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05 July 2016

Beauty Swag shown by Kim On Snapchat

While the rest of America were celebrating Independence Day, Kim Kardashian was treating herself. Granted, every day is probably a treat for the woman who hired professional mermaids for her daughter’s birthday and few herself to Paris for cheesecake.

In an unusually lengthy Snapchat story, the Kardashian Kween elaborated on her newest beauty buys (or gifts, probably). The list included a pack of La Mer’s Hydrating Facial masks, as well as the nightmarish- seeming Déesse Spectrum mask you’ve probably already seen on stars like Chrissy Teigen.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kim’s dragon hoard adds up to a knee-shaking $4,000, and that’s just fve products. And while the family’s haters can shake their heads at the excess, beauty geeks can appreciate the amount of work it takes to maintain that famous visage.

Kim starts off with a classic: La Mer’s Hydrating Facial masks, $250 for a set of 6. La Mer has long been a favorite of the A-list crowd. (Roll your eyes if you must, but they don’t just give these out for free.) Eternally young supermodel Cindy Crawford loves the brand’s lip balm, and stars like Gwyneth Paltrow attend the brand’s parties.

This particular mask is the closest anti-aging treatment to actually bathing in the blood of virgins, something we all know Kim would do if it was legal. She’s bathed in her own blood, at this point. The masks promise to reduce dryness and wrinkles, providing the all- important glow that reminds everyone in your family they owe their fame and riches to you.

The star showed off her Ziip, a luxury tool for administering electrical facials at home. Ideally, the gold and white applicator shocks your cells into doing their job on overdrive. That means more collagen, tighter skin and faster cell turnover. It’ll also help with under-eye circles, the perfect solution to the bags your husband’s frantic tweets and nude music videos are giving you. Most likely to look like a vibrator, but not be one: Foreo Luna Cleansing Brush, $169.
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Kim often shares her love of anti-aging products (read: desperate fear of cracking into bits like Meryl Streep in “Death Becomes Her”), so it comes as no surprise she’d invest money in deep cleansing. Foreo’s Luna brush pulsates, using tiny silicone bristles to scrub out each day’s pollution and grime buildup.

If you’re still hoping to justify the cost, you could probably use it as a vibrator. (Just saying.)
A tool even ET could use to phone home: Lancer’s Microcurrent Power Boost, $250.

Kim is a longtime client of Beverly Hills’ Dr. Harold Lancer, so it only makes sense she’d be trying his customized beauty treatments. The Microcurrent Power Boost might look like an old-school telescopic pointer, but it’s designed to stimulate aging facial muscles and skin with a gentle electric current. Yep, we’re back to the “shocking our faces” thing again.

It would seem Kim has learned the hardest lesson of them all: Don’t ask your dermatologist for beauty advice, unless you’re prepared to fork over big money. Celebrities, they’re just like us!

03 June 2017

The Beauty Trend Taking Hollywood By Storm

Beauty is everything in Hollywood and that’s why it’s usually our favourite A-listers leading the charge on anything the promises youthful, clear skin. So when celebrities started posting pictures of themselves on social media wearing a rather alien-like illuminated face masks it’s no surprise the rest of us stood up and took notice. These masks are used for LED Light Therapy but while celebrities are usually the first to jump onto any new beauty treatment it turns out the science of LED light therapy isn’t new. In fact, this treatment has actually been gaining in popularity in New Zealand over the past few years. Who knew?

It all started last year with a post by Jessica Alba, but recently Kourtney Kardashian, Kate Hudson, and Kelly Rowland have all posted photos too.According to In Style, the blue light targets acne-causing bacteria; red stimulates the creation of collagen and elastin to decrease fine lines and wrinkles; pink boosts the skin’s repair function. Combinations of the different lights are used to treat skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis. The strength of the light is the key for this treatment.

According to the experts, the leading option is the Korean Déesse Premium LED Mask. The idea is that you use the mask on clean, dry skin for 20 minutes a few times a week. But it doesn’t come cheap. Price estimates for this treatment are upwards of $1000. The handheld LED lights can be used at home daily for three-minute sessions on each area of your face and are more reasonably priced.

LED light therapy has been popular in New Zealand for the last couple of years with a number of well-known clinics around the country offering this service. According to EverYoung a Déesse mask is used for skin rejuvenation and pain relief. “It increases blood flow, promotes wound healing, stimulates collagen and elastin production. It can also be used to treat mild to moderate acne and for post treatment pain relief.”

Other local clinics offering the service include, Forme; Caci and Loft Beauty among others.

04 March 2017

Kourtney Off At-Home LED Therapy Face Mask

Kourtney Kardashian, is that you? The mom of three, 36, posted a picture to Instagram of herself wearing a futuristic light mask on Wednesday, March 2. Turns out, Kardashian was doing an at-home LED-therapy session with a not-yet-for-sale facial mask. The item is part of an upcoming product launch available to celebrity aesthetician Shani Darden’s clients.

Darden, whose list of clients also includes Jessica Alba, uses different colors of LED light as part of the final stage in her signature facials. “The (red) light helps to reduce fine lines [and] wrinkles and boosts collagen in the skin,” the aesthetician tells Us Weekly of the product, which costs $2,200. “It also has blue light, which kills acne bacteria.”

Doing the treatment home is convenient, though in-spa versions are more intense. (A custom one-hour session will set you back $300). “The at-home one is not as strong as the professional version,” Darden says, “but (this product is) very effective.”

One of the benefits of the treatment is its ability to act almost immediately. “LED facials are great to getright before events because they do a fantastic job at taming breakouts and giving the face a radiant glow,” Darden previously told Us Weekly.

07 May 2017

ANTI-AGEING MIRACLE MASK

Nestled in celebrity facialist Georgia Louise’s modernist atelier on Manhattan’s Central Park West is an arsenal of products to create smooth, fawless-looking skin. Her most desired tool, however, is the Déesse Spectrum Mask, a $2,900 Korean-designed LED contraption resembling Jason Voorhees’s white hockey mask from Friday the 13th. Louise claims that the mask, which she uses regularly as part of her customized facials ($550 a pop), not only prevents aging, erases fne lines, an improves skin tone but also is “life-changing,” she says. “Linda Evangelista was the frst client to buy it, then makeup artist Gucci Westman got one, and it just snowballed.”

How LED Light Therapy Works So why is the Deesse mask which Louise discovered at a beauty trade show, creating such a buzz? At-home LED (light-emitting diode) treatments are nothing new: They usually involve a handheld device that sends specifc wavelengths of light energy (painlessly)

New Anti Aging Beauty Treatment – Déesse Skin Mask System into the skin’s deeper layers. Red light stimulates collagen and elastin production, which leads to
plumped wrinkles and frmer skin; blue light kills the bacteria that contributes to acne. The Déesse has both red and blue lights, and they can be turned on simultaneously. In addition, a third, near- infrared light promotes circulation and scar healing.

A big part of the Déesse’s allure is that it’s unusual to have red and blue lights in one device, just as it is to be able to combine them. It’s also rare to fnd a device that is contoured to ft over the entire face. Louise says that the mask should be purchased only through skin-care professionals. “You have to give instructions on how to use it—you don’t want to overdose on light therapy. It’s a professional-strength mask, and it’s not something to be bought lightly and abused,” she says. “But for anyone who wants to prolong healthy looking skin without invasive surgeries, it’s a phenomenal tool.” She recommends using the mask no more than three or four times a week in 20-minute increments, after applying Biologique Recherche’s Lotion P50 and Creme Masque Vernix to the face. Louise considers a woman in her 40s to be the ideal candidate but says that people with severe acne can also beneft from the mask. “It’s fabulous for infammation and controlling the sebaceous glands,” she explains.

The Déesse does have its skeptics. Dermatologist Neil Sadick, medical director of New York’s Sadick Research Group, has been testing the device for the past six months and questions its individual effectiveness. However, he believes in the mask’s potential usefulness when coupled with in-offce treatments. “We might have a patient come in for an Omnilux in-offce LED treatment once a month and then use the Deesse at home as a supporting device,” he says. “The at- home technologies don’t have the same energy levels, so they don’t work as well. Plus, there are no good evidence-based studies showing its effcacy that have been published.” And there may be risks associated with at-home LED devices: Studies have linked LED light with retinal damage(eye guards should always be worn when using the Deesse). Sadick has had patients “complain of fickering in their eyes” after LED therapy.

Westman, one of the fashion industry’s most sought-after makeup artists, has no complaints. She’s a devoted fan of the device, for use both on herself at home and on her celebrity and model clients at photo shoots. “I had been using handheld light machines for years, and it would take an hour and a half to do my whole face,” she says. “Something started happening with my skin—rosacea, I think —and it was brutal; nothing was working. I used the Deesse one time, and the texture and quality of my skin changed. It’s defnitely tighter.”

30 July 2017

IS THIS YOUR NEW ON-THE-GO FACIALIST?

The recent boom in high-tech beauty gadgetry has made it possible to turn your bathroom into a sci-fi playground, complete with handheld lasers to zap unwanted hair and pocket-size micro-current wands to tone facial muscles. But a new device—spottedinside the Upper West Side spa of the Manhattan facialist Georgia Louise this month and worn by Katy Perry in a recent post on her Phhhoto account—is taking the concept to a whole new level.

Designed to fit over your face like a futuristic hockey mask, the Déesse Spectrum apparatus is a gleaming white contraption outfitted with dozens of tiny bulbs that emit various forms of professional-strength LED light to boost targeted responses within the skin. “It’s seriously fantastic,” says Louise on a recent Friday afternoon, zipping around inside the wood-paneled spa where she regularly uses it as part of the protocol in her custom facials. Mode 1 sends out 630 nanometers of red light to stimulate collagen and break up hyper-pigmentation, she explains, while mode 2 delivers 415 nanometers of blue light to kill acne-causing bacteria and reduce inflammation. Mode 3 bathes your complexion in both red and blue lights, along with a combined pinkish beam that increases circulation and promotes wound healing (ideal, say, after a procedure at the dermatologist’s office, or simply as relief for accidental sunburn). To intensify the transformation, small patches can be attached to the neck to tone and tighten the muscles simultaneously with low frequency energy, resulting in a subtle lift.

By effectively fighting wrinkles, dark spots, acne, and redness all at once, the supercharged mask—which hails from Korea—is super efficient, says Louise, who discovered it while attending a skin care convention with clients (and friends) Linda Evangelista and Gucci Westman earlier this spring. “Now we’re all obsessed with it!” she admits. And while the mask is typically only available through professional channels, Louise will dispense it to clients under her supervision. Not surprisingly, it commands a steep price—$2,900 to be exact. Although considering how often you’re meant to use it, its cost-ratio value may be roughly comparable to investing in one perfect hold-everything handbag for fall.

“I recommend doing three or four 20-minute sessions a week—not every day,” says Louise. First, she advises applying cleansers, lotions, and serums tailored to your skin’s needs “since the light will help them penetrate deeply,” she says. (Among her favorite prep products: Biologique Recherche’s exfoliating Lotion 50, repairing Sérum Placenta, and vitamin-rich Sérum Amniotique E). Although an immediate glow is noticeable after one session, Louise says six treatments provide the ultimate, youth-enhancing boost.

Westman, for one, is quick to agree—the Spectrum was her secret weapon for this year’s Met Ball. “I used it for two weeks beforehand,” she reveals. “It totally cleared up the redness I had from traveling, and I’ve never gotten more compliments on my skin.” Indeed, the portability factor is a distinguishing feature, since the featherlight mask and digital controller can easily be tucked into a carry-on or suitcase (“It weighs less than a pair of Jimmy Choos,” Louise says).

In fact, Louise says her clients often use their 20- minute sessions as a form of meditative therapy. “Linda watches TV while wearing her mask,” Louise says. “And I think Gucci chops onions.”