HydroPeptide Facial in Chelsea

In between the ring-a-ling clamour of Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U is a little oasis off the King’s Road.

The Chelsea Day Spa, once you’ve found it, is a small but chi-chi sanctuary of whites, designed to smooth away any naughty frown lines that living in upmarket Chelsea may give you.
 
I was here for a HydroPeptide facial – a new paraben-free, age-defying and skin plumping treatment, so the bumph says. It also says that  HydroPeptide is a ‘total skin buffet that feeds a deep-penetrating combination of three bio-active complexes, 19 peptides and over 10 antioxidants into the skin’.

Peptides, apparently, are ‘specific amino acid sequences needed every day to keep collagen at its maximum potential and the skin smooth and plump. Peptides mimic the natural signals of cell communication and repair – unfolding their biological anti-ageing properties, each targeting different areas’.

That makes little sense to me. What makes sense is that the highly enthusiastic and lovely Ricardina from Lisbon, (new in town) talked me through every move she made. Normally babble is anaethema while relaxing in a spa but she gave me the choice: no words, just the lulling music, or the explanations. I took the latter.
 
I was tucked like a baby under blankets in a dimmed and fragrant room and I immediately felt hypnotised. Ricky asked me some questions. Despite the copious amounts of water I normally drink, she said my skin was dehydrated.

This, she said, was because I was using too harsh a toner that sucked out moisture, encouraging oil to shoot up to the surface. Golly! Her 25 years of experience certainly showed as all eight steps of the facial blended into one relaxing experience of skin prep, sloughing of dead skin, gentle massage of face, neck, scalp and shoulders before a kaolin clay self-heating enzyme mask was slathered on.

I nearly fell asleep at this stage but it wasn’t over. To be honest, I don’t really know what she was doing as I was almost dozing. But what I do know is my skin looked fabulous when she’d finished. The pores were smaller, it was soft and dewy, the skin definitely looked plumper and I kind of looked – um – Chelsea.

Or that’s what I kidded myself anyway.

HydroPeptide facial at:

The Chelsea Day Spa
69a King’s Road
Chelsea
SW3 4NX