Look, no make up!
Leading cosmetic dermatologist Dr Vali has created her own holistic skin care treatments to achieve the kind of look that sets you apart from the pouting Instagram crowd
DR Vali’s LMS Wellness is unlike any medical wellness and dermatology clinic you have ever been to. Like time-travelling to the future, it is light years away from the fusty waiting rooms of Harley Street.
By invitation only, LMS Wellness is “discreetly” located in a side road in South Kensington. Within its sleek dark walls, it offers state-of-the-art services and cutting edge facilities, among them a meditation pod, a cryotherapy chamber and an infrared sauna. There’s even a Nasa-designed hyperbaric oxygen chamber, which looks like a huge techno-barrel.
One of London’s leading cosmetic dermatologists who was once described by Vanity Fair as “a cross between Salma Hayek and Oprah Winfrey”, Dr Vali is a twice board-certified dermatologist, having trained at King’s College London and UCLA.
She is a dynamic, buzz–bomb dressed in Bottega, radiating with energy and warmth. Her clients come to her via “word of mouth” and Dr Vali addresses them as ”legend”, “superstar” or “hero” (and some of them most probably are).
Dr. Vali
East End-born and raised, she set up LMS Wellness with her younger brother, Dr Enayat, who is equally well qualified, being board certified at Imperial College London and King’s College London. Considered one of the world’s top micro-surgeons, Dr Enayat handles the functional medicine and complementary therapy side of the clinic.
With her thick lustrous hair and makeup free skin, Dr Vali is straight-talking and gloriously frank (the detailed facial analysis her clinical consultants gives you pulls no punches). She is the best advertisement for her clinic.
She treats her members with her fully integrated 360-approach to skincare in which your internal health and lifestyle are just as important as your surface appearance. She doesn’t follow trends, preferring an individualistic, less-is-more approach. No way is this your average Botox clinic. In fact, she advocates skin-tightening rather than muscle freezing. So if you are after the latest Instagram influencer pout, this is not a place for you. Glass met with Dr Vali between lockdowns to find out more about her plans.
DR Vali’s LMS Wellness
You are going to launch your “By Dr. Vali” brand with New Breed Skin Technology skincare this year. How is it different from other skincare brands?
“By Dr Vali” draws from my 17 plus years of experience as both a medical practitioner and an aesthetic dermatologist. Our Adaptive Skincare is built on the premise that the skin is highly adaptable. With the right biohacking techniques, you can retrain the skill cells to accomplish whatever it needs to function – and look – like a superstar.
Instead of developing another line of products that sit on the surface of the skin, we created a game-changing patented molecule that is active on the medical layer of the skin – the reticular dermis. This wakes up the cells and guarantees true cellular change, even for medical skin conditions.
Most people stockpile loads of products on their skin and say, “it feels soft”. When they stop, they turn around and say, “it feels dry”. In actuality, you’ve been force-feeding it non-stop, so it’s become lazy. It no longer generates what it needs to function at its best because it didn’t have to.
What we asked ourselves was: “What do most of our members complain about? What do they need outside of clinical treatment to re-educate their skin? Which ingredients target rosacea, acne, pigmentation, laxity, fine lines, texture and pores? Which of these truly work and what concentrates do we need them in?”
The Cutis Contouring Tool
Once we had that down, we had to ensure delivery is protected, so it does what it needs to do, where it is supposed to without being destroyed on the way. Our patented molecule replaces the structure of the skin barrier by combining hydrophilic (water-soluble) and lipophilic (fat-soluble) ingredients and wrapped in Japanese technology because we’re rock-stars.
We then stepped back to make sure that it was all safe. Even though we’re delivering products with high concentrations, they have to be safe with minimal side effects because we’re that acute. This is where my clinical hat came on: at LMS, we get a huge footfall treating side effects from products used incorrectly.
DR Vali’s LMS Wellness
It sounds incredible. How does it work?
We’re really proud of it. It’s great. When the molecule is released into the medical layer, it adapts to the wearer’s skin. So, if your problem is rosacea, the product will release different ingredients to someone that’s dealing with hyperpigmentation or acne.
It adapts to you on a cellular level to deliver a uniquely sophisticated level of personalisation. It’s a game changer. That’s why, it’s called “Adaptive Skincare”. It uses your cells to fix you.
So, the customer won’t have to buy a large range of products to treat their unique skin conditions?
Not unless they want to. What we’ve done is design a core range of products, with hero treatments that focus on acne, pigmentation and rosacea. There are always a range of causes for these conditions, that can be factored from lifestyle to genetics. We’ve carried forward the same adaptive skincare model, and just honed in more closely on these skin types.
DR Vali’s LMS Wellness
Can you share with me something about the Cutis Skin Toy (The Ultimate Micro Contouring Tool) you have invented and are about to launch?
I found an engineer in Germany and said: “I only have one pair of hands, I need a device for my people who I can’t reach to contour, who have already been contoured and need to maintain it; and also for people who want to keep their face and neck tight.” It’s bringing the accessibility of Dr Vali to the world; giving them a clinical result without the downtime.
I need strong pulsation that doesn’t require conductive gel and isn’t EMS [electrical muscle stimulation] technology, which is the norm.” All my products have to represent me; they have to be cool, new and different to anything you’ve seen before.
We’ve put two motors with over 14,000 oscillations per minute combined into it and created a device that works on a deeper level than others. Bringing one of the strongest motors to the industry Just like our Adaptive Skincare. So you are literally contouring, tightening and lifting the skin. It’s got four different intensity levels and five t settings. It has the strongest motor I’ve seen in a skin tool, but it feels great. It performs like a legend.
DR Vali’s LMS Wellness
Can you explain the theory behind it?
It uses sonic pulsation – a vibration in the strongest frequency and wavelength possible. It gets down near the nerve endings because of the overlapping vibration of the motors. This makes the nerves wake up.
It works on all anatomical planes, so we’ve dubbed it the “transanatomical sonic pulsation technology”. All the anatomical planes work together to produce tightening and contouring, so if you do one side and not the other side, you’ll really see the difference. But with no risk, no conduction burns – nothing.
by Caroline Simpson
New Breed Skin Technology bydrvali.com