Vogue Arabia Returns to March14: The Making of Dubai's Best Beauty Salon

March14 Beauty Residence has been called Dubai's best beauty salon before. This month, Vogue Arabia said it a third time. On 14 August, the magazine published its report on the wet look lash trend defining summer 2026, written by Alexandra Venison, and turned to our founder, Ruby Barreau, to explain the technique behind it. Our thanks to Vogue Arabia, and to Alexandra, for the question.

The trend Vogue Arabia asked us to explain

For years the instruction at the mascara wand was separation. Every lash on its own, no clumping, no sticking together. This summer that instruction reversed. Wet look lashes are glossy, defined and grouped into fine spikes on purpose, the exact effect a clean spoolie used to correct. It reads as mascara freshly applied rather than professionally set, which is the point.

There are two roads to it. Extensions build the look fibre by fibre: one strand fused to one natural lash for a classic set, several fine fibres opened into soft fans for volume. A wet look lash lift reaches the same finish without adding a single fibre. "It is not a different chemical treatment. It is a matter of technique," Ruby told the magazine. "We control how each lash is positioned on the lifting shield so the lashes remain more defined and individually separated, creating the illusion of freshly applied mascara." A tint, taken at the same visit, carries the finish darker and glossier still.

Why the lift wins on maintenance

For the lowest effort option, the lift has the advantage. "It typically lasts between six and eight weeks, following the natural growth cycle of the lashes," Ruby explained. There are no infills. The effect simply fades as lifted lashes shed on schedule and new ones grow in behind them. At March14, a wet look lash lift with tint starts from AED 390, though the result depends on the natural lashes already present. Growth direction, Ruby noted, can matter more than length, with downward pointing lashes often showing the most visible change.

Three features in one month is not an accident

This is the third time this August that Vogue Arabia has written about March14. The magazine named the Residence in its August beauty guide as a reason to stay in the city, then asked Ruby why Japanese manicures are replacing gel extensions, and now this. A magazine does not return to the same address three times in a single month by coincidence. It returns because the room keeps giving it something worth printing.

The heritage behind Dubai's best beauty salon

What the coverage rarely spells out is where that eye for a trend comes from. Long before Al Quoz, Ruby Barreau built her career inside the industry that sets these trends rather than follows them, working across red carpet season, award shows and fashion weeks with some of the most photographed women alive. Her client list has included the Kardashians, Jennifer Lopez and Maya Diab, among many others whose faces have carried a trend the day before it reached everywhere else.

That is the background March14 was built on. A salon can hire technicians. It cannot hire twenty years spent reading what a camera will reward before the rest of the industry sees it. When Ruby tells a fashion editor that wet look lashes are the trend of the summer, or that a nail should be left to recover rather than covered again, the answer carries the weight of someone who has been asked the same question backstage, under the same pressure, for a client with far more resting on the result than a magazine page.

Why March14 is Dubai's best beauty salon

Call a salon the best beauty salon in Dubai and the claim costs nothing. What gives it weight is who repeats it back to you unprompted: a beauty editor at Vogue Arabia three times in one month, a colourist who trained backstage, a client who has been coming since the doors opened. March14 was built as a residence rather than a salon on a strip: one roof, five ateliers, a standard borrowed from performance beauty rather than hospitality. The heritage behind it is why that standard holds as well under a fashion editor's questions as it does under a client's.

Visit the Residence

March14 Beauty Residence occupies 3,500 square feet in Al Quoz 3, Goshi City 2, Dubai. Appointments across all ateliers can be made here or on +971 58 554 6222.

With thanks to Vogue Arabia and to Alexandra Venison.