Video: Go Inside One Of South-Central L.A.’s Most Popular Beauty Salons

In South-Central L.A., the local beauty shop does more than hair — it acts as a community center, where locals hang out for hours. Which is exactly what i-D shows in the first episode of its latest project, Real American Beauty, a series that will go inside vastly different beauty shops all over the country. Of course, the goal of the series is so much more than that. "So often, we get presented with a fabricated, imagined, and often unrealistic image of beauty that is so far removed from reality," Ravi Amaratunga, i-D's global group director of film and video, told us. "We're showing a spread of what real all-American beauty is." For the stop in L.A., it includes Mr @ Ms, a South Central mainstay. "We located loads of places [when we were looking for the right subjects], but Mr @ Ms just had a community vibe like no other," Amaratunga said. "Liza, our director, really found a connection there." From Cuban-American boxers in Miami to East Coast prom queens, docu filmmaker Liza Mandelup will span the many versions of beauty in the U.S. Up next? "You'll have to wait and see, but get your prom tiara ready," Amaratunga told us. Click play above, then surf over to i-D to subscribe for the rest of the videos.