Imogen Edwards-Jones discovers a facial treatment that gives you a youthful glow, even on a hangover
If you’re the sort of babe who knows her Botox from her fillers, and her lipo from her lippy, then the name Dr Philip Levy will probably be something you mumble like a mantra in your sleep. But for the rest of us, the great un-informed, who don’t know their collagen from their cat, let me help.
Dr Levy is the number one Botox doctor in Switzerland, and let’s be frank, I imagine there’s quite a lot of that stuff going down over there. Dr Levy is also the inventor of the Nefertiti Botox lift, a procedure that re-contours and shapes the jawline without the use of surgery. He’s been voted aesthetic dermatologist of the year (Tatler) AND he’s a skin anti-ageing pioneer. In short, what this dude doesn’t know about your epidermis, probably isn’t worth knowing.
And now he’s in Selfridges. Not personally, obviously. There’s a lot of Swiss Botox to dispense. But now you can get his unctions and potions and skincare regime as part of the Face Gym package on the ground floor, just past the nails and the eyebrows. For an extra £30 you can have a 15 minute ‘bolt on’ to the usual Face Gym facial which when the good doc’s extraordinarily fabulous creams retail at £165 for the Eye Booster Concentrate, £280 for the Booster Serum, £290 for the Booster Cream and £310 for the Enriched Booster Cream, seems like rather a massive bargain to me.
And I love a bargain. So in the interest of saving money I popped in for a Dr Levy special facial last week, just before the BAFTAs, when I was going out to a few parties and ceremonies and red carpets, so I was quite keen to look a little less skip-fresh than usual.
Firstly when I arrived, quite early in the morning, hot off the school run, Emma who was to do my facial was adorable. She was fun, sweet, chatty (in a good way) and most importantly, instead of pinning me back onto the chair and cracking on with it, she listened to what I do and don’t like about people fiddling my face. And she proceeded accordingly.
Secondly, you can more or less tailor this facial to exactly what you want/need. So if you are a little time sensitive, and can’t afford to spend an hour in a hairband staring at Selfridges' ceiling, then you can really hone the facial down to its essential elements – namely as much of Dr Levy’s Argan CellActive Complex-infused creams as God damn possible, teamed with a high performance ultrasonic device to the help the cream/serums penetrate the skin as rapidly and as profoundly as possible.
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So after a quick cleanse, Emma went straight to the Levy. Firstly she layered on the eye booster concentrate and the booster serum and waited a ‘sticky minute’ as it is known in the Dr Levy camp. While you wait for the serum to be absorbed, your face can appear tacky to the touch. Then she applied - as I am a crone well past my sell-by date - the Enriched Booster Cream. Younger, smoother ladies who haven’t spent a lifetime sucking down Pina Coladas, with factor-less face, in the sunshine, would need the less hard-core, Booster Cream. Emma went on to combine the creams with the ultra sound, thereby making sure the vitamins A,C, and E plus the hyaluronic acid and the magic patented Argan CellActive, which apparently boosts the vitality of derma cells, get into the skin more rapidly.
Then also by way of a treat, Emma combined the whole experience with a ten minute ironing of the face using a Pure Lift Face electronic shocking device that felt a bit like I’d mistakenly placed a knife in the toaster while keeping my feet in the bath. As she ironed and chatted, my loose, flabby cheeks contracted and contorted uncontrollably and all the while, all I could think was: “Beauty is supposed to hurt, so this must be bloody marvellous!”
Anyway, who cares about the science and the pain and the odd fact that the Pure Lift set my teeth on edge: did it work?
Hell yes!
All I can tell you is this. I looked SO much better and younger and firmer and more bouncy that a few people, blinded by the red-carpet flash bulbs, didn’t actually recognise me. I think they’re so used to my exploded-sofa of a face that when it looked fresh and perky and it had some makeup applied to it, I was not the person they knew.
And the effect lasted at least four days, despite my valiant attempts to negate it. Even staying up past 2am at the Grosvenor House, plasteredly insistent on reading everyone’s palm, didn’t prevent someone from telling me I 'looked well', as I crawled out of bed some five hours later for the school run.
Now that’s SOME facial.
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