GET THE GLOSS – 9 January 2025 – RACHEL JOHNSON

Link to full article

With a big birthday approaching, a terrified Rachel Johnson goes under the needle for a ‘face restoration’ treatment. Here’s how she got on

As time goes by you find yourself staring at women’s faces quite hard. This one has had her lips done, a terrible trout pout. And you think to yourself, ‘Oh dear!’

The human eye is, it turns out, expert – too expert – in detecting what is needle and what is nature. Knowing this, I made a public vow I would never do anything surgical to my face – like a face or neck lift. I broke my nose twice and turned down a free nose job on insurance as I was worried I’d hate the results.

Also, my husband has threatened me with divorce if I do any work. I’m basically a tweakment virgin. But with a big birthday approaching, I began to wonder whether I was being too dogmatic. So many of my friends look amazing even though we are in late-ish middle-age and I was beginning to wonder why and how.

When I asked one who’d had a glow up – dewy skin, rosebud lips – she was messianic about a ‘Dr Ivy’ – Dr Ivona Igerc at the Hale Clinic on Harley Street in London. “Go!” said my friend, Sarah, without telling me anything about her work, or what she does. “She’s amazing!”

So I turned up at her sunny top-floor crib without knowing what she would do, and what I would agree to. Dr Ivy is an aesthetics and anti-ageing specialist, who trained at the University of Croatia and is one of the pioneers of the ‘liquid face-lift’ – where filler is placed across nine points of the face to increase volume – and an expert in non-surgical rhinoplasty. I had no idea what I was in for. All I knew was that I wanted to look like me, only better.

She examined my face minutely in daylight, traced my lips and jawline with a finger and made me turn sideways and smile. “The main aim of this treatment is that when I go home, my husband doesn’t notice anything,” I said, anxiously.

And she said something magical that made me feel safe, as she studied me: “Don’t worry. I’m all about restoration, not transformation.”

She told me that my face was like an Old Master painting (more like Old Mistress!) to which she was just going to give a bit of varnish. I was in! It helped that I knew she was highly sought after as a cosmetic doctor on Hollywood film sets, and that she discreetly sees A-listers, models, and CEOs both here at Harley Street and EF Medispa in Chelsea, “reviving faces with her unique eye and talent,” I was told.

And, yes, I can confirm, she is an artist.

She asked me if I trusted her to give me her signature treatment, the Swan Lift, which treats face​, neck and jawline with micro injections of filler, Botox and collagen threads. She promised I would be happy with the result and – far more importantly – that nobody would think I’d had anything done.

She made me stand up for the treatment because she needs to see the effects of gravity on the face and also to observe the face in the round. It took less than 30 minutes for her to complete the treatment, after numbing cream, using the tiniest needles. She gave my turkey neck some Botox in the middle to lift it, and a micro-filling of dermal filler around my cheekbones, cheeks and my mouth to make my face look more youthful and bouncy.

She tightened my jawline with mini threads, just 38mm long. These reinforce the structure of your face by acting as scaffolding, according to Dr Ivy. Cleverly, they also stimulate collagen and six-to-eight months later they disappear, leaving your new collagen in their wake.

And finally, she gave me ‘Diamond Lips’ – another one of her trademarked treatments –where she reshapes your mouth daintily by adding filler to the Cupid’s bow and lower lip. This was the bit I was terrified about, but my mouth looked exactly the same as it had done a few years before – fuller and more pouty. She works so quickly, deftly and accurately that this takes place in no time. The needles hurt a little but only when they are going in.

She is very keen on icing your lips afterwards. I left clutching an ice pack and was told to ice for several hours afterwards.

My face bruised in a couple of places in a mild way but, my neck looked as if someone had tried to strangle me. I told my husband I’d been hit in the neck by a tennis ball. Anyone else who asked – only a couple of people – I’d tell them it was the result of a sex game gone wrong which tended to shut them up.

Rachel Johnson before her tweakment (left) and a month afterwards (right), wearing no makeup except lip gloss

The treatment looked great immediately: a more youthful, less saggy and craggy face, and more pillowy lips, but nothing obvious. And nothing that shouted, ‘WOMAN AFTER WORK!’

I’m not sure I noticed a huge amount of difference in the neck, but the lips were great – it was so nice to see them again.

I think that if I were to become a tweakment addict so soon after losing my tweakment virginity, that’s what I’d ask Dr Ivy to do again if anything. I’m still making up my mind!

So far the change in my appearance has been subtle – so subtle in fact that so far nobody has noticed the difference except me, which was exactly the result I wanted.

Diamond Lips with Dr Ivona at the Hale Clinic, £500. The Swan Lift costs £1000, www.haleclinic.com