How I found the secret of French women’s perfect legs
Every summer, CLOVER STROUD hid her pins — until she went to the UK clinic of France’s top ‘leg doctor’ . . . with miraculous results
The look on the doctor’s face says it all. ‘Five?’ he repeats, in a French accent as strong as ripe brie. ‘You ’ave five children?’ he looks slightly alarmed, shaking his head and almost whistles under his breath.
Then he looks me up and down again, reappraising the challenge in front of him, as if I’m a breeding mare. I feel almost apologetic. Five children is greedy by any standards and greed in any context doesn’t go down well in Dr Jean-Marc Chardonneau’s home town of Paris.
I’m certainly not going to tell him I breast-fed each of those five children for a year, since prevailing French opinion is that a woman’s breasts are the property of her husband, not her children.
Anyway, Dr Chardonneau is not here to give a view on my breasts, but instead to cast his expert eyes over my legs. In Paris,
where he usually practises, he is known as The Leg Doctor, the best-kept secret of French women who see their lower limbs as an asset to be beautified and cared for, just as much as their face or figure.
Smooth, vein-free, shapely legs are a passport to looking younger and sexier, as anyone who has watched Brigitte Macron, 65, working the steps outside the Elysee in one of her trademark minis alongside her husband, who is 25 years her junior, will attest. And, according to France’s biggest market research company, TNS Sofres, 89 per cent of French women think their legs are key to looking good.
This attitude to beauty, like many other aspects of French life, is at odds with British women’s rather more slapdash approach to physical care. Just as French women don’t get fat, and their children don’t reject healthy food with a sneer, it might also be true to say that French women don’t have varicose veins, sun spots or ‘cankles’.
As an expert on leg health, Dr Chardonneau is a key player in a Parisian’s pursuit of perfect pins, but now he’s brought some of this magic to London. Usually practising in Paris, he spends a day a month as part of the ‘French Collective’, a sort of cabal of French experts formed by renowned aesthetic surgeon Dr Bernard Hayot, who opened the discreet London clinic Epilium & Skin late last year. In France, Dr Hayot is a master of
l’embellissement, the idea of discreet, usually non-surgical, facial work that leaves patients looking well-rested and fresher, rather than a bad imitation of their younger selves.
A specialist in oculoplasty, or eye surgery, and a pioneer in the world of fat transfer, Dr Hayot has three clinics in Paris, but has gathered a team of world-renowned French aesthetic surgeons and practitioners, specialising in everything from breast augmentation, facial rejuvenation and body-sculpting to eye surgery, hair transplants and leg care, to practise at his London clinic.
Dr Chardonneau offers a bespoke service to clients, some of whom will pay as much as £15,000 to achieve perfectly proportioned, blemish-free legs.
He can slim cankles, banish stretch marks and sun spots and destroy cellulite, and the range of treatments he offers is impressive.
For
£800, he can do cryolipolysis on fat knees, ankles and thighs, freezing fat cells which the body then re-absorbs and expels; and for £450, he will do a radio frequency treatment, stimulating collagen production to firm skin.
Then there are chemical peels, which start at £80, to fade blemishes and sun spots, and he has pioneered certain treatments around the removal of veins. Sclerotherapy is used on varicose veins, involving injecting solution into the vein to dull and then remove the blood.
At £700, it’s not cheap, but it only takes 20 minutes, so theoretically could be carried out during a lunch break.
And those pesky little spider veins that can spread to the outer thighs and backs of legs can be treated with a Veinwave for £350, which heats and closes the vein, so destroying it, and microsclerotherapy, costing £220 per session, an injection into a vein, so that it shrivels and then vanishes.
Even simple hair removal can be treated with a laser, though at £200 for the upper legs, it is considerably costlier than a disposable razor.
Unsurprisingly, Dr Chardonneau has a global reputation when it comes to legs and, since he’s more accustomed to examining French women, who see legs as an all-year asset, not just something reluctantly revealed for three months in the middle of summer, it’s hardly surprising that I’m feeling slightly nervous about my leg reveal.
He does, however, have a reassuring and relaxed bedside manner so, when he smiles and says, with the faintest sparkle: ‘OK, now you undress yourself, lie on this bed and I look at your legs,’ I’m more than happy to oblige.
I don’t think my husband has anything to worry about, but being instructed to undress and hop onto a bed by a French man is definitely an interesting way to start the working day.
Leg maintenance, however, comes fairly low on my list of priorities for summer, somewhere below hastily renewing the children’s passports in time for that foreign holiday and cleaning out the paddling pool. Getting my legs out can be painful: it’s probably one of the chores I like least, along with bikini shopping and full-scale body depilation.
This is where I fundamentally differ from most French women, for whom slathering their thighs in expensive anti-cellulite cream
and popping organic appetite suppressants all year round is viewed as basic body care. The most I stretch to is a quick onceover with a razor in the shower a couple of times a week and, if I’m being indulgent, slapping on some Dove fake tan. This is clearly not a beauty regime Dr Chardonneau is familiar with.
‘French women, they understand how important it is to look good, because then they feel good. For French women, beauty is a way of life, not just something they do sometimes, you understand?’ he says. I nod vigorously, understanding nothing. My heart sinks even further when he asks about my leg regime. I rack my brains for the right answer. When it doesn’t arrive, I lie and tell him I try to run more often, which I guess is true if you count the number of times I’ve had to sprint to the school gate.
‘What other treatments do you undertake?’ he enquires, politely, as I try to pull off my clothes with as much dignity as I can muster under the bright, white lights of his operating table.
‘Treatments?’ I ask, like a rabbit in headlights and wonder if I can include a trip to the dentist every four months. I cast around, dismissing the idea of pretending I’ve tried Botox and a tummy tuck, but that they weren’t for me. ‘What about getting my teenage daughter to paint my nails before a wedding?’ I say, brightly, but I think the joke is lost on him.
‘Beauty therapy is powerful,’ he says, looking me directly in the eye. ‘You change your look, and it can change your mind. And your mind, bof!’ he says, motioning to my head. ‘Your mind is the most powerful part of your body. Your mind controls everything.’
He lifts up my leg in his cool hands, running his palms over my knee, shin, calf and ankle, then nods appreciatively. ‘You have the ideal ratio between the calf and ankle, which means from the knees down, you have perfect legs.’
Being told I have perfect legs is more exciting than the time I got top marks in an English exam, but it’s a different matter altogether when he tells me to lie down and turn onto my side, running his hands up my thighs, squeezing the handfuls of flesh I prefer to keep well covered up.
‘Hmmm. ’Ere and ’ere and ’ere, there is cellulite.’ Ah, my old friend cellulite. Even the word sounds lumpen and slightly grotesque. It’s something I’ve had since my late 20s but, after hitting my 40s, my relationship with it has changed. It’s no longer a rather fleeting guest who visits me now and again when I’ve eaten too much toast at teatime, but to which I can bid a cheerful au revoir by skipping breakfast for a few weeks.
Now, it’s more like a rather embarrassing, uninvited guest who stubbornly refuses to leave.
Dr Chardonneau recommends a course of mesotherapy, a nonsurgical procedure involving injecting fat spots on my thighs with a mixture of vitamins and chemicals, including 50 per cent phosphatidylcholine.
Over a course of three months, I return to Dr Chardonneau once a month to receive three injections in each thigh (£300 a session), which will break down the fat to be excreted via the lymphatic cells in my urine.
As someone who views sitting in the hairdresser once every four months for three hours to get my roots done a serious commitment to beauty, the demands of this treatment in terms of time, effort and money are not something I’d usually consider.
However, I am nothing if not a dutiful pupil and so return, once a month, for a mid- morning rendezvous with Dr Chardonneau. I undress, roll over and he sticks injections into the three fattiest areas on my thighs.
AFTErthe shock of the initial pinprick, the treatment itself is not immediately painful, but leaves a sensation similar to a faint bee sting. During each session, Dr Chardonneau leaves me with strict instructions to do no exercise at all for three days.
I have no intention of doing any, anyway, but still nod vigorously.
The pain of the injection site increases a little after each treatment, but not dramatically, though it does leave some dark bruising for a few days in the areas. And, while the full results of the treatment aren’t visible until a month after the final session, I start to see results almost immediately.
‘Your bum looks a bit smaller, Clover. Not in a bad way, but just on the sides of your upper thighs,’ remarks one of my most outspoken girlfriends as she stands behind me while I strap some of my children into their car seats.
A month after that, I can fit back into a pair of jeans I last wore three years ago. My upper thighs feel tighter and less flabby.
At our final session, Dr Chardonneau examines me one last time and says he’s pleased with the results.
But he also instructs me to look after my legs with deep tissue massage I can do on myself, by squeezing and kneading my skin vigorously to move the fat around, get rid of blockages and improve the circulation.
A diet high in vitamin E (found in almonds), selenium (fish and Brazil nuts) and zinc (pumpkin seeds and chickpeas), copper (cashews, lentils) and dietary fibres ( vegetables and wholegrains) will also help.
‘And no sugar. Absolutely no sugar. These results will last for ever if you look after your legs,’ he says, as serious as a headmaster telling off a wayward pupil.
Like all good French wives, I haven’t told my husband about the treatment, preferring to maintain an air of slight mystery around why my legs are so much slimmer.
And, with a new spring in my step, I also silently resolve to bin my disposable razor in favour of something less budget.
‘For French women beauty is power. You change your look and it can change your mind. Bof! Your mind controls everything.’ Dr CHARDONNEAU, THE LEG DOCTOR