With all the focus on gowns and designers, there’s one thing that often goes unnoticed when it comes to the red carpet during the award season. Right now, dermatologists and the world’s best facialists have descended on Los Angeles in a bid to get our favourite A-listers ready for their close-ups on the red carpet.
Nicholas Joss is the woman they call. Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank, Keira Knightley, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway – the list of the London-based facialist’s clients ring like a who’s who in Hollywood. Each year she flies to New York to hold a temporary beauty suite at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills hotel with the Sanctuary Spa St Tropez, to make sure she’s on hand around the clock for all of her client’s last minute beauty needs.
During the award season she anticipated giving up to five facials a day, many of which can last up to an hour and a half long. Her trademark lymphatic drainage massage is what they flock to her for: the deep-tissue massage is designed to lift and tone the contours of the face and leave you with a radiant glow.
She starts with gentle cleansing, massaging a Thermal Rose Clay Mask from The Sanctuary into the skin to clear impurities. Drawing on a technique she learned while training in Malaysia, she then messages The Sanctuary’s Secret Facial Oil, which is bursting with hydrating botanicals. What makes Joss’s massages is different is the fact that she also massages inside the mouth too gliding her fingers along your cheeks and along the jaw to free the muscle and loose tension.
‘Putting pressure on key points along the face helps to relieve areas of stress and also helps to clear out clogged pores to create clear, photo-ready skin,’ she explains.
Having studied biology at university, Joss knows a thing or to about the human anatomy. ‘I think my degree gave me an immediate interest in skin, especially with it being the largest organ,’ she explains. ‘I also studied for three years as a beauty therapist which made me realise I loved massaging and seeing the effects on people.’
She originally started off as a manicurist on fashion shoots. After realising she had a knack for facials, she quickly gained a reputation among those in the know and before long, her facials were so sought after she got an agent and focused solely on being a skin therapist.
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With barefaced stripped back looks dominating the red carpet these days over the type of dramatic looks of old, perfect skin is more important than ever before, she tells me. During the season she has three assistants that work with her and makes a point ‘always fit around my clients, as it is 100 per cent about that. I really embrace all situations.’
‘It is so important for me to be there for them when they need me, allocating time for each individual, giving them my 100 per cent attention and care,’ she continues. ‘I ensure I arrive a good week before any big red carpet event so I can give clients enough time and so I’m able to work around their schedules.’
So what does get red-carpet ready skin involves, I ask? ‘It depends on the client but often I start treatments 7-10 days before an event and tend to see them twice over that period, often finishing with a tan.’ She swears by Sanctuary Spa’s Therapist Secret Facial Oil and Wonder Oil Serum. Have that and you’re good to go, she says.