In most salons, a facial is a succession of products. Cleanse, apply, remove, apply again. The hands are there to spread, not to work. Our Signature Facial starts from the other end : it is a massage, a real one, and the skincare arranges itself around it.
That is not a turn of phrase. We are a massage institute before we are a beauty salon, and our therapists work a face the way they work a back : looking for the tension, taking the time to undo it, never rushing the movement.
How it unfolds, in order
- Cleansing milkA few minutes A gentle cleanse with a milk remover. Come as you are, wearing make-up or not : that part is our job, not yours.
- A gentle scrubA few minutes A fine grain, worked without insistence, which lifts what dulls the skin and prepares it for what follows. The point is not to strip, but to open.
- The clay maskWhile it sets White clay for sensitive, dry or reactive skin ; green for combination to oily skin, which it purifies more firmly. The choice is made at the start of the treatment, by looking at your skin — not in advance, on a form.
- The facial massageThe heart of the treatment Forehead, temples, brow, jaw, neck. This is where most of the treatment goes — a good half of it — and this is when the firming serum comes in.
The serum, and what it actually does
The massage closes with a firming serum of prickly pear seed oil and marine algae, by L'Escapade Cosmetics and Ostium. Prickly pear seed oil is among the costliest oils in cosmetics : the seeds make up only a tiny fraction of the fruit, and it takes a great many of them to yield a few centilitres. It is rich in vitamin E and essential fatty acids.
Let us be straightforward : the firming effect is real, but it is immediate and temporary. You leave with smoothed features, an awakened complexion, a more open gaze. This is not a medical procedure and we will not pretend otherwise. What the treatment does lastingly is release areas you clench all day without noticing — the jaw, the forehead, around the eyes — and that shows too.
Why massage the face
The face carries around forty muscles in constant use : to speak, to chew, to frown at a screen. The jaw in particular is one of the most clenched areas of the body in many of our clients — tight at night, tight in meetings, rarely released.
Careful work on those areas produces a kind of relief you do not suspect until you have felt it. Many people who come for their skin leave talking about something else entirely : a headache that lifted, a neck that loosened, a feeling of lightness. That, to us, is the best summary of this treatment.
And the Relaxing Facial ?
We offer two facials, and it is worth saying plainly how they differ.
The Relaxing Facial — 1 hour, €90 — comes in three movements : cleanse, scrub, massage. It is the essential version, the one to choose for a pause, or to discover the way we work a face.
The Signature Facial — 1 hour 15, €120 — adds the clay mask and the firming serum, and above all leaves more time for the massage. It is the one to choose when you come for the effect, and not only for the interlude.
Practical details
- Signature Facial — 1 h 15 €120
- Relaxing Facial — 1 hour €90
The stated duration is the treatment time. The scrub, the mask and the serum are included ; there is no supplement.
The treatment takes place in a private room, in a bathrobe, with no hammam : neither heat nor steam is needed here, and the skin stays calm. We provide the bathrobe, towels and slippers. Please arrive about ten minutes before your appointment, just to settle.
One last piece of advice : do not plan to put make-up back on afterwards. The skin has just been cleansed, exfoliated and fed ; it is asking for nothing else. If you are heading out that evening, book a little earlier and give it an hour to itself.
We are at 8 Villa de Saxe, on a quiet street in the 7th, a ten-minute walk from Les Invalides, Monday to Saturday.