Since this story is about my very first facial ever, with renowned New York facialist Cynthia Rivas no less, let’s start by discussing the condition of my skin. This is going to read like some apocalyptic weather report, the type that gets trailed on the news as if it were a disaster movie: periods of extremely dry patches, prone to flaking; bouts of intense redness, prone to flushing; and a T-zone that looks unnervingly like a meteorological map, prone to lines of blackheads swirling alarmingly across my nose (plus a few straying onto my forehead) with only intermittent success in countering them. But, hey, enough about my good points.
What am I doing about all of this? Less than you would think, and certainly less than I should be. This is my skin “routine,” if we could even call it that: a Nivea Gentle Exfoliating Face Scrub, at $7 a tube, which I bulk-buy when I am back home in the UK (it’s actually brilliant in the shower for softening a beard pre-shave); warm, but never hot water; and, umm, that’s it. No, there is no moisturizer. No, there is no sunscreen. No, there is no eye cream. And no, there is no hope for me.
I am relaying all of this to the very patient, very kind, and very empathetic Rivas, whose brilliance is so good that she is working with Chanel, and her poker face is impenetrable. We are sitting in her beautiful, airy treatment room, perched on the 23rd floor of the WSA Building, with an incredible view across the East River to Brooklyn. It’s very late in the afternoon, and the room is flooded with a soft light, the better (I am hoping) to make my skin look not too bad. During our getting to know each other session, I deliver this confession about my (lack of) skin care in an apologetic tone, much the same you or I (okay, I) might use when chatting with the dental hygienist about how it has been tough to floss three times a day every day.
Rivas immediately puts me at ease. Wisely and smartly, she counsels that future outcomes are what’s important here. It’s certainly not about judgment. And this is as much about her intuitiveness as it is about the informed, intelligent, and scientific, even, way she thinks about her role as a facialist: investigation, deduction, analysis, and the application of solutions. (One of her questions was whether I was on any medication because that could impact my skin, and how she might treat it, something that would never have crossed my mind.)
Upfront, Rivas portrays this first-time facial as part of a continuum of at-home treatment. “You tell me what you are comfortable with,” she says, adding that she’ll send me home with instructions on how to keep the good skin going. “It could be simplified, but there’s nothing simple about it in terms of the quality of the ingredients in the products.”
Skin care has often felt scarily adult to me, like 401 Ks and monitoring interest rates, but listening to Rivas’s advice is as enlightening and beckoning as the sun glowing into her office. By this point, I am lying out on a heated treatment table, snuggled over a soft blanket, and feeling the gently insistent huff, huff, huff of a stream of warm steam on my face. There may also have been some deep focus mirror situation going on, but I am trying not to think about that, because eyeing my skin with that level of magnification should carry a NSFW warning. At one point, she said to me, “Honestly, we all have the blackhead thing going on, so I m going to tweak your products at home to address that too. But,” she continued, “don’t be so hard on yourself. This is the first time you’ve ever really gotten them professionally cleaned out.”
Over the course of an hour or so, Rivas talks me through the steps of the facial, interspersed with stories: about how we both ended up in New York, me from London, her from northern Virginia; her own first-ever facial (it was at Bliss: “I think it was Oprah’s favorite facial and I love Oprah to this day, so I was, like, ‘Oh, my God, I have to go there’”); if different locations she has worked in across the world—NYC, Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, and now she’s eyeing London—have different skin obsessions; the very high level of technical research in Chanel products (her), and the brilliance of its packaging (me); how she likes to mix methods and philosophies, particularly what’s considered Western with what’s Eastern.
“You will notice that, in treatment, we’re going to mix a bunch of things,” she says. “There will be different sensations, some bubbly, some that will feel cooling. I am also very big on massage, and my number one thing is healthy skin. Further down the line, I’d love to do some micro-channeling on you. And to get the skin healthy, it’s the correct products, the correct collation, proper extraction, and it’s not just surface; I like to detox and work around the lymphs that can make you puffy; blood flow brings oxygen and nutrients to the skin cells.”
As Rivas is relaying this, she has started work. “First step, proper cleansing,” she says. This involves swirling an oil cleanser over my face in smooth, rhythmic waves. Cleaning is for Rivas numero uno. “People will do it in the morning, but not at night, or the other way around; it’s important to educate people on the importance of proper cleansing.” Then Rivas begins an oxygen treatment. “You wouldn’t know this [she has assumed correctly], but oxygen has been used a lot in facials over the years,” she says. If those involve an external infusion of oxygen to the skin, Rivas wants to create an oxygen-starved surface to the skin, to encourage the body to oxygenate from within. This involves applying a gently abrasive pad that she glides over my skin, likely causing it to feel, in her words, spicy. In fact, it actually feels great; a little heat building as the lightly whirring pad is moved across my face, but none of the slightly burning feeling my skin can get if it goes near any heat source.
Now we are onto the extraction moment. I brace myself for the pinching. But—get this—Rivas says, “You have what everyone wants. You have very small pores, which is great. And when you have small pores like these, it’s harder to do extractions. I don’t recommend doing this at home yourself.” (Noted: no more peering into the bathroom mirror.)
Lastly, she finishes with a massage, working both face and neck. It feels incredible, but also, for someone who has had a sum total of two massages in his life, a reminder that you can find yourself connecting with your body—and now, I guess, face—differently because the muscles are being stimulated in ways you’re not used to. A spot of sunscreen (okay, I am converting!) and with that, we’re done. She leaves me to put my sweater back on, but first, I have to stare into the mirror. I can never take a compliment about myself, so I will compliment Rivas instead: She has made my skin look a-mazing; brighter, lighter, softer, but maybe just as importantly, it feels great.
I walk to the subway to go home and almost don’t want to take it to not come into contact with the grime of the city after what has felt like an experience that was both utterly ethereal yet also so physical. I wasn’t prepared for my skin to be so improved, nor was I prepared for the realization that my avoidance of getting a facial was a strange avoidance of judgement on how well, or not, I look after my skin, and in a way, an extension of how well I look after myself. Rivas is a terrific facialist, for sure, but what makes her so good is her ability to sensitively intuit how to work with her clients.
As I left, she had thoughts. “Let’s work on the pigment, let’s work on building more collagen, more elastin in your skin,” she told me, “so maybe some micro-channeling and maybe some retinol at home—that kind of thing. I don’t need you worrying about blackheads. And if you really have to focus, my focus for you would be sunscreen.” All sound (and doable) advice, but perhaps more importantly, Rivas has turned looking into the mirror every morning, noon, and night as an act of looking ahead, not just looking at the right now.