‘GOD, I’M GOOD’
Facialist uses oxygen to contour clients’ faces for the red carpet
For a man with an aristocratic title, positioned at the hub of Hollywood’s glamour machine, Lord Gavin McLeod-Valentine (real name) had a fairly unglamorous time of it ahead of the recent Golden Globes, leaping in and out of Ubers with his anthill of beauty equipment while he dashed between Los Angeles’s far-flung neighbourhoods tending to nine Globes nominees and presenters. These included Allison Janney, Kristen Bell, Isan Elba (Idris’s daughter and one of the Globes’ ambassadors) and Edgar Ramirez. What makes this man so soughtafter? Oxygen. There’s a bit more to it than that, but oxygen is, he claims, “the magic delivery system” in a facial that changed his life (really). “People think, argggh oxygen, it’s going to unharness a load of free radicals. But it’s antiinflammatory, great for rosacea, antibacterial and makes everything look juicy.”
He knows the skin cycle. “All my adult life I’d battled with egregious acne. It was so bad, and the only way I knew to fight it was with products that stripped my skin and left me looking like a runaway from a fire. I can’t tell you how many social invitations I wanted to turn down because I was so selfconscious.”
He talks fast — just about every trace of his Scottish upbringing has been expunged from his transatlantic rattle. I keep asking him to slow down, but he can’t. He’s got his lists to juggle — who gets the best slots (the one as close to the awards as possible). He has worked during all of the major awards and will be in demand on Oscar night. If he sounds like someone high on oxygen, maybe it’s because this all happened relatively belatedly. For 10 years he worked for high-end jewelry houses, including Garrard and Bulgari, before segueing to equally high-end beauty brands such as Sisley and La Prairie. It was Gina Brooke, Madonna’s makeup artist, who introduced him to Intraceuticals, an Australian skincare line.
“After two days, I called her and said, ‘Oh my God. This is incredible.’” Brooke told him to calm down and give it another two weeks, just in case. Then she gave him an Intraceuticals oxygen facial, “And I thought, ‘how does the world not know about this?’” He spent the next year convincing Intraceuticals to let him work with them, emailing them periodically about all the opportunities they were missing. He enrolled in beauty school in New York and in 2016 Intraceuticals finally took him on.
His access has grown by word of mouth. Actress Priyanka Chopra (friend of the Duchess of Sussex) introduced him to Halle Berry, who he oxygenised for a première and the 2017 Met Ball.
He began experimenting. The classic Intraceuticals facial that had given him his first “eureka” primarily used oxygen to push ultralightweight particles of hyaluronic acid (a molecule that holds up to a thousand times its own weight in water) deep into the dermis. The good Lord wondered what would happen if he used the oxygen stream to gently manipulate his clients’ facial structure. What happened is that he achieved some remarkable contouring results: More definition, lifted cheekbones which in turn opened up the eyes and firmer jawlines. “Sometimes I stand back and look at my work and think ‘God, I’m good,’” he says.
None of this is permanent, but it lasts long enough for celebrities to look radiant and rested on the red carpet, and cumulatively, the massage and mega hits of moisture improve the skin’s texture and tone. It’s remarkably low intervention by modern standards — no lasers, no needles — but there’s a move among Hollywood’s actresses to back off from the rictus of lineless, inflated pillow faces of a few years ago.
McLeod himself, although he has the smooth, airbrushed complexion favoured by Kim Kardashian (another client), seems to have changed his tune since we met last autumn in London, when he told me he thought most British women looked tired compared with their American counterparts. He used to go to the late Dr. Fredric Brandt, the (in)famous plastic surgeon and Botox czar whose approach, when it came to fillers, was more is more. “Yeah, his work on me was definitely a bit questionable.”
McLeod still swears by lasers, peels (“the proper, professional ones, not the ones you buy at the pharmacy”) and Profila (“it’s not even really filler but hyaluronic acid, so it’s like an injectable moisturizer”), but he also recommends protecting your skin daily from the sun and getting enough sleep (he recommends Lumity, skin supplements that can also improve sleep), regularly using Nu Face, a home gadget that uses mircrocurrents, and, obviously, the Intraceuticals oxygen facial.
The products themselves (from intraceuticals.com) are effective: The three heroes contain different weight molecules of hyaluronic acid to target as deeply as possible and seal it all in with a hyaluronic acid moisturizer.
He now says he finds it refreshing to see women (and men) “who look like themselves and aren’t overly terrified of the aging process. But sometimes a little tweaking is fabulous. Americans are very proactive with their beauty upkeep.” He loves all his clients and ideally wants an hour — and a scotch, which he gets with Janney — to complete their transformations. But when he did Margot Robbie for the UK première of I, Tonya, he had 15 minutes. But she’s in her 20s and naturally stunning, I say. “They work their ass off, so you never know quite what you’re getting when they walk in the room. They don’t look the way they do on the red carpet,” he responds. Brandt told him never to fall into the trap of thinking he’s the celebrities’ bestie. “He warned they’d all ignore me at parties because they want to keep their beauty secrets. But I haven’t found that. Honestly, I don’t think of myself as a service provider but a kind of healer. Whatever energy I bring into the room is what they take on to the red carpet with them. I can’t be chaotic. I have to be positive.”
Whatever energy I bring into the room is what they take on to the red carpet with them. I can’t be chaotic. I have to be positive.