Julie Colin gently wrapped a scarf around her client's curlers to protect the precious new hair-do from the thick dust swirling around outside her salon in a makeshift Haitian camp.
It's been almost five months since Ms Colin, 26, lost her home and her beauty salon in the January 12 earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of people and devastated Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.
International donors and Haitians are increasingly frustrated at the slow pace of recovery and reconstruction, with rubble still filling the streets and millions of homeless struggling to survive in some 1,300 tent cities. But determined to get on with her life, Ms Colin, who lives in a camp in what was an upscale golf club in Petionville, wasted no time relaunching her beauty parlour under the cramped tarpaulin she shares with family.
Her new surroundings can't compare to her once-thriving brick and mortar, modern salon though.
"Oh, it was chic," she sighed, looking around at the dirt floor covered by a blue plastic tarp, and peering out the open doorway that looks out onto drainage trenches and a steep path that turns to mud when it rains.
"It wasn't like this. It had everything," she said, a tinge of nostalgia in her voice. "I can manage to work here, but I'm still missing a lot of things. Like hair dryers, and I don't have electricity."
All treatments are half price these days - she knows everyone is short on cash.
Manicures and pedicures are less than $3, acrylic tips about $1.20 extra. Getting your hair washed and styled costs about $10. Ms Colin wants women to be able to afford the little luxuries she can offer. New and old clients are ecstatic at the chance for some pampering. So far, said Ms Colin, six loyal customers who still have their homes make as many as three bus transfers to get to this tiny oasis from miles away.
Others, like Katiana Mugascin, a 25-year-old customer of two years, live in the same camp for internally displaced people, and are clinging to a weekly ritual that just feels good.
"I don't feel okay at all, because I am not used to living like this," said Ms Mugascin, looking in the mirror at her newly-shaped eyebrows.