You won’t believe your eyes

The 30-minute treatment that zaps dreaded crow’s feet

OH THE TERRIBLE pomposity of youth. It seems like just the other day that I was assuring people – much older people, cringingly – that ‘those little fans around the eyes are so charming, so sexy, so wise!’ Yes, a 20-year-old me actually said that. Now those little fans of lines seem less charming – largely because they’ve etched themselves around my eyes. Most of the time you’re too busy to notice, but then someone shows you a picture in which you’re laughing and rather than think, ‘Wasn’t that the best night?’ you think, ‘Christ, when did I turn into Angela Lansbury?’

It gets most of us down for maybe half a second, but rarely long enough to consider turning yourself into one of the Beverly Hills brigade. When you’ve lived there, as I have, you quickly decide you’re better off out of that game. ‘But there are games and there are games,’ points out Dr Ingrid Arion – a French cosmetologist I’ve written about before, much to the chagrin of her French clientele, who want to keep this anti-ageing sorceress to themselves. ‘It’s all about how you play them.’

Of course, without the French accent this sounds like nonsense, but from her pouting Parisian mouth, it’s Descartes crossed with Yoda. And because I know she’s a magician, I let her take her reallife fractional radio frequency wand to the skin around my eyes.

A safe and non-invasive alternative to all the hardcore laser and light eye treatments out there, the radio frequency is combined with a non-invasive tightening treatment to gently lift and resurface that ‘charmingly’ mottled and lined skin. There’s no burn, no redness. The results are astonishing – and they’re instant – 30 minutes later, my eyes look youthful and alert.

‘Because there is no fatty tissue in the eye area and the skin is very fine there,’ says Arion, ‘anything one injects there will be seen.’ Her curated eye treatment is semi-permanent, lasting up to three years, but Arion prefers light, regular touch-ups to anything more permanent. ‘The key thing is to remain perfectly imperfect.’ A statement is so wise that it may even work with an English accent. From £500; dr-ingridarion.co.uk