Time for a tweakment? To roll back the years without raising brows, a new en point Botox pen may be the answer
BOTOX is dead: long live Botox. Time was when appearance-conscious sorts would compare how spookily smooth their foreheads were, skin tightened around widened eyes to deliver a slightly disturbing stare. Re-encountering this look at a Manhattan haunt of the well and truly Botoxed not long ago made me wince.
I spent the evening mesmerised by my host’s forehead. Her lines had been so ruthlessly eradicated that they had ended up as a single high ridge under the hairline. Having planned to ask her who her dermatologist was, I changed my mind. Now that is a sure sign of Botox fatigue.
And yet there is no more effective way of dealing with stubbornly ageing lines than a dab of neurotoxins to freeze the muscles. So a new generation of practitioners are leaving the “frozen forehead” look in favour of “tweakments”: small, targeted interventions that leave us looking refreshed rather than radically changed.
The Botox pen is part of this evolution — a lighter, less painful and more precise way of treatment via a motorised injection. Dr Jules Nabet is one of the dabbest hands in London with the Botox pen, developed in Switzerland. One of a small, sought-after cast of French cosmetic dermatologists working in London, Nabet imported the more natural beauty of Inès de la Fressange and Isabelle Huppert. Others agree. A luminous Robin Wright, playing the alluring villainess Claire in House of Cards, says candidly she favours a light “sprinkling” of Botox twice a year. Michael Gove’s journalist wife Sarah Vine agrees.
Next-generation Botox aims for a natural look, so people won’t be able to tell you have had a “procedure”. The Botox pen wielded by Dr Nabet, in a modest basement in Kensington, looks reassuringly different to a traditional needle and the “tweakment” feels more like a short, blunt, minor prod. It’s not exactly pleasant but not the wincing pain of the old-school interventions. Because it is minutely targeted, there’s less danger of bruising.
The device always injects the preselected dose, without the pressure of a needle “so there is no chance of injecting too much leading to a more frozen look”, says Nabet.
Recovery time is quick, with less bashed-around feelings you get after needle treatments or dermarollers. But the accuracy of the hand wielding a pen matters, so choose experts wisely.
Results take a few days to appear and lines are softened, rather than ironed out — preferable to the totally resurfaced look. On one encounter, I would say results work better on the forehead and are modest on the upper lip. Those who want to look more plumped out may prefer to brave a filler there.
Another French skin expert in London, Georges Roman in Devonshire Street (he treats a lot of FTSE 100 CEOs), sticks to traditional needle methods but spends a lot of time weighing up angles and variations in facial muscles. Roman reckons “subtlety is now what we should aim for, letting faces evolve with life but looking fresh” — and Nabet agrees. “If people say you look well afterwards and can’t say why, that’s a good result.” The tweakment is here to stay — with a bonus that you can fool all around you into believing you are naturally smooth and never look worried about a thing.
Name of Treatment: Dr Jules Nabet Botox Pen
Price: £280
Duration: 15-20 minutes
Downtime: slight redness which goes down in 30 minutes (Botox takes three to seven days to take full effect)
How to book in: julesnabet.com
Time for a tweakment? A new en point Botox pen may be the answerBotoxResults take a few days to appear and lines are softened, rather than ironed out