It's official, overdone faces are passé. Nowadays it's all about 'tweakments'. Beauty Editor Nadine Baggott talks to the experts about the new face of Botox and fillers and tracks down the best post-treatment innovations.
When you think of Botox and fillers do you immediately imagine frozen faces, puffer-fish lips and pillowy, overstretched cheeks? But are our fears justified? We are often wary because it is only the bad work that gets noticed; the good work slips silently under the radar, undetected by even the most trained eyes.
"My patients come to me and, most often, the first thing they say is, ‘I do not want to look done,'" says Dr Tapan Patel, director of the PHI Clinic in London. "In fact, some of my patients don't tell anyone they have had work – not even their partners. They simply want to look fresher, to return to a look they had perhaps five years ago, when they appeared less tired, less stressed and more fresh faced."
Doctors with more subtle sensibilities often find themselves having to correct the mistakes of heavy-handed practitioners. "Sadly, you cannot reverse Botox, you have to wait for it to wear off over a few months, but I can dissolve hyaluronic acid filler almost instantaneously by using an enzyme that breaks the bonds – I can feel them popping under my fingers," says Dr Frances Prenna Jones.
"I can dissolve a pillow face in ten minutes. Yes, you will have your old fine lines back, but after a week or so I can replace the old filler with a more subtle version, hydrate the skin to soften fine lines and give you back the best version of your face."
Naturally, these new treatments – or tweakments – require a bespoke approach. Dr Patel says this is key to their success. "No two faces are identical, so no two treatments should be identical either," he explains.
"Traditionally, injectables were very formulaic, with set patterns of where to inject and where to fill. But every face is unique and you need to be very aware of that when you use Botox and filler."
Read the full story in HELLO! out now.