Makeup artist in Vake

Vake has more cars than kerb. Between Chavchavadze Avenue, Abashidze and the streets around the park, finding a space within a reasonable walk of a specific entrance can take ten or fifteen minutes on a weekday evening.

That is not a small thing when the artist is carrying a full kit. It is why an appointment here is scheduled with a margin at the front rather than at the back.

If your building has a yard, a gate code or a reserved space, say so when you book. It is genuinely the most useful sentence in the message and it is left out more often than the address is.

Much of Vake is pre-1980 housing, and a good deal of it has no lift or has one that is out of service more often than not.

This is why the floor gets asked about at booking, and it is not idle curiosity. Carrying a professional kit up to a sixth floor takes time and it is a different arrival than a lift to the fourth.

Nothing about it changes the price. It changes when the artist leaves, which is the part that protects your schedule.

Older Vake buildings have generous windows, and flats facing the park or Mtatsminda get real usable daylight for most of the day. That is an advantage and it is used — makeup is done by the window wherever the room allows it.

Ground and first floors on the narrow streets behind Chavchavadze are the opposite: overlooked, shaded by trees and by the building opposite, and dim even at noon. In those, portable light is set up rather than working under a ceiling fixture.

Ceiling light alone is never enough for matching a base. It comes from above, it is usually warm, and it hides exactly the tone difference between face and neck that daylight shows.

Vake has the largest concentration of embassies, international organisations and foreign residents in Tbilisi, and the bookings reflect that. Receptions, national day events and formal dinners are a regular part of the pattern, alongside the usual weddings and birthdays.

Those events have one thing in common: they are photographed under indoor artificial light and they run late. The makeup is built accordingly — set to hold five or six hours, and made with the room's warm light in mind rather than the daylight it was applied in.

English is spoken, and the consultation happens in whichever language you prefer. It matters more than it sounds: describing what you want done to your own face is not a conversation to have in a second language if you do not have to.

• Formal receptions and dinners — indoor light, long evenings
• Weddings — Kashveti and the Vake registry office are both close
• Birthdays and family events at home
• One-off appointments before a photo shoot or an interview

Makeup starts at 150 GEL. Within Tbilisi there is no separate travel fee, so a Vake appointment costs what the same appointment costs anywhere else in the city.

Allow an hour per person. Book to finish thirty minutes before you need to leave, especially if you are heading to the centre in the evening — Chavchavadze towards Rustaveli at seven o'clock is its own delay.

Send the address, the floor, whether there is a working lift and what time you need to be ready. Those four things are the whole of what is needed to plan the visit properly.