Can a new laser really bring back your eyebrows?
Like so many of us, HANNAH BETTS fell for the trend for tattooed brows — with embarrassing consequences. So...
Oh, my Lord!’ squeals the photographer watching a laser beam work its way along my eyebrow. ‘It’s like a magic trick! Those hideous marks are just vanishing!’
The man performing this trick is Dr Sach mohan, of Revere Clinics. he owns both of Britain’s state-ofthe-art tattoo removal lasers — each costing more than a new Ferrari — which are the tools for his revolutionary Brow Reform treatment.
I’m not having something added to my face, but taken away. Namely the unsightly orange stains left by having my eyebrows tattooed more than 15 years ago.
Before the treatment, each eye bore a fat, satsuma-coloured, slugshape above it. After it, I have normal brows again — no pain, no downtime, merely a spot of redness that is gone in minutes, plus some very slight, under-hair scabbing that will have healed in a couple of days.
After years spent trying — and failing — to conceal these horrors with heavy make-up, it has taken Dr mohan seconds to erase them. Forget magic, this is a miracle! his Superman cufflinks feel entirely appropriate.
Despite being a typically undemonstrative English woman, I grab Dr m’s hand and kiss it. happily, he is used to this kind of reaction.
For, as he says: ‘We are in the middle of an epidemic of eyebrow self-harm.’ And he is the man who can save us.
This is merely one of many specialist services he provides to fix ‘tweakments’ gone wrong — be it trout pouts, pillow faces, or furiousfaced Botox.
Women, it seems, are ever more risk-happy in their approach to beauty, and salons ever more willing, meaning the demand for corrective procedures is a growing and alarming trend.
The eyebrow is a particular trouble spot, as it is forever waxing and waning with fashion. In the past couple of decades, the British brow has morphed from super skinny in the Noughties to its current postCara Delevingne magnificence.
These days, it’s not only Love Islanders who rock a power brow, but even the archconservative Duchess of Cambridge, who has been criticised for sporting a heavy ‘Scouse brow’.
yet pencil-thin arches are said to be making their way back — witness Rihanna on the cover of the current issue of Vogue.
Either way, from tweenagers via office workers to pensioners, our womenfolk are spending £200 a year on eyebrow grooming, according to the market research company NPD, with annual product sales estimated to be £20 million to £32 million.
MANy go in search of a more permanent solution. Twenty years ago, the technology was referred to as ‘tattooing’, generating a solid block of colour. Today, stars including Lena Dunham, creator of hit TV show Girls, and helen mirren have opted for ‘microblading’.
mirren, 73, the poster woman for ageing beautifully, doubtless inspired other older women to head to their local salons, begging for the same.
Despite the fancy new name, microblading differs from oldschool tattooing in only one way — pigment is implanted by making a series of fine incisions to create the impression of individual hairs.
Both treatments are classed as ‘semi-permanent’ tattoos. however, their effects can last a lifetime — despite practitioners requiring no qualifications.
The upshot, according to Dr mohan, is that hundreds of thousands of us are walking around with seriously botched brows. ‘I’d estimate that up to 1.5 million people are going about with bad brow jobs,’ he tells me. ‘Personally, I’m seeing at least three or four new cases a week.
‘The damage I encounter falls into different generations,’ he continues. ‘Cases like yours present as mono-blocks: disproportionate, aesthetically poor, a real eyesore.
‘Work from about ten years ago imposed a marginally better, more shapely mono-block. Five years ago, tattooists began to feel they were artists and introduced lunatic variations, such as brow repositioning. Now there’s microblading.
‘It’s good that practitioners are trying to replicate the natural brow in terms of positioning: the effect isn’t as dense. however, it’s still a tattoo, meaning the negative effects are no different, while the little ticks can be harder to camouflage.’
As women who have made the mistake of having their brows tattooed will tell you, the look often evolves from crazily overbold to plain crazed, with very little by way of a positive period in the middle.
many seek help because their new eyebrows have been applied in a bizarrely unnatural shape. Dr mohan shows me images of patients’ brows forming surprised crescents, or massive, inverted Nike ticks — before he worked his magic.
The dramatic discolouration
that I and so many other women experience is because of the use of unstable pigments.
The ink fades as it oxidises, degrading while in contact with the air. Black turns to grey, blonde becomes an unflattering greeny-brown, while dark brown goes ginger, as in my case. No wonder my brothers nicknamed me The Joker.
Attempts to rectify this have traditionally involved more tattooing (yup, I was fool enough to go there, too). This means that older women, whose brows have drooped, can end up with several layers of colour in a sort of terrible rainbow. Alternatively, some seek out medical tattooists to cover the discolouration with a beige pigment — again, a situation that can result in multicoloured monstrosities.
‘These nightmare brows dominate a face,’ notes Dr Mohan. ‘In some careers — actresses, models, etc — the impact can be disastrous. Not that it’s fun for anyone. I’ve had patients not want to go out until I could help them because they felt so self-conscious.’
I used to cover my orange slugs with make-up — first foundation to obliterate the glare, then Armani’s Eye & Brow Maestro, which can be as heavy duty as one needs. No one saw me without my Armani brows — not even my boyfriend.
Because the tattoos were larger and more angular than my natural growth, this make-up had to be trowelled on in a way that looked over-sized and unnatural, so I always looked curiously artificial.
Over the years, Id tried scrubbing at the pigment, chemical peels, layering dye over the top — all to no avail. My ugly power brows were the bane of my life.
If the eyes are the window to the soul, mad brows reveal that soul to be one of a maniac. No one can look at anything else because there they are: slap, bang in the middle of your face — a self-inflicted injury.
The only means of erasure, before Dr Mohan launched his pioneering service, was the Q-switch laser, still deployed by his rivals. ‘That’s what gave tattoo removal a bad name,’ he argues. ‘Eradication was never complete and the majority of sessions would involve blistering.
‘My clinic would never have been satisfied with that level of treatment, so we waited until the technology had moved on.’
My tip-off came from awardwinning Shavata Singh, of the Shavata Brow Studio. She collaborates with Dr Mohan on Brow Reform. First, he’ll erase tattooing disasters, then she or one of her staff will work with the natural growth left to create beautiful arches, via shaping, threading and temporary colour (from £14, shavata.co.uk).
My own shape was fine — good, even. However, this was difficult to discern beneath the lurid stains surrounding them. W HEN I stripped off their mask of make-up at my first appointment, Dr Mohan put my clown brows at 6/10 on the disfigurement scale — a score that made me feel both depressed and vindicated. He also showed me some 10/10 cases.
One, a young North London social worker, boasted vast inky blocks, positioned bizarrely above her natural growth. An attempt to dissolve these tattoos with saline injections had divided each into inflamed-looking, twotone affairs.
Yet, after just three bouts of the laser, the patient was back to her normal, beautiful self.
Inspired, if a bit terrified, I demanded the same cure. Even after one lasering, it would be impossible to over-estimate the life-changing impact.
Examine very closely, and there was still a hint of discolouration. However, the ghastly orange blemishes existing outside my natural growth had vanished, meaning I looked sane for the first time in years.
Dr Mohan’s miracle machines can also be used to erase semipermanent lip and eye-liner, tattoos proper, pigmentation (age spots and freckling) and even port-wine marks (he casually removed a tiny speck of one I’d had since birth).
For aftercare, one can use a face oil, and — once redness has faded — RevitaBrow Advanced Eyebrow Conditioner to stimulate growth (£99, revitalash.co.uk).
If I crave emphasis, I use my beloved Armani Eye & Brow Maestro, or pencil-wise, I favour Bobbi Brown’s Perfectly Defined Long-Wear Brow Pencil and Smashbox’s Brow Tech To Go.
Better still, for the first time in 15 years, I can simply let my brows be.