Face lift lite
Sharon Osbourne’s admitted to a fair amount of surgery, including a face lift gone wrong.
“That one put me off and it frightens me,” the TV star told The Sun newspaper last year. “I really f…ing pushed it with the last face lift and I am now like, ‘no more’,” she said.
“Time is against me, I cannot have another face lift.”
This is despite spending five and a half hours under the knife with extensive recovery time.
A tough lesson for Osbourne.
This year, however, is all about less invasive surgeries with as little downtime as possible.
And, mini face lifts — or face lifts lite — are exploding in popularity, especially among younger women who are not after their mother’s face lifts where the skin used to look too tightly pulled and ‘cling-wrapped’.
Rather, the mini face lift does less work under the skin but still tightens and eliminates wrinkles.
Dr Vivek Eranki, CEO of leading Perth cosmetic surgery clinic Cosmetique, says the procedure is becoming popular among Australian women in their 40s who want a more refreshed, youthful look without the complexity, invasiveness and recovery time of traditional full face lifts.
“In the olden days, there used to be a trend to wait until we were in our fifties, sixties or older and then have a deep plane face lift where we’d lift various aspects of the face,” he explains.
“Now, a lot of patients want minimally invasive options, which I think is good because you don’t want to go down a heavy path at a young age.
“Patients are exploring minimally invasive, or a lite face lift, in their forties now.”
However, a word of caution from Dr Eranki: “I personally do not endorse these (mini face lifts in your 40s) because it is a surgery where if you are going to do it, do it once and do it properly and then let it be.”
He says this is because every time surgery is performed, there are risks including nerve damage and scarring.
“The other problem with a lighter face lift is you don’t go as deep as the traditional deep plane face lifts so you are relying on the tension you create in the skin and the superficial layers to hold everything up,” he explains.
“These structures can stretch over time so the results aren’t as longstanding as when people have their deep plane face lift.”
He says a better option for younger women who are concerned about sagging skin is to explore using filler or thread lifts to rejuvenate the face.
While these need maintenance, they at least stave off the requirement for invasive procedures, he adds.
Dr Eranki believes Aptos thread lifting is a good non-surgical option to address excess skin laxity and stimulate new collagen growth with a short recovery and little downtime.
The threads, which gradually dissolve into the body, promote new collagen production which redefines the face, restores volume and creates a more youthful appearance.
“Small things can make a big difference,” he says.
West Perth-based specialist plastic surgeon Guy Watts, who has trained at internationally renowned centres and worked all over the world, including in New York, agrees that patients at a younger age are now asking for rejuvenation procedures which cause minimal scars.
He’s receiving lots of enquiries about ‘ponytail’ face lifts, the modern term for a lift of the outer brow, corner of the eye and cheek area.
“A face lift still forms the cornerstone of facial rejuvenation and modern-day techniques, executed correctly, do not create an overly pulled or tight appearance,” explains Dr Watts.
In fact, he revealed a recent Las Vegas Cosmetic Surgery and Dermatology Conference he attended focused on combining these techniques with advances in the use of exosomes (variations of a ‘vampire’ face lift), thread lifts with surgery and advances in energy-based treatment options.
Dr Watts adds: “There is a shift toward ageing gracefully and there is no doubt that graduated earlier intervention with specific surgical procedures over time, combined with judicial use of fillers and wrinkle relaxers, creates a more long-lasting youthful appearance.”
Blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery)
According to Dr Eranki, blepharoplasty is wildly popular among people of Asian ethnicity, especially in Korea, and demand for it is now strong in Australia.
Unlike conventional upper eyelid blepharoplasty, often used to correct defects that can cause vision impairment by removing excess skin from the eyelids, Asian blepharoplasty is another kind where the goal is to create an eyelid fold.
“Blepharoplasty is basically an eyelid lift and a lot of the time people will incorporate it in a face lift,” Dr Eranki says.
“As people age, the upper and lower eyelids become heavier and puffier and this procedure involves cutting out the excess skin.
“This type of blepharoplasty, where you cut out the excess skin, is popular in the Caucasian population.
“The second type, which is becoming increasingly popular in Australia, is the Asian blepharoplasty which creates an eyelid crease in the upper eyelid, something the Asian population typically does not have so by creating one it opens up the eyes and in their view, it creates a more Caucasian or western look.
“It is very, very popular in Korea — almost everyone gets it done and we are finding a lot of the Asian population in Australia is looking for that procedure.”
Rapper and performer of Unpretty Rapstar game Jessi openly discussed her double eyelid surgery in an episode of comedy show Happy Together.
However, Dr Eranki doesn’t recommend young people have blepharoplasty simply to look younger and fresher because it is invasive cosmetic surgery.
“Anything like that to do with your face, put it off until your fifties or sixties,” he warns.
‘Exploding’ lips
TV personality Kendall Jenner shocked fans when she showed off her very plump pout in a recent Instagram video.
Dubbed “exploded lips”, Dr Vivek Eranki says the look the 27-year-old mother-of-four flaunted is indicative of the continuing trend for bigger lips.
Although Kendall has never openly stated that she has used lip filler, the “exploded lips” look she’s sporting comes off the back of the 2021 trend for Russian lips and pillow lips, he adds, only this latest lip augmentation is “a little more voluminous” again.
“Exploded lips were one of the most in-demand lip augmentation treatments in 2022,” says Dr Eranki. He finds women are in one of two camps — they’re either after a subtle, natural look or a very plump, pillowy look and they don’t tend to cross camps.
However, he adds that since last year he’s noticed more patients coming into Cosmetique clinics wanting fuller, more sensuous lips.
“Influencers and celebrities appeared to be driving demand,” he says, “and there is no doubt that big lips signify passion and sensuality (and that) having this look can really boost a woman’s confidence too.”
However, Dr Eranki warns that although soft, full lips can help “maintain the illusion of youth”, lip fillers come with risks.
“While Exploding lips are a highly sought-after look, they can also be risky to achieve if the clinician is not experienced in undertaking the treatment,” he cautions.
“Too much filler or poor placement of filler can cause bruising. Even worse, it can damage blood vessels and even impact veins and arteries which can compromise overlying tissue.
“It is common for patients to feel a slight tightness in their lips which subsides in a few hours, however, technicians without the required experience can over-fill the lips causing pain and physical damage to the lips and surrounding areas.
“Depending on the degree of filler, the lips can look so voluminous, people may say they resemble bubbles, hence the term exploding lips.
“The key is to achieve a balance between voluminous and aesthetics which only an experienced clinician can achieve.”
Dr Watts, meanwhile, has noticed a shift away from the frozen and over-filled ‘pillow face’ look overall and says patients are now leaning towards combining surgical procedures that “elevate and redistribute natural volume”.
In fact, he says he is seeing the consequences of too much filler and issues with filler migration and movement more and more.
“Where fillers tend to mask signs of ageing by filling, surgical procedures are better at reversing those signs by lifting, redistributing volume and tightening,” Dr Watts explains.
“We are finally moving away from filling, filling and more filling which has created an epidemic of ‘puffy faces’ to filling, tightening, lifting and redistributing with combination treatments.
“The answer is not always in the syringe,” he adds. “The scalpel plays as critical a role in anti-ageing.”
‘Supermodel’ jawlines
In the quest for a more youthful appearance, another non-surgical procedure gaining popularity is chin and jawline contouring.
While the beauty treatment has become popular among influencers and celebrities including, some experts suspect, Chrissy Teigen, Dr Eranki says a defined jawline is now far more achievable than most ordinary people realise.
“There is no need to go under the knife and have irreversible risky surgery, injectables will deliver the same result without the expense, risk and worry,” he says. “The look is achieved with chin and jaw filler.”
He says jaw and chin fillers have grown in popularity among men and women and that it can be undertaken in your lunch hour with immediate effect.
Jaw fillers are dermal fillers that add shape, volume and definition to the jawline to achieve a desired look.
Dr Eranki says they can restore lost volume and add structural support to the cheek and lower face area for “a more youthful, well-defined and balanced jawline.”
There is no downtime and no scalpels or cutting involved. Instead, there’s just a bit of redness that goes away in a couple of days, he explains.
He adds his highly trained staff use local anaesthesia, blunt cannulas and only tiny injection points, with most patients describing the procedure as pain-free.
Jaw filler can make you look slimmer, according to Dr Eranki, because it can “elongate the face and reduce the appearance of a double chin.”
It can also make your features look “sharper and more symmetrical and accentuate the V-shape of your face,” he adds.
“You don’t have to spend weeks bandaged up, looking like a train wreck either,” Dr Eranki says, adding that when high-quality fillers are used the results can last up to three years.
Expect to pay from $399 for high-quality jaw fillers.
Hair transplants
Doctors are reporting a surge in male hair transplants, with famous men including Elon Musk and LeBron James rumoured to have had one.
Few celebrities have openly admitted to having the procedure, however reality TV star Andrew Tate revealed he underwent a hair transplant in 2019 to curb his receding hairline and diffuse thinning.
After being diagnosed with male pattern baldness, he opted for FUE, or follicular unit extraction, in which individual grafts containing hair follicles are extracted from one area of the scalp and then implanted on the desired site.
Dr Eranki suspects the spike in demand is a result of celebrities like Tate revealing they were delighted with the results.
“A procedure that has been around for many years which is actually becoming more popular in Perth is hair transplant surgery,” explains Dr Eranki.
“Three people in my own social circle have had hair transplant surgery and these are not men who would otherwise consider having cosmetic surgery.
“Men are feeling they don’t need to put up with baldness anymore.”
He says there is the FUT hair transplant or the FUE technique, adding the latter is becoming more popular.
“It’s not painful because you can numb the area but the procedure does take time because it is very fiddly,” Dr Eranki explains.
“You are literally moving one follicle at a time so it takes many, many hours.
“Depending on how much needs to be transplanted across, it can be done in the one sitting but those who want denser hair at the crown might come back for recurrent surgeries.”
He says the new hair has usually grown within 12 months.
Expect to pay around $20,000 for the procedure, although he believes the cost could soon rise.
The effects are permanent, he adds.
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