Citysearch LA Summer Beauty Lounge at the Argyle Salon and Spa

City Search LA/ Argyle Salon Event

While I was out on a family road trip last week, I missed out on a fun event going on in LA so I asked Nadine Jolie to stand in for me and fill us all in on the happenings. Not only does she share about the event but she tells us what Jennifer Aniston and Jean Harlow have in common!

“This past week, the Argyle Salon and Spa, located in the Sunset Towers hotel in West Hollywood, played host to a Summer Beauty Lounge with Citysearch LA and MopShots.com, the new Citysearch site that lets you upload photos of your hair to create a virtual lookbook. I mingled, sipped Karma Tequila, had a bang trim, and perused the beauty offerings from the acclaimed, full service salon and spa: massages, facials, mani/pedis and a Brazilian Blowout information station (the Argyle Salon, fyi, is where the treatment originated in the states.)

I’ve visited the Argyle once before, for a divine Hollywood Secrets facial, and highly recommend it, particularly enjoying the fully-private rooms, often named Best in LA. Even with such luxury and pampering, however, the real star of the show is the hotel itself!

Fellow gossip hounds will know the Sunset Towers—also called The Argyle—as one of Hollywood’s most enchanting enclaves: the site of last year’s Vanity Fair Oscar party, a favorite spot of Jennifer Aniston, former home to Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Elizabeth Taylor and Jean Harlow. (Does it get any more glamorous?! I think not.) With a heavy load of history to bear on its gilded art deco shoulders, The Argyle has an alluring, hushed quality to it: walking the wood paneled entryway and stepping into the elevator, the hair on your arms rises with the imagined shadows of legends past. As with many things in glitzy Lala Land, all that glitters is not gold—and conversely, shabbiness often masks hidden treasures—so from the moment you enter the quietly beautiful lobby and walk down to the airy (fully updated!) spa, you know you’re in for a real treat.

Back down in the Argyle Salon and Spa, as my stylist Joseph Chase snipped my bangs and I mulled over a tequila and tonic, I thought how fitting it was to have a beauty event here, the LA sun blazing even as the sun faded below the trees, at a location that has known intimately the secrets of those most beautiful gods and goddesses: the ghosts of Old Hollywood.

Old Hollywood and New collided as I left the hotel, the hum and bustle of frenetic Sunset Boulevard yanking me from the Argyle’s tranquility. Jack Huston, Hollywood royalty himself as the nephew of Anjelica Huston, grandson of famed director Jack Huston, and boyfriend to current Golden Girl Cat Deeley from So You Think You Can Dance, hopped out of a cab, brushing by me as he danced up the stairs of the hotel, no doubt rushing to an impossibly fabulous drinks engagement or meeting. The cycle of glamour continues, and the players will change, but the Argyle remains at the center of Hollywood, quietly watching over it all.”

Sounds like it was an amazing event, but who would expect anything less from CitySearch? Thanks for the coverage, Nadine!

You can read more from Nadine on her beauty blog, Nadine Jolie. Or, choose to read her fabulous fiction: Confessions of a Beauty Addict and Beauty Confidential on sale now at Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, Target and Studio Beautymix at Fred Segal.