Face cream of the crop
Scots beautician to celebrities tells ANNA BURNSIDE about building her own brand
DEBORAH Mitchell massages the jowls and manipulates the jaws of some of the most famous faces in the world.
Victoria Beckham, Cameron Diaz, Gwyneth Paltrow, Claudia Schiffer and even Simon Cowell all trust her with their skin concerns.
Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, whose peachy complexion belies her 74 years, is a devotee and friend.
Kate Middleton had one of Deborah’s famous bee venom facials just days before her wedding. It’s hard to imagine Deborah, 55, whose mother’s family is from Coatbridge, padding around the palace or swapping red carpet gossip with the AAA list.
Her family left Lanarkshire and moved to Telford. Deborah, who is dyslexic, was bullied at school and suffered from severe acne. Now she has built a multi-million-pound business from her kitchen table beauty products – but without adding the airs and graces that the applier of the royal face pack might be expected to pick up.
“I want my brand Heaven to be accessible to anyone,” she said on a recent visit to Glasgow. “That’s why it’s packaged at all price points. You can buy 10mls and feel really special.
“It’s exactly the same cream that the top celebrities use. It’s not available everywhere, you have to buy it in an approved salon or directly from us.”
Heaven products are certainly not pocket money prices but, in the bonkers world of super-luxe skincare, they are far from the priciest lotions and potions available.
The entry-level bee venom mask, suitable for people whose skins are not yet used to being frozen by Deborah’s organic answer to Botox, is £86.50. This does rise to £352 for the most potent mask, which sounds like madness until you compare it to brands like Creme de la Mer, where a pot of mere moisturiser can cost £300.
Abeetoxin, the ingredient that makes customers reach for their credit cards, was inspired by Deborah’s sister’s hives. After much trial and error, she came up with a mix of bee venom, Manuka honey and botulism harvested from bee hives. It controls the facial muscles to give a powerful temporary face-lifting effect.
Since it has been patented, many other brands have attempted to do something similar.
Recently Deborah has introduced nettles as a plant-based alternative. It’s also patented, as Nettatoxin. “I pick the nettle tips myself, brew them, do something witchy with them,” she said. This ingredient is particularly effective on puffy eyes. Like many of her most successful products, this came to her while she was asleep. “I dream them up,” she said.
She might be joking when she describes the nettle harvesting process but there is something supernatural about the way Deborah can diagnose a skin issue.
“You grind your teeth,” she said to one client as soon as they are introduced. “We will do something about that.” There is a two-year waiting list for an appointment with Deborah at her HQ in Shropshire, near her barn-conversion home. The spa has its own helipad so Simon Cowell-level clients can pop in.
And although she has trained therapists all over the world there is something special knowing that the X Factor supremo’s pores have been examined in exactly the same way.
The nettles, venom, hylauronic acid and essential oils clearly work.
Deborah’s masterstroke is to give them an air of exclusivity. In an Amazon-dominated world when just about everything is two clicks away, that makes her the queen bee.