The Art of Looking Younger

Serum: Secret of the Gods
If there’s not a single vial of serum in your skin care arsenal, you—and your skin—are still in the Dark Ages. Literally. Serums are thin, silky smooth fluids formulated with a variety of anti-aging agents, including vitamins, minerals, alpha hydroxy acids (AHA) and peptides—small chains of body-building amino acids that regulate cell function and stimulate collagen growth. The results are brightened skin, minimized dark spots and fine lines, exfoliation of dead surface cells and antioxidant protection. Serums go onto freshly cleaned skin before moisturizer, sun protection and makeup. The ideal regimen is to alternate your serums—a moisturizing serum one day and AHA the next, Elden says.

What a Girl Wants Versus What a Girl Needs
"A patient knows what she wants to achieve," says Flaharty, "but the procedure I recommend to address her concerns may be different from what she thought she wanted. I spend about 20 minutes with my hands on the face, feeling the tissues and bone structure, studying the texture and elasticity of the skin. She may think she needs a brow lift to relieve a tired look around the eyes, but in her case that procedure may create gauntness, as in the case of certain aging Hollywood stars. The solution may instead be an upper eyelid lift, in combination with topical agents that will tighten and add moisture to the skin."

Good Fat, Bad Fat
There used to be a lot of emphasis on removing the fat under the eyes. The newest trend seems the complete opposite.

"Look at young people," says Prysi. "The fat pads under their eyes give a healthy look. When we remove that natural fat, it can give a sunken, hollow look, even when the loose skin is gone. What we want to eliminate is not the fat but the dark circles and the sagging skin."

Prysi also doesn’t recommend fat injections from other sites on the body to fill in the hollows beneath the cheekbones: "Adding fat to the cheeks changes the architecture of the face. A better way is to simply restore the natural architecture through the lift. Also, the results are unpredictable, since fat dissolves. "As we all know, fat stays where we want it gone. Yet, it goes away exactly where we wanted it to stay."

15-Minute Brow Lift? Men are First in Line
You say surgery and gold-infused serums aren’t in the budget this year? Anastasia Soare of Beverly Hills, eyebrow guru to the stars, says that reshaping the brows in balance with your bone structure and facial physiology can give new vitality to the face, creating the illusion of an instant brow-lift. When Soare brought her world-famous brow studio to the Spa at the Ritz-Carlton, Naples, and called for volunteer subjects for brow artists-in-training, among the first to raise their hands were two male employees. Raymond Orellano is a sales coordinator and Tim Morison is director of revenue management for the resort.

Ray says: "I’m Italian; I have dark hair and eyes, lots of eyebrows. I actually could comb my eyebrows. I have had them cleaned up a couple of times. It wasn’t a great pleasure because afterward my skin was red and splotchy like I’d been hit in the face. When I saw the e-mails that the PR department sent around to the female employees, I called and asked if a man could do it. They said, ‘sure, absolutely!’

"The aesthetician who analyzed my face said the right eyebrow was fine, but the left needed to be raised up a bit. My eyes look more balanced now—and no red skin.
"My mother liked it; my girlfriend liked it. Even the ladies in the office noticed."
Tim says: "I have big, hairy, bushy eyebrows. If they didn’t get whacked with my electric razor every month or so, I could easily turn into Andy Rooney. My wife is always saying I should get them done professionally. They were looking for volunteers so I signed up.

My wife noticed right away. She thinks it’s just great, so I guess I’ll be back."
It just goes to prove that here along the Gulfshore, where even the medians are beautiful, there’s a rejuvenation procedure for every need, every age and every budget.