New Estonian Beauty School
Joins International Aestheticiennes
International Aestheticiennes Chairman Mrs. Lillian Maund, recently visited the Tartu Illuravi Erakool, one of Estonia’s leading Beauty Schools, to welcome the training establishment into the fold of I.A. (International Aestheticiennes), which has members from Hong Kong to Houston.
Mrs. Maund, assisted by Jennifer Dawson, visited Estonia, to ensure that the School complied with IA standards to gain their I.A. licence and become the body’s Estonian representative.
Mrs. Lillian Maund is no stranger to the Estonian beauty scene, as she explained, "I am particularly pleased to develop this new contact with Estonia, because Linda Costigen was an important influence on my career more than thirty years ago. I met her at Henlow Grange, where she was training students. She ran a very tight ship there with a strict training regime — up at six in the morning with a brisk mile-long walk to do yoga exercises, then the same walk back for breakfast, which was followed by a full day’s work. At night they had their theory lessons. I am not sure that today’s student would survive such rigours, but she turned out excellent students who never had a problem finding employment. The people she turned out were superb and of course she practiced everything herself, so she knew her subject inside out. Even as late as the early 90s I took a group of students to see her at work. She was a phenomenal character who had a great impact on the beauty profession — sadly, she is no longer with us."
"She also had a training centre in Spain, just below the Andalucian mountains — it was a wonderful place in a wonderful location — a little like our Headquarters in Bolton, below Rivington Pike, but without the sunshine," she joked.
During her visit, Mrs Maund explained the philosophy which underpins her teaching, to leading Baltic beauty magazine Avenüü. She considers her most important role as a tutor and therefore she values the quality of teaching, as she told journalist Juune Jolvandus, "Teaching is effective not just inside of schools' lecture room but above all it is successful, when the problems rising from actual practice are professionally solved." She told the magazine how her Training Centre does not acknowledge the newly graduated pupils as teachers but prefers to search for the tutors from different centres - for example the anatomic teachers should come from universities and dermatologists from suitable centres.
"We approve a good cosmetician who has a sufficient ability and empathy, who can connect with the other person. The client becomes trustful so she relaxes and the procedure will achieve the desired therapeutic effect." Mrs Maund told the magazine. "Hands are the most important implements for the cosmetician - the machinery we have today is only the therapist’s assistant. Surely it is knowledge and skills that control the work of hands."
Following
on from her visit, two of the Illuravi Erakool’s teachers made the
journey from Estonia to Bolton. Marju Maasing and Made Tammepold spent
a week fact-finding at the Lillian Maund Beauty Training Centre, where
they examined International Aestheticiennes’ teaching, to adapt to
their own professional practice.
‘We are here for one week because our school joined International Aestheticiennes and we would like to study the IA way of working," Marju explained. "It has been very interesting, so far we have seen a lot of treatments and notice that in Estonia, we spend more time on some treatments. For Example, with Pedicare, we spend an hour, but here it only takes 45 minutes. We also do some parts of massage in a different way, with different movements — but of course there are different traditions all round the world."
"Our school has been open for more than five years now and we have 45 students at the moment on three courses, who come from all over the country. We have two teachers doing practical treatments and another teacher - a science specialist, teaching chemistry, anatomy, physics and so on. At the moment they are all from Estonia, but in the future, we plan to open a school in Tallin (the capital), to accept students from Lithuania and Latvia," she continued.