How can you tell someone’s age? Is it A, their ability to find their way around anything more tech-y than sending an email and using a printer (guilty); B, whether or not they can recite all the lyrics to a Central Cee/Taylor Swift/Kool & the Gang song; or C, how wrinkly their faces are?
Not that it matters one bit, but the answer is definitely not “C.” As a 56-year-old woman, I find it impossible to tell anyone’s age between about 25 and 40, so furrow-free are their foreheads, and as for the over 40s, from Sienna Miller to Demi Moore to Naomi Campbell, I am fascinated at just how healthy, beautiful and vibrant women of all ages are looking these days, before thinking, “I want what she’s having.”
Women are having it all, and not necessarily in the way that Helen Gurley Brown’s book of the same name intended us to. Published a mere seven years before the arrival of the now-famous injectable Botox, what we’re actually having is, globally, about $3.5 billion worth of Botox this year alone. It’s not just Botox either: more than 14.9 million surgical and 18.8 million non-surgical procedures—everything from “tweakments” through to full-on facelifts—were performed worldwide in 2022. One happy side effect of all this? Beauty brands are now teaming up with dermatologists, aesthetic doctors, and plastic surgeons in a mutual love fest of the beauty equivalent of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”, the results of which might just be giving us our best skin ever.
Dr Patricia Ogilvie, whose clinic Skinconcept Munich includes two private clinics in dermatology and laser medicine, thinks so. Working with around 14 different laser systems, from ablative (which evens out the skin by removing its top layers) to non-ablative (which creates heat and tightens the collagen without irritating the epidermis), her laser speciality was of interest to Dior, which, finding that 50% of premium customers, including its own, undergo aesthetic procedures such as laser, wanted to find ways to further support their skin. For Dr. Ogilvie, a dermatologist and member of Dior’s Reverse Aging Board, introducing Dior’s La Micro-Huile de Rose Activated Serum to these otherwise potentially aggressive treatments is irresistible. “To a certain degree, all these procedures rely on creating damage to the skin,” Dr. Ogilvie explains. “It’s an induced healing process, and we want to orchestrate that as much as possible while also getting the benefits of collagen production. It’s a balance.”
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Dr. Ogilvie is excited at how this might benefit her own patients: “My clients find it very difficult in social situations to [publicly] show any signs of redness post-treatment,” she says, “and so even just reducing the downtime by a few degrees is great for them.”
Dior isn’t the only skin-care brand to be on the laser trail. Shiseido’s new Bio-Performance Skin HIForce Cream was not only inspired by the way laser treatments propel our skin into crisis mode, prompting it to focus on maximum recovery and regeneration, but it was also tested by a dermatologist specializing in non-ablative fractional laser, where it was found that it helps skin heal faster afterward.
Meanwhile, Orveda’s new Youth Glove Protocol Hand Care Trio was inspired by aesthetic hand rejuvenation procedures, such as fillers. Our hands very often bear the brunt of aging and receive a cursory slathering of hand cream if they’re lucky, but Orveda’s new daily cream and weekly pro-grade procedure is applied at home under medical-grade silicone gloves so that the complex can “fill” the volume in the dorsal hand area. It promises to increase plumpness by 23%.
As for Botox? Natura Bisse’s Inhibit High Definition Lifting Cream was designed to lessen the need for injectables and comes with a whole host of dermatologists and aesthetic doctors who recommend it. SkinCeuticals’s P-Tiox is a wrinkle-minimising serum rich in peptides, which claims to work on nine different types of lines. Crow’s feet, under-eye wrinkles, nasolabial folds, and cheek folds, among others, were all reduced after 12 weeks, while skin texture overall appears more smooth and glass-like.
So what’s the best way to combine skincare with aesthetic treatments? “Getting your skincare right is the first step towards getting the best out of in-clinic treatments,” says Dr Catherine Borysiewicz, consultant dermatologist at Galen. At the new clinic, off London’s Harley Street, patients choose from aesthetic procedures such as Sofwave non-surgical lifting, Fraxel laser, or Morpheus 8’s radiofrequency, but equally, they can have gentler HydraFacials using mineral-rich Omorovicza products. Borysiewicz recommends starting a new skincare regime a number of months before having any clinical treatments. Post-treatment, she favors a facial spray or mist to help soothe and cool the skin immediately, as well as a super hydrator such as ZO Skin Health Hydrating Creme. She cites the most important concern post-procedure as hygiene. “Following aesthetic treatments or surgical procedures, you are dealing with a very disordered skin barrier and you do not want to have a negative impact on healing. In the immediate post-surgical phase, wound product packaging is also important to avoid the risk of bacterial contamination of products.” Dr Emma Craythorne, consultant dermatologist with SkinCeuticals, likes to use the Phyto Corrective Gel straight after treatments in order to cool the skin, and also topical antioxidants such as CE Ferulic or Silymarin CF in combination with LED devices.
According to Mark Gruszynski, MD, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Scottsdale, occlusives are also key for post-procedure skin repair, particularly after resurfacing treatments. After Co2 lasers, microneedling, IPL, BBL, or any chemical peel, Mariana Vergara, a board-certified NP and the founder of Beauty Villa Vergara in Beverly Hills, frequently recommends a carboxy gel treatment.
“After Botox or any laser treatment—and really every single day—broad-spectrum mineral sunscreen is essential,” says Robert Schwarcz, MD, a double board-certified oculofacial plastic surgeon in New York. “It protects healing skin and helps prevent post-inflammatory pigmentation and UV damage.”
Will any of these stop us beating a path to the derm’s door and giving up our laser or Botox altogether? Dior’s studies show that when La Micro-Huile de Rose was used alongside laser treatments, skin appeared eight times plumper than when laser was used by itself. As for Botox? “I don’t think people will be having less Botox,” says Craythorne, “but there are some studies that suggest P-Tiox makes Botox last longer, so it can be used in combination with injectables and will nicely support the medical treatments that happen in-clinic.” Good news for derms, then, and—if we can perhaps delay the regularity with which we go back for treatments—even better news for our pockets. Ahead, a look at some of these aforementioned products and more that bolster the affects of your favorite in-office tweakments.
