Renée Lapino – medical aesthetician, Tweakment mega star - is one of those therapists I will just sort of unleash on my face, willy nilly, with few questions and confident abandon. Partly because she’s a mesmirising human; a sort of beautiful, high energy cartoon of a person with an excellent accent (New Orleans-y). Partly because she likes to work in the company of her sausage dog, who, if you’re incredibly lucky, will snooze on your feet while Renée Tweaks you. Mostly because Renée is an incredibly creative, incredibly knowledgable operative, who works at the cutting edge of lasers, IPL, LED masks and derma rolling, occupying that potent territory just below full blown injectibles – your botox and your fillers – but way above base level facials. Her machines can lighten and tighten and lift, more than I ever knew was even possible. They give better glow than your finest Snapchat filters.
She’s been prettying me up for a few months now, and the results have been five star thumbsup emoji aces; good to the point that, if Renée says she’s got a new machine, I go: “OH MY GOD OH MY GOD WHAT DOES IT DO WHEN WILL YOU DO IT TO ME?”
Her newest is called NuEra. It uses radio frequency, a smoothing system which works by heating the tissue on your face, promoting sub dermal collagen production, lifting and tightening ones chops temporarily – the kind of “temporarily” that lasts a few weeks to a month typically, though a series of treatments will boost the impact and longevity of said temporary.
I’ve had various radio frequency treatments before, and been medium-impressed. It’s not entirely comfortable – no tweakement ever is IME – it involves heat, generally 40 degrees or so of it, so unsurprisingly, quite often feels hot; hot to the point you’re not sure you can stand it much longer, but do, mainly because you don’t want your therapist to think you’re a pussy. The effects I’ve noticed from past treatments have been subtle, but apparent… At the same time, radio frequency is not one of the ones I’ve gone crazy for, up until this point.
NuEra claims to be a development in radio frequency tech in that its temperature gauge feeds back to itself thousands of times a second, automatically adjusting itself so that it heats each part of your face at the desired rate, for optimal impact. This also means it’s considerably more comfortable than I’d been used to. At no point in this 20 minute treatment – during which, Renée slowly runs the flat head of the machine’s conductor over my face – do I have to bite my lip, hide my tears, or pretend I’m fine when I’m not. And afterwards? My face is tauter, the contours on it more pronounced, and it’s glowing to an almost unseemly degree. Renée books me in for a series of follow up treatments.
“We’ll be able to see you from space,” she promises. “But in a good way.”
NuEra is being rolled out into salons nationwide as we speak. Radio Frequency treatments typically cost from £60 a session.
Would I pay for it with my own money?
Yes, though I’m a little skint in the run-up to Christmas, so if someone else could get this for me and call it a stocking filler, I’d be ever-so grateful.