Photograph by Robert Scheer
Nilou Rahimi applies a mask, designed to extract skin impurities,
on client Parvin Shamlou at Nilou Day Spa.
By Clarence Cromwell
A banner reading Nilou Day Spa spanned the front of a 1,050-square-foot store at Quito Village Shopping Center Feb. 12 as workers toting ladders and measuring tapes bustled in and out.
Four days remained to transform the empty unit near the Vision Center into a makeup, massage and skin-care salon, Nilou Rahimi said. She was moving her practice there from Harmony European Day Spa on Big Basin Way, where she worked more than four years.
She said the store interior, once completed, would be "just very earthy, with warm atmosphere. Peaceful." She has already bought some wooden china cabinets for her lobby.
"The idea is to have my clients just like my guests at my house," Rahimi said.
Nilou will provide makeup application, facials, brow and lash tinting and waxing. She will also offer aromatherapy, body wraps and glycolic acid treatment.
Aromatherapy massage involves rubbing naturally scented oils into the skin. The plant extracts that scent the oils are said to cause the body to relax.
A body wrap means slathering the customer from head to toe with a sort of paste made from seaweed.
"It's like mud," Rahimi explains.
Then she wraps the client in a hot blanket. The combination of heat and seaweed draws toxins out of the body and replenishes minerals in the skin, Rahimi said.
Glycolic acid treatment washes away layers of dead cells, helping the skin regenerate itself.
Although Iranian by birth, Rahimi learned the techniques in Belgium. She followed her husband, Farok, an electrical utilities consultant, when he found a job there 12 years ago. Another job brought the Rahimis and their three children to the United States eight years ago, and she worked at Beau Visage spa in Palo Alto before making her transition to Saratoga.
The Nilou Day Spa can be reached at 866-5036. Hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, March 6, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved