The New York Times-20080127-For Pamperers of the Pampered- It-s Beauty- Interrupted
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For Pamperers of the Pampered, It's Beauty, Interrupted
Full Text (475 words)THE situation seemed dire.
About 40 beauty care workers from Georgette Klinger, many of them employees for decades, had been locked out of their salon, housed in a prewar building with filigreed silver doors on Madison Avenue at 53rd Street. The salon had closed abruptly on Dec. 18, and the women worried that clients would think they had been abandoned.
I'm still shocked, said Eugenia Sakharny, 60, a red-haired manicurist who was born in Odessa and had worked for 29 years at the Madison Avenue salon. You don't want to believe it.
That date in December, the salon's hair stylists, colorists and aestheticians, most of whom are from Ukraine, Russia and Romania, were informed, many by telephone, that the place would not open the following day.
The elegantly appointed shop, which was founded in 1941 by Georgette Klinger, a Czechoslovak emigre and nurse, was known in its heyday as an exclusive sanctuary for socialites seeking to pamper their skin. The company grew into a small empire of 10 salons around the country. When Ms. Klinger died in 2004, at 88, the company had already changed hands several times.
In July, the company filed for bankruptcy protection, and in the ensuing months, its salons nationwide were quietly shuttered. The Dallas salon closed abruptly in October, and eight others, including the New York shop, would quickly follow.
We had no product, Ms. Sakharny said of the jars and bottles of shampoo and facial cream that used to be ever present. No towels.
Thomas Pitta, a lawyer for the company's owner, Angela Krivulka, said that after a prospective buyer pulled out of the deal, the company was left in a terrible cash situation and had stopped generating sufficient cash to pay the bills as they came due.
But to the relief of many of the salon's workers, a guardian angel stepped in, in the form of a local Klinger manager, who worked out a last-minute agreement with Saks Fifth Avenue to place former Klinger employees under its wing.
Thirty-three former Klinger workers found their new professional home at the Salon and Spa at Saks, where, one day recently, a 39-year-old colorist from Ukraine named Vicki Levitskaya took a moment to reminisce with colleagues.
Our clients are very loyal; they followed us, she said of the regulars who now visit their new salon home three blocks from the old one. We really appreciate it; why not? Or we'd be running around in the street looking for jobs.
As Ms. Levitskaya spoke, she received a quick embrace from Angela Furman, a longtime Klinger skin care technician from Odessa. Ms. Furman, 61, thinks of her colleagues as family. As she summed it up, We're happy we are together.
[Illustration]PHOTO: We're happy we are together, said Angela Furman, right, a former Georgette Klinger employee. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARILYNN K. YEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES)