The secret to great skin is not what you think…

telegraph.co.uk:

A post shared by Violette (@violette_fr)While it took a global pandemic for us Brits to get the message, in France women never subscribed to the notion of “anti-ageing” to begin with. “We see ageing as a privilege; there’s more of a tenderness towards ourselves,” explains Serrat, who as a resident of New York is all too aware of the contrast in attitudes to beauty.

While it’s not unheard of for women to subtly tweak something here and there, for the most part the French favour a minimalist approach that relies on regular manual facials that “work on the health of the skin barrier, rather than quick fixes like filler,” she says.If you find yourself in Paris, Serrat, whose own skin is testament to her less is more approach, recommends beauty therapist Barbara Sand, whom she raves is “the only facialist I trust with my skin”, to lift and sculpt the face using facial massage techniques that the French are renowned for inventing.

While I haven’t tried Sand’s facial, I have, however, enjoyed the cheekbone-heightening results of Darphin’s bespoke facial at the Darphin Institute on Rue Saint-Honoré, which I highly recommend if you are in the French capital.Of course you don’t have to take the Eurostar to get great skin.

Since Covid, Clarins has seen customers return to human touch facials, in particular its Youth Expert Facial, formally known as “the Paris Method”, which combines quick-lifting strokes to improve circulation (with a resultant glow), de-puff skin and firm the underlying muscles.