brutal Russian occupation, as did eastern cities including Mariupol and Melitopol. (The Oscar-nominated documentary 20 Days in Mariupol makes the horrors of the Russian invasion graphically clear.) For Ukrainians who remained, life was put on hold. Beauty salons closed; washing one's hair was seen as a luxury. “On the second day of the invasion, when my village was being occupied and I was hiding in the cold, dark basement of my building, I wasn’t thinking of ‘beauty’ or how I looked," says Julia Tymoshenko, the marketing and communications manager at Saint Javelin, an enterprise that creates social content and raises money for the war effort through sales of its apparel and merchandise. "I was in high-adrenaline, survival mode. All you can think of is your safety and the safety of your loved ones.”
But even while salons were shuttered, their owners were hard at work figuring out their next steps for the good of their staff, their clients, and Ukraine. “When the full-scale invasion began, we had 250 to 270 people working in Kyiv," recalls Borodina. "We had G.Bars all along the front line and we had to make decisions on what to do.” Her team quickly got to work relocating staff from eastern Ukraine to salons in the west or to their salons in Poland, Georgia, and Cyprus.
In western Ukraine, salons reopened quickly. “In Ivano-Frankivsk, where my family and I evacuated, salons paused their work for less than a week,” says Alyona Ponomarenko, beauty editor in chief at Vogue Ukraine. “The owners understood that it’s necessary to support the business to save jobs and maintain the economy. And my manicurist explained that due to the refugee flow, there was no shortage of customers.”
In Kyiv and the east of the country, reopening took more time and consideration. However, most of the salons we spoke to were open in some capacity by mid-March 2022 — even the ones in occupied territory that were navigating a terrifying new reality. The team at G.Bar’s Kherson salon watched Russian tanks drive into that city in early March 2022 and quickly take over. “When Kherson was under occupation, it was calm in terms of shelling," says Borodina. "The thing we were worried about was that one day someone would come and say that it was their business now. But somehow, G.Bar survived.”
A deep sense of patriotism contributed to the decision to reopen salons. “War is a costly thing. As a small business, we have to create revenues for the country: salaries, taxes, and paying for other services and goods," says Antonina Krolyvets, cofounder of the Kyiv-based Bunny Nails chain. "We had to give a boost to the economy for everything to start moving.” She reopened two of her five studios on March 12, 2022; by March 14, all five were back in business.
That doesn’t mean the decision to reopen was easy. “There was demand, but I wasn’t sure if it was the right time or how safe it was," says Alla Baranovska, founder of the Kyiv-based Clipse salons. "I felt responsible for the safety of my team, even though I couldn’t personally guarantee it.”
Many salon owners felt a similar sense of duty to their staff. “There were requests from the team [for us to reopen] as they were running out of money,” says Krolyvets. “We had to make a quick decision as the fear and inactivity were making us feel helpless. We wanted to be useful, and we understood work would help.”
Support went beyond financial concerns. “It’s your work routine that keeps you sane,” says Borodina, who opened two G.Bars in Kyiv at reduced capacity in March 2022, and began opening all of them (except for one in Kharkiv that was damaged beyond repair) in May. “People had to do something to not go crazy.”
Getting back into the salon gave Ukraine’s hairstylists, manicurists, and aestheticians a welcome distraction from a new daily reality that involved missile strikes, the threat of occupation, and for many, loved ones who were now risking their lives on the front lines. “The woman who did my first manicure [after February 24, 2022,] says she felt relieved when she saw a message from the salon owner that whoever wanted to could go back to work,” says Anastasia Vlasova, a photojournalist who documented Kyiv's salons for this story. “She said that she was tired of sitting in the corridor behind two walls and being scared.”
Duty to country and employees would mean nothing, however, if there weren’t people demanding beauty services after the invasion. Says Borodina, “It was a shocking revelation for me as a business owner that women would go to a salon during the war.”
Others were not so surprised. “Ukrainian women want to look beautiful even in challenging times,” says Baranovska.
“Ukrainian women are special,” says Oksana Markova, a cosmetologist and esthetician from Zaporizhzhia, a city close to the front lines. “We are very responsible when it comes to our appearance, no matter what stones or rockets fall from the sky.”
From what I’ve experienced in my own family, and learned through speaking to dozens of Ukrainian women over the past five months, there's not much that can come between Ukrainian women and their dedication to beauty. “My grandparents lived under occupation in Mariupol and managed to escape to a friend’s place in Berdyansk, which was also occupied," says Mariya Suant, founder of the London-based e-commerce site I Am Volya. "The first thing my grandma did when she arrived was go get a haircut and manicure that her friend booked for her. The first thing she did.”
Taking pride in one’s appearance wasn’t the only motivating factor for people to return to the salon. There were deeper elements at play, notes Ponomarenko: “Despite all the terrible events, the shelling and the explosions, people in Kyiv did not stop getting manicures. It seemed to be the only thing keeping them going. The only area in their lives they could control.”
For many women, that initial trip to the salon after February 24, 2022, was a vivid and surreal experience. “My manicure in March was very special,” remembers Vlasova, who had just returned from photographing a missile attack in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district (see photo below), a few blocks from where her manicurist lived. “It was symbolic of the general emotional state of society. People started to think not only of survival but about one’s appearance.” Vlasova can tell you the exact color she chose that day: a bright, raspberry pink.
“I remember getting my hair cut in May 2023, when Russia was bombing Kyiv almost every day," says Tymoshenko. “Almost every other night I was sleeping in my hallway to ensure that I wouldn’t be killed by the window glass in case it got hit by a blast. During my appointment, the air-raid alert started, followed by the sound of very loud explosions. The city council app sent a notification that the air defense was working and missiles were being intercepted,” she continues. "The air alert continued through my entire appointment. When I left the salon and went to the underground metro station where hundreds of people were taking shelter, I remember thinking to myself how bizarre the entire experience was of me just getting my hair cut while trying to ignore Russia’s bombardment.”
Not every Ukrainian was eager to rush back to the salon, grappling with feelings of guilt over the fact that many of their fellow citizens remained homeless or under occupation, unable to even take a hot shower. “For two months I gave up makeup; I thought it was inappropriate,” says Ponomarenko of Vogue Ukraine. “But then I did an online interview with a psychologist who lived in a hospital for a month, saving patients. She came on with makeup and said that she was wearing it even in the darkest moments. I was so inspired that the next day I went to a colorist. She lightened my hair, trimmed my split ends. It felt like a renaissance.”
For many Ukrainians, salons offer an experience that goes beyond physical transformation, giving them a glimmer of hope and a sense of community. “We are a place where people see life as it was before the war and the life that will be in the future,” says hairstylist and salon owner Maxim Kulikov.
Salons also offer a form of therapy where, collectively, people can grieve and process their trauma while getting their brows groomed and cuticles trimmed. Says Krolyvets, “A manicure is a treatment where two people are sitting facing each other for two hours, and in the first months those were like therapy sessions. We were hugging, crying, sharing stories about how we survived and helped each other.”
The challenges didn’t stop after salons reopened. Air-raid sirens interrupted treatments, which is one thing if you’re painting someone’s nails and another when you’re bleaching their roots. For 365 Studio owner Iryna Popova and her team, the answer was across the street, in the basement of the salon’s corporate offices: “My team opened the bunker space in two days. There were [meeting] rooms in the basement that we equipped for beauty services so we could finish treatments. The only thing we didn’t have was a way to wash hair.” If they absolutely needed to, they could use the kitchen sink.
G.Bar got lucky with its newest salon, G.Bar Brave, which opened in November 2022. In the basement of Kyiv’s famous Arsenal building, the space was a cannon factory during World War II. Borodina and her team chose the spot in 2021 for its trendy location and unique architecture. “We were initially worried about the fact it was in a basement. When the war started, we realized this was a plus,” she says. It’s the only G.Bar where customers do not need to move to a shelter when an air-raid alarm goes off.
Some salons in Kyiv have converted their basements into underground shelters for customers, although not all are equipped with beauty stations. “These are not bunkers, but it’s possible to stay relatively safe there, at least to minimize the risk of shrapnel wounds made by broken glass or debris,” " explains Ponomarenko. Those salons without basements direct customers to nearby shelters that are scattered across the city.
As Ukrainians entered their first winter of full-scale war and Russia began actively targeting civilian infrastructure, salons were increasingly faced with a lack of electricity and water — two integral elements for beauty services — for hours and sometimes days at a time.
Ukraine’s hairstylists, manicurists, and facialists had to get resourceful. “Finding generators was next to impossible in December 2022, so we were working with portable batteries, bottled water, hot water in thermoses,” says Baranovska, adding that in some instances they provided services in parking lots or went to a client’s home if they still had power.
Salons invested in rechargeable hair dryers. There were days when nail artists did manicures and pedicures wearing headlamps. “For our technicians, it was a small victory to do a perfect French manicure without light," says Baranovska, "to get a bride ready in complete darkness during an air-raid because she has her wedding in an hour.”
Nothing about that first winter of full-scale war was easy, as many Ukrainians were without power for a majority of the long, dark, icy-cold days. What got businesses and citizens through it was an acute understanding of what was at stake and the sacrifices their fellow citizens were making along the front lines to fight for their country’s survival. “It was important not to give up for me and my husband," says Krolyvets. "There was a feeling that if our warriors were fighting, we should do so too.”
These days, many salons are completely autonomous, meaning they have enough generators and water to stay open for a prolonged period in the wake of another attack on the country’s energy supply.
Two years into the war, many salons in central and eastern Ukraine have almost returned to business as usual. Stronger air-defense systems mean cities are better protected from missile and drone strikes than in the first year after the full-scale invasion, and energy reserves ensure there will still be power in the event of attacks on energy infrastructure. The lights stay on, the internet stays connected, and the basement shelters remain relatively empty despite constant air-raid alarms. “According to our rules, when an alarm starts, we tell everyone to seek shelter,” says Borodina.
These days, however, many customers stay put. “Ninety percent of people refuse to seek shelter,” explains Ponomarenko. “When you are constantly under fire, you get used to being a fatalist.”
In that first year, 365 Studio’s bunker space was a salvation for staff and customers who were afraid. “They were really grateful,” says Popova.
But for every person who preferred to head to safety, there were those who wanted to stay put in the salon chair. “A lot of people in Ukraine feel a false sense of safety, meaning they distance themselves from the fear of constant air raids and shelling,” says Yelizaveta Kuzma-Kurtyak, founder of Mediskin clinics, who opened a windowless safe room in the middle of her clinic, far from external walls, to be able to administer facial treatments undisturbed. "Patients like to feel confident that the service will finish as normal and we won’t interrupt it halfway through when the air raid starts.”
Ukrainians are not reckless, though. “People who criticize Ukrainians for continuing to try to enjoy themselves and their lives during this time have clearly never lived through a war,” says Tymoshenko. After two years, Ukrainians gotten very familiar with what presents a real threat and what doesn’t so they can exist with some sense of normalcy.
“An air alert is sounded when airplanes with possible weapons take off somewhere in Russia; an air alert doesn't scare anyone anymore,” explains Borodina. It's at this point that some Ukrainians who find themselves in public spaces go through a series of calculations, not all of which are based in fact or official protocols, attempting to rationalize the risk. “When a missile launch is recorded, you receive an air-raid alert on your phone, but even then Ukrainians don’t immediately seek shelter," Borodina continues. "You have to find out where the launches are coming from. If it is the Caspian Sea, we know it will take about 50 minutes to fly to Kyiv. So I have the opportunity to finish this Zoom, finish my manicure, and then, in 30 minutes, if [the missile is] suddenly directed to Kyiv or if it doesn't get shot down, I move.”
There’s also the economic reality that Ukrainians have been facing since the start of the war. Business costs have increased significantly, but many salon owners refuse to raise prices when everyone in the country is struggling financially. For Ukrainian salons, time really is money, and interrupting work for every air-raid alarm isn’t realistic. “If the rockets are not flying, we are working,” says Krolyvets. “We have sirens five to six times a day and if we don’t work, then we’ll go bankrupt.”
In Zaporizhzhia, close to the front line, air-raid sirens can sound up to 12 times a day, according to Markova. At that rate, it would take all day to finish just one facial.
The war may not have discouraged Ukrainian women’s dedication to their beauty routines, but it has impacted the types of services they’re getting. In the salon, treatments that go beyond the typical cut, color, and manicure have become more popular. “Women are wearing less makeup and starting to pay more attention to their health,” explains Baranovska, who notes a rise in facial, trichology, and foot-care services (like medical pedicures) at Clipse. Scalp-specific treatments are also on the rise at G.Bar.
Kuzma-Kurtyak, the founder of Mediskin clinics, feels that the war has people reconsidering the way they spend their money. “They’re starting to invest less in expensive goods and more in themselves,” she says.
In response to this shift, G.Bar is adding a “mental beauty zone” to its flagship salon in Kyiv, which will focus on relaxing services like massages and meditation. “I used to think, I don’t need a massage, I’ll do it later, or I’ll save that money for something else,” says Borodina. “But all this has changed because there is nothing to save for because the future is unknown.”
Unsurprisingly, a rise in stress among the population seems to have caused a spike in skin-care treatments. “A lot of chronic conditions have reemerged, like acne," explains Kuzma-Kurtyak. "All our patients mentioned that they aged 10 years during the first several months of war.”
Manicures remain Ukraine’s most popular beauty service, something that has always been a non-negotiable for most Ukrainian women. “Everyone [gets their nails done]," says Suant. "It doesn’t matter if you have money or not because you can find services at any price.”
Though Ukrainians may not have invented the manicure, their meticulous process has nearly perfected it. The popularity of maintaining pristine nails in Ukraine also means that you never have to travel far to find a salon or artist. In Tymoshenko’s hometown, a tiny village outside of Kyiv, she explains, there are five manicurists. “Everyone knows who does nails. I was given a ride by an old man in my village once," she recalls. "He looked at my nails and asked where I do them and then started sharing what he knew about the nail ladies in the village. He said, ‘I know that Oksana is the best. All women in the village go to her, and if they can't, they go to Anna, who's also not bad.’"
A friend of mine — an investigative journalist from Kyiv who reported from the front lines early on in the war — recounted to me, with a dark laugh, how in those first weeks and months after the invasion, everywhere you looked you saw women with grown-out gels, unable to remove them because it was hard to find salons that were open. Today, salon owners have noticed a shift away from gel polish to the traditional manicure. “If something happens again and we’re unable to get to the salon, people don’t want to remove gel polishes themselves,” Borodina explains.
Ukrainians' love of manicures made it all the more heart-wrenching when, in the first weeks of the full-scale war, a photo of a dead woman’s beautifully manicured hand covered in dirt as her body lay in the street was widely circulated across news sites. A local makeup artist recognized 52-year-old Iryna Filkina by her red and white polish. Taken in Bucha, a Kyiv suburb where the Russian army murdered civilians, the photo quickly became one of the most haunting and defining images of the war — capturing the horror, the senselessness, and the reality of it all in a single shot.
Despite a significant loss in staffing and profits over the last two years, many salons are still finding ways to help the war effort. After the recent January 2 attacks that destroyed its facade, LuChe Beauty began a fundraiser for its neighbors who lost their homes. Clipse Salon organized “beauty days” for the staff and patients at Okhmadyt Children’s Hospital. “People had a lot of pain and fear and we saw how women and children were forgetting about their pain during these events,” says Baranovska. Clipse also launched a charitable program for the wives of injured soldiers and supported funds like The March of Women and A City of Kindness, offering financial aid and hygiene sets to displaced women.
Ukrainian soldiers have also benefited from “beauty days.” Last spring, barbershops sent technicians to the front line in Zaporizhzhia, treating the National Guard soldiers to haircuts and beard trims. “I can tell you that the hairstyle has a great effect on the mood. You feel confident in everything, so it’s not scary to go into battle,” a serviceman with the call sign Hrim (Thunder) told the Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda.
At the beginning of the war, Borodina felt helpless and confused about whether her industry even mattered. Then she began receiving hundreds of messages from displaced Ukrainians who had stumbled across G.Bar’s recognizable blue-and-pink salons after fleeing from their home cities. “They would tell us that they saw G.Bar and they cried. Then they went in and got one of our services and felt alive, that they had a sense of home,” she says. “That’s when we realized we are not only working in the beauty market; we are working in the domain of women’s mental health. I believe taking care of yourself is what makes you feel alive even when everything around you is a complete mess. I started to see that we are doing much more [good] than I ever thought.”
As the war enters its third year, Ukraine’s salons will continue to face an uphill battle. But they will also continue to fight. Not just to keep the economy going. Not just to show the world that, collectively, Ukrainians will never surrender. For Ukrainians living through the realities of war, the beauty industry offers far more than just the prospect of smoother skin or shinier hair. “People don’t need beauty. They need a feeling of normality," says Krolyvets, "a feeling that they are alive and there is tomorrow. And beauty services help with that.”
In Ukraine, beauty has taken on a wartime meaning that is profound, though not unprecedented. The stories of salon owners, technicians, and average citizens finding solace and strength together echo through the history of countries at war. For Ponomarenko, using beauty to survive and to help others is what keeps her hopeful for the future: “It reminds us that life, whatever it may be, goes on.
