Salon owners bring a bit of SoHo to Chinatown
By Paula Rath
Advertiser Fashion Writer
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
It's a bit of culture shock in the heart of downtown Honolulu. On Nu'uanu Avenue, sandwiched between Got Art, a kitschy gallery, and Lai Fong, an old-style mom-and-pop purveyor of cool things Chinese, is an edgy interior that looks as though it stepped out of SoHo.
Salon J co-owner Joe Randazzo wants men and women to feel equally at home in the spare, modern space he designed with Gary Casupang. They plan to bring in a makeup artist and line of products.
The 2,200-square-foot space formerly occupied by the American Institute of Architects is now J Salon, a deluxe beauty salon for men and women. The look is clean, modern, spare and spacey, with a Pop Art edge. White walls are splashed with orange. The floors are plain old poured concrete with a varnish. With a loft-like look, the ceilings let all the pipes and underpinnings hang out.
There's nothing girly about this salon, and that's exactly the way co-owners Joe Randazzo and Gary Casupang want it.
"We were going for industrial without being uninviting; not homey, yet welcoming. We want men to feel as comfortable here as women, and we definitely don't want anyone to feel silly in our salon," Randazzo said.
The co-owners created the look without the help of an interior designer. Randazzo attended the Art Institute in Chicago, and Casupang has done his share of visual merchandising for retail stores, most recently Banana Republic in Kahala Mall.
J Salon
Natural light floods the salon and has been harnessed for the makeup room that is not yet occupied. They are looking for the right artist and line of makeup, Randazzo explained. Ditto the manicure room.
"In New York, this is what a lot of stores and salons look like," Randazzo said. But in Honolulu's Chinatown, J Salon definitely stands out.
