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At the highest echelons of the practice, they barely speak.
Interior: @bornonfifth. Carbonari: Gabrièle Laborde. Hand: Emma Silke. Garrett: Tone Woolfe/Parfums Christian Dior. Medina-Cleghorn: Courtesy of subject. Remaining Image: Getty Images.
Elizabeth Grace Hand, then, does not look like a good facialist.
There are many places to get facials in New York City.
(In my family, we just call it Mario.)
Im being rude, but lovingly and familially so.
On Walker Street, a new client facial withPractisefounder Kristyn Smith costs $485 and includes a skin consultation.
Hand just relocated her own space, calledStalle Studios, to Howard and Mercer.
Her thing is a buccal massage, which starts at $360.
Facials are such a big thing now, Hand says, slipping off a pair of Chanel wayfarers.
When it comes to questions of how much shes making per annum, Hand is quiet luxury.
Of course, Im doing better now, she says.
Anywhere Ive worked before, I was barely scraping by, she says.
The girls who work for me are doing especially good, even if its not their business.
If nothing else, every person I spoke to for this story indicated good pecuniary health.
But the expanding beauty industry enthralled her.
She enrolled in a 15-week course atChristine Valmy, an aesthetics school in Times Square.
But the idea that we might pay somebody to beautify our skin is a newer one.
These spas imported much of their skin-care wisdom, and their workforce, from eastern Europe.
Nobody left their appointment without scheduling their next one.
They arrived with $25.
At the time, cosmetology programs didnt include skin services.
Valmy opened up her own professional school, in 1966, on 57th Street.
In 1970, she helped lobby the U.S. Congress to establish a distinct license for aestheticians.
Classes span from chemistry to makeup program to human resource management.
Today, tuition for the full degree, as it were, costs just north of $11,000.
If you attend classes most days of the week, youll wrap in less than four months.
Valmy, who passed away in 2015, always said that the best skin-care ingredient was consistency.
Its like caring for your teeth by brushing them three times a day, she once said.
This was, back in the day, a newfangled approach.
It was a luxury that youd get at a hotel.
Theres only a little overlap.
(Hi Dianna!)
I saw a client yesterday who I know goes to two other people.
We talk about it, and she’s like, You guys all have your own strengths.
Medina-Cleghorn wears tadpole brows and Alaia flats covered in rhinestones that cost as much as a Joanna Czech facial.
But she felt the industry changing beneath her feet.
He had this really amazing career, but I didnt feel like those careers existed anymore.
Gillian Milberg, or@SkinbyGill, came to New York via FIT from Miami.
I didn’t necessarily want to be a fashion designer, she told me, over Zoom.
I just wanted to work with the people and the clothes and stuff.
She worked at the talent agency Streeters, and the casting agent Ricky Michiels.
The pandemic stalled production, and essentially Milbergs career, which prompted her to consider skin care.
She reached out to Pavitt, who suggested she enroll at Christine Valmy.
Milberg worked at FaceGym and Practise while slowly and steadily building an audience on TikTok.
Her space sits in a warren of offices on Broadway and Canal streets with like-minded inhabitants.
It feels so right, she gushed.
Everyone was like, you oughta have a good resume, he tells me.
But it was my first fashion job!
The showrooms connected him to editors and celebrities, but lacked pay or prospects.
Within a few years, LVMH came calling.
In 2020, Garrette emerged from an internet-wide search for faces to represent the launch of Rihannas Fenty Skin.
I went through this rigorous interview process, three months long, Garrette said.
In the end, it came down to a final two.
Hes a regular at beauty industry events, and looks at home on a step-and-repeat.
For all of the confidence he projects online, Garrette seems at least slightly bewildered by his sudden success.
It’s not something I actually expected, he says, somewhat shyly.
My facial practice has completely evolved.
Product is really where I feel like I excel, he says, sounding like Valmy.
Medina-Cleghorns first job was at Joanna Czechs New York spa, where she eventually became a manager.
One of her biggest learnings was modeled after Czechs bedside manner, which is polite, but not deferential.
Continuous education, Czech says over Zoom.
To underline her point, she picks up a book on her bedside table calledThe Science of Beauty.
This is my bedtime reading!
The bookings happen organically, says her assistant, a fresh-faced Englishwoman named Danielle.
So, you know, we’re lucky that way.
Carbonari spent an educational interlude in New York, working in a plastic surgeons office near Grand Central.
The funny thing is, she hired me because I was French, Carbonari told me, laughing.
Her speech is emphatic, and every other anecdote sends her arms fluttering.
She was like, You speak French, youre French, you have the French way.
She was fascinated by the differences in aesthetic sensibility between European and American women.
New Yorkers arereallyinto beauty, Carbonari says.
Some of her clients would come back twice in one week.
I would say, you dont have to come every week!
They thought I was funny.
Carbonari also worked in London, but says New York is the easiest place to build a clientele.
But on the record:
Its all love, Milberg says.
The cool thing about all my aesthetic friends is that we do all have our own lane.
We all have different philosophies, and we’re all very, very, very different, Hand says.
Elizabeth and I were talking about how there are eight million faces in New York, Medina-Cleghornl laughed.
Like, theres room for all of us!
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