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Forget crow's-feet and "elevens"-your jaw and
neck might reveal more about your age. April Long
investigates the latest potions and procedures that
promise to deliver a chiseled effect. Take that gravity!
In a dimly lit room at New York's be used with La Mer's new Lifting Conmembers-only hangout and spa Core tour Serum: an application method I'll
Club, a transformation is taking place. be able to do at home that's essentially
Celebrity aesthetician J oanna Czech a CliffsNotes version of the facial masis hovering over my face, rapidly press- sages Czech administers to such beautiing my skin upward in a progression of fully defined clients as Kate Winslet and
movements from jaw to cheekbones. It's Christy Turlington. "When you press
a technique she developed specifically to on skin gently, it slightly stretches," she
21152 IBEAUTYIInvestigation
says, "and when you release, it grasps whatever's
on the surface." As I watch
in a handheld mirror, I'm
actually too distracted by
the results to listen to what
she's saying: T he puffiness
below my eyes has gone
poof, and the skin along my
jawline looks as taut as a
trampoline.
La Mer's elixir isn't
the first to come with suggested application instructions (how many of those
little fold-out diagrams
have I dropped in the
sink?}, but it's safe to assume that the company is
the first to draw inspiration
from such technologies as
3-D printing and flexible
glass to rethink how facial
contours can be enhanced.
"We wanted to look at the
face from an architectural
standpoint, where you can't
separate one part without the whole thing falling
apart," says Loretta Miraglia, senior vice president
of global brand product development and innovation
at La Mer. ''And what we
found was that the jaw was
our most important baseline. As an edge, it's particularly subject to gravity,
because it's the common
denominator, where everything else on your face
falls. If you can see a lifting
effect there, you can see it
anywhere."
The appearance of the
jawline-and, as Nora Ephron would confirm, the
condition of the neck below-is a particularly sneaky ind icator of age. "The
perception of a youthful appearance depends on symmetry, balance, and contrast of brightness and shadow on the
face," says J oshua Zeichner, MD, the director of cosmetic and clinical research
at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York
City. "While you may not consider the
jawline to play a large role, it actually
does. A strong jaw defines and supports
the lower third of the face. As we age, we
lose definition in that area, partly from
skin laxity due to damaged collagen and ~
partly from a loss of fat along the jawline I
and in front of the ears." Indeed, derma- '
tologists often speak of the "triang1e of :
effect by reducing skin
laxity. Brandt also uses
filler to create definiCatch a lift with new sculpting products
tion along the jawbone
that specifically target the neck and jaw
and enhances the tightening effect with noninvasive
ultrasound
Ultherapy treatments.
(Whereas any wattle under the jaw could previously be nixed only
with liposuction, a fatinjectable
dissolving
is in the final stages of
A NE ./
C L I NIC
FDA approval.)
INF I N I rL IL IFT
Strategically placed
Botox, too, can refine
both jaw and neck.
"Some refer to Botox
along the jawline as
SfR."" GMMN, rK
M tllOl':."t'-•COf'u.&
the 'Nefertiti lift' because it can help restore the well-defined
jawline as seen in statues of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh's wife,"
D0No1
with dt. br) Aie
rid t""
•
Zeichner says. "By refirming neck cream ~ •
mobwrha. llu. ~
•
laxing the downward
)
pull of the platysma,
which is a vertical layer From left: AVON Anew Cllnlcal Infinite Liff Targeted Contouring Serum
of muscle in the neck
contains seven concentrated skin-tightening ingredients; during
in-vitro tests, LA M ERThe Lifting Contouring Serum Increased
that becomes thicker
collagen fibers by 56 percent In 48 hours; ELEM IS Pro-Intense Liff Effec t
as we age, the face lifts Jowl and Chin Mask firm s the double-chin risk area with arjuna bark
up and the neck looks extract; DR. BRANDT Do Not Age Firming Neck Cream decreases the
production of harmful proteins within cells to boost skin's resilience.
more smooth."
Radio-frequency devices can deliver an even deeper-and,
Regard less of what tack we take in
some maintain, longer lasting- effect. our attempts to defy gravity, however, be
New York derm Macrene Alexiades- it merely mastering Kardashian-worthy
Armenakas, MD, has achieved impres- contouring powder or subjecting our
sive results with ePRIME, a nonsurgical faces to state-of-the-art derm-wielded
procedure in which five pairs of hair-fine devices, how our necks and faces age
needles are inserted into the skin to de- will always come back down (no pun inliver radio-frequency energy. "I've re- tended) to how we take care of our skin.
cently completed a randomized, blinded "Topical anti-aging ingredients are imstudy of ePRIME and have homed in on perative in order to provide the skin
the exact parameters that enable us to with the raw materials it needs to reachieve at least one-third to two-thirds juvenate its collagen and elastin," says
Alexiades.
the result of a lower-face lift," she says.
Doctors at New York's Advanced DerAnd as for the massage element sugmatology P.C. are using a similar de- gested by La Mer? Well, it certainly can't
vice, ThermiRF, which delivers radio hurt. A few hours after my session with
frequency via probes inserted under the Czech, the lifting effect is still there, aljawline. "Patientl> are numbed, so they beit less noticeable. I tap the skin on my
don't feel anything," says Valerie Gold- jawline, and it doesn't spring back quite
burt, MD, PhD, who uses the gizmo to so quickly as it did right after our meetblitz double chins as well as to firm up ing- but, I remember, Miraglia did say
saggy skin. "It results in a building of col- the results would be cumulative: "It's like
lagen that will continue over the course after one workout your body might not
of a year, but it also has an immediate show any results, but if you keep going
tightening effect because it contracts the and look again three weeks later, you'll
tissue that overlies the muscle, which see a change." Mainly, my skin just looks
in turn causes contraction all the way good. Glowy. Happy. And that seems like
through the fatty layer up to the skin."
the right place to start.•
youth"-the observation that younger
faces have a V shape, with high cheekbones and a small chin. In older faces, especially for those who gain weight, that
triangle flips, as cheekbones hollow out
and the jaw grows heavy.
Until recently, restoring that allimportant triangle was largely considered the business of dermatologists, who
could use fillers to top up volume and
lasers to tighten. But now, a new generation of high-performance beauty products are stepping in, helping to reshape
the contours of the face-or at least helping us to retain our youthful outlines
longer- by bolstering the scaffold of collagen and elastin that keeps skin dense
and holds fat in the right place. La Mer's
Lifting Contour Serum, which contains
a combined fermentation of the brand's
trademark miracle broth with a copperrich blue algae and a fibroblast-boosting
brown algae, has been shown in 3Dimaging-assisted clinical tests to firm the
overall face and neck area by 68 percent
after eight weeks, with a 63 percent improvement in the eye area and a 51 percent improvement in the jowls. (It also,
Miraglia says, has a "liquid Spanx" effect
immediately upon application, which is
what I witnessed while in Czech's chair.)
Avon's ANEW Clinical Infinite Lift line
targets jowls, jawline, cheeks, and neck
with a polypeptide complex that stimulates the production of firming matrix
proteins; and the multistep Pro-Intense
Lift Effect Super System from British
brand Elemis counteracts sag with a cellenergizing 30-day program consisting of a
serum, day and night creams, and a onceweekly Jowl and Chin Mask- a serumsoaked fabric that hooks over the ears.
The beauty ideal of an elegantly defined jaw-from Audrey Hepburn to
Kerry Washington- is an enduring one,
perhaps in part because, for a long time,
there was so little to be done in that zone
when things began to go south. Old Hollywood stars once had to rely on clothespins and tape, which they hid under
their hair, to pull back their saggingjawlines, and for generations only surgical
intervention could help an aging neck
appear more swan than turkey.
Thankfully, though, even dermatologist-administered options have evolved.
Fillers, including the recently FDAapproved Voluma, can be used to shore
up the cheeks, which will, in turn, provide a visible lift to the jaw area. Or, says
dermatologist Fredric Brandt, MD, "you
can fill the fat pads in front of the ears,"
which sounds thoroughly unappetizing
but will have a similarJolie-jaw-bestowing
~
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