This £750 Facial Taught Me Some Hard Truths About Ageing

There are gravely serious things happening in the world: Donald Trump’s criminal trial, war in Ukraine, boats of people in the Channel desperately trying to reach Britain, 40-year-high inflation, increasing social inequality. As a political journalist I am following the last two particularly closely. But right now, instead of writing about them, I'm swaddled in a blanket like a baby in an unreasonably comfortable bed after getting a £750 facial.

For transparency, this is a press appointment so I didn’t pay for it. (That's just as well because £750 is a month’s rent in some parts of the country.) The treatment in question is the Stellar Face Exosome facial. It's available only at Salon C. Stellar, a cutting-edge new skincare destination in London’s Soho, founded by Andrea Pfeffer, formerly of buzzy London clinic Pfeffer Sal. Numbing cream applied at the start of the 90-minute session removed most of the feeling from my face, save for a cold and tingly sensation, so it's a shock when I look in the mirror and find that I am tomato-red — a poor woman’s Kim Kardashian post-vampire facial. 

Alarming as it is, my scarlet skin is the expected outcome of microneedling, a process whereby tens of tiny needles are rolled across the face. These needles create microscopic pinpricks that signal the skin to go into 'repair' mode and allow any product applied during or after the procedure to reach deeper into the skin. After each section is complete, the surface of the epidermis lightly punctured, my facialist smooths on the exosome serum from which the treatment gets its name.

The serum feels unremarkable. It is liquid goop, as most serums are. What is remarkable about it is that it’s derived from stem cells: basic cells which can develop into other cells and form tissue, like muscle cells or brain cells. Exosomes (like the ones in this facial) are essentially little particles released from these cells. Here, they act as messengers or communicators between skin cells and can encourage activity such as growth or regeneration. These materials can be found in human, plant or animal cells, though Andrea assures me that there is no actual cellular matter in the product used at Salon C. Stellar. Rather, what’s being applied to my face are "rose stem cell-derived exosomes". Andrea describes the resulting treatment as "a very loud wake-up call for the skin".

Andrea has always been a pioneer when it comes to bringing the latest treatments to her clients. She explains that she began looking into stem cells due to her own interest in "longevity" as opposed to anti-ageing. There is a crucial difference between the two and it's about enhancing the skin, not preventing ageing full stop. "I was blown away with the results [stem cell-derived products] were having on degenerative diseases," she says. "The leading stem cells clinics are also treating athletes, for example, to assist with injury recovery. The result (topically on the skin) was really an accidental discovery, and you can imagine how my eyes bulged when I got to the chapter [when scientists] started talking about this."

As I emerge from the treatment room, Andrea smiles and assures me that the redness will die down. "Tie your hair back and head home," she says. Strange looks abound as I make my way through Soho. Later, when the redness subsides, a glow appears. There’s no denying that, for the moment at least, having plant-derived stem cells massaged into my face has diminished my sun damage, lines and the scarring from spots which I most definitely should not have squeezed during my last period. 

In the days that follow, the glow intensifies and goes on to last for weeks. For a while I appear poreless, and people keep telling me how "well" I look. There are facials and there are facials. Andrea is a visionary and I cannot stress how effective this exosome needling treatment was in my experience. That said, four to six sessions are recommended for a lasting effect and at £750 a pop, you’ll need to take out a mortgage to afford it. 

I am always wary of expensive beauty treatments and many people feel that the skincare industry exploits our collective fear of ageing. In the great race to defy ageing and maintain youth whatever the cost, (supposedly) science-backed skincare is everywhere. Is a treatment that involves stem cell technology just the latest in a long line of attempts to take our money?

I put this question to Dr Uliana Gout, founder and medical director of London Aesthetic Medicine and the president of the British College of Aesthetic Medicine. "Exosomes have certainly come with a bang in the world of aesthetic medicine in the last two years or so," she says. "It’s an exciting area to explore and further our evidence-based understanding of their potential when it comes to rejuvenation. At present, we’re at the inception stage and seeing a flourish of marketing and [pharmaceutical] products being launched into the market." Overall, Dr Gout is positive about the future of exosome therapies. "We see them have longer term effects in clinical studies and [when more research is done] we shall be able to fully evaluate the potential of their effects on the skin and the tissues below."

Weeks pass after my facial. I look in the mirror and think of that bit in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason that shows Bridget in a Thai prison, surrounded by women who want to talk about one thing: romantic love or, rather, the elusiveness of it. There may be a more than manageable amount of heavy news at the moment but some issues are universal. Were that movie to be written now, Bridget would be dabbling with cryogenic freezing therapies and her band of buddies would be discussing age filters on Hinge over glasses of biodynamic wine, which they scoff at. (Let’s be honest, sometimes it’s a little too funky.)

As with wine, when it comes to women’s appearances, natural is not always best — at least, not according to the absurd beauty standards propagated by contemporary cultural behemoths like the seemingly ageless Kardashians and Hadids. No matter where you are in the world, the fact remains that a woman’s age matters more than it should. It is still used to discriminate against us in our personal and professional lives. Men seek ever younger partners; employers know that younger women (though less experienced) are cheaper to hire; older women are pitted against their more youthful counterparts. The wisdom, beauty and comfort in one’s skin that comes with age is not valued as it should be.

The flawless effects of Salon. C Stellar’s frankly peerless exosome treatment were thrilling but, equally, they drove home how heavy the weight of ageing is. Like an invisible albatross around my neck, I know that I lug it with me wherever I go and that, subconsciously, no matter how many levels of feminism I complete, my disquiet about getting older remains. 

My 35th birthday is just gone. I know that my life is happier, fuller and more meaningful than ever. But the truth is that I still feel weird about my skin. I liked that my pores disappeared after the exosome treatment. I've had Botox and I’ve had radio frequency treatments. I’ve had facials and I’ve had lasers fired at my face. I have been fascinated by them all, and reaped the benefits of the results. At the same time, I have felt uneasy about my aversion to looking my age. How could you not have complicated feelings about the ageing process in our society? We are living in an era where a 37-year-old male acquaintance of mine recently shared that he has set the upper age limit for women on his dating apps to 31. In Britain, the gender pay gap becomes most egregious when women enter their 30s and (generally) start having children. Male infertility is widely heralded by experts as a looming public health crisis but it is women’s fertility that makes headlines, dominates dinner party conversations between middle-income professionals of a certain age and causes heart-rending anguish for single and married people alike. 

I think that microneedling a stem cell serum into your skin can be fun and relaxing. It can make you feel good about yourself. However, treatments like these are simply an aesthetic endeavour and not a way to stop ageing. That's impossible. If it were possible, we'd miss out on the wisdom, experience and self-confidence that can come as years pass by. The problem isn't that we will wrinkle, sag and change. It's that we live in a world that is still hostile to this inevitable and (if you allow it to be) beautiful aspect of human experience.

Andrea shares her own take on the thorny issue of ageing. "My approach to skin and beauty is really more about looking and feeling your best at all ages," she says. "There is a real shift away from trying to look 20 years younger than you are." Of course not everyone subscribes, adds Andrea, who feels as though we are taking more of a rounded approach to ageing with a renewed focus on "not just looking great but moving great, feeling great and living well".

I may be living well but making peace with ageing remains a work in progress. If anything softens the blow, I’m not sure it will be beauty treatments. Nor will it be a philosophical lightbulb moment, or a new feminist awakening. It might just be that the sheer amount of maintenance involved in trying to prevent or slow ageing is a logistical nightmare.

To paraphrase Nora Ephron, I am starting to think that not having to worry about my appearance might be the secret upside of death. That said, beauty treatments will always appeal to me. Lying in the cocoon of Andrea’s new salon, unable to look at my phone and oblivious (if only for a moment) to everything currently going on in the world is welcome relief. It’s surely only a matter of time until you can self-administer exosomes at home for less than £50, because Andrea Pfeffer is usually around three years ahead of the beauty and cosmetics market. By then, she’ll be on to the next thing, talking me through the technology as I inevitably continue to grapple with the ageing conundrum.