Looking grand Does the £1,000 facial really work?
Victoria Lambert was the first person to try Britain’s most expensive facial – but is it worth it? Here, she gives her verdict
Admit it: summer holidays suit you. When you look in the mirror, back stares a sun-kissed, freckle-nosed, bright-eyed creature who has had a full eight hours’ sleep nightly – and looks a decade younger as a result. Or near enough. But how to maintain that enviable holiday glow when you’re back in the office, one’s glorious complexion turning grey quickly thanks to strip lighting, canteen food, the commute and air-con.
You could try sleeping more, drinking less wine and buying a pot of pricey day cream, perhaps. Or stocking up on space-age £10 Dr Jart firm rubber masks, as demonstrated by beauty expert Trinny Woodall recently, who commented: “It feels like I can’t bloody move it, but that’s no different from normal.”
Or maybe you should opt for London’s latest and most exclusive treatment: the jaw-droppingly expensive, £1,000 Recharge facial, which has just been launched by celebrity facialist Joanne Evans at Skin Matters, part of the super-exclusive Bodyism club in Westbourne Grove.
Lasting two and a half hours, the Recharge is designed to tackle any concerns you have via a 14-point plan, which includes vitamin injections, lasers, ultrasound, and the sort of mask that looks like something out of a Hollywood special effects department. It’s exhaustive. Although not exhausting – at least not for the client, as I discovered when I became the first person to try Britain’s most expensive facial last week.
The treatment begins with needles. Nurse Colette Bateman is on hand to deliver an injection, either a vitamin drip which lasts about 40 minutes or, in my case, a B12 intramuscular jab in the upper arm. Evans explains that many of us can do with a vitamin boost.
After the pain, the pleasure.
The cleaning, the steaming, the dermabrasion to remove dead skin cells, and then a tingly chemical peel with 7.5 per cent glycolic acid. A brief eyebrow tidy, and it’s time for some vacuum suction – a mini skin Hoover around the nose and chin.
Swiftly we’re on to micro-needling to stimulate growth hormones in the face and allow all the different products I was lathered in to penetrate deeper into the skin, which feels like a swift tickling from a baby hedgehog rolled over the face.
Evans applies a creamy layer of plant stem cells followed by an ultrasound treatment, which pushes the nutrients into the skin 4,000 times deeper. Then the gloopy soothing mask, which contains vitamins and minerals in an alginate base. It covers the eyes, nose and mouth before setting into rubbery contours for 20 minutes; I’m feeling like the jelly inside a mould, setting for a party. Just to ramp up the sci-fi element, Evans attaches galvanic currents at the top, which make my
forehead tingle and improve blood flow. It might feel a bit lonely behind the mask, but Evans is massaging my neck and shoulders, and Sandra Felicio, one of her colleagues, provides a reflexology treatment.
Once the mask is peeled off, there’s still time for a facial massage with a copper wand for stress reduction and gentle face lifting, and an Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) PL laser treatment which stimulates collagen, evens out skin tone, and gets to work on pigmentation spots caused by sun damage. After 150 minutes of dedicated work, I now know how my car feels in the MOT garage.
So – the £1,000 question – is it worth it? It’s easy to see if you add up the various individual treatments, the price certainly reflects what you get. At most clinics, a single peel can cost £80, a microdermabrasion £55, one session of IPL can set you back £400. It all quickly adds up. Even so, it’s a major financial consideration.
“My clients don’t want a standard treatment,” says Evans, who has 25 years’ experience in skin care, working with clients such as Bella Freud and Jemima Khan. “The idea for the facial came from them. Many are so busy when they book to see me, they tend to say, do whatever you can in the time you have. The Recharge was the result – a sort of multitasking overhaul for the face.”
It can become even more bespoke, and this more fluid approach to beauty treatments is the future, says Evans. She also thinks there is an increasing move away from the filler and Botox-era of frozen faces, with women wanting a more natural look. Anyone looking at me, as I sipped my protein smoothie afterwards in the cool café upstairs would have been taken aback by my red face and blooming crop of sun spots stimulated by the laser. But a few days later, as promised, my complexion has calmed down completely as the old skin sloughs off and, golly, it feels like velvet. More information: skin-matters.co.uk