Clarifying facial
0.00 to 0.02 mm
Clears the surface and puts water back into it.
More on clarifying facialLucidum. Medical aesthetics, measured in millimeters.
A clinic on Greene Street in SoHo. Before we treat anything, we show you which layer of your skin it reaches.
Every treatment works at a depth. A peel stops a few hundredths of a millimeter down; filler is placed on bone. We begin each consultation by showing you where, so you can judge what is worth doing.
Depths on this site are typical ranges for facial skin. Yours are assessed in person.
Surface to bone is about eight millimeters.
Six layers, seven treatments. The gauge keeps count as you go down.
0.00 to 0.02 mm
Stratum corneum
The surface
Fifteen to twenty rows of flat, finished cells. It is the part you touch, and the only part most creams ever reach.
0.02 to 0.10 mm
Epidermis
Living epidermis
New cells rise from the base of this layer and take about four weeks to reach the surface. The cells that make pigment sit at its floor.
0.10 to 0.50 mm
Dermis papillaris
Upper dermis
Fine collagen and the smallest blood vessels. This is where redness lives, and where the skin gets its supply.
0.50 to 2.00 mm
Dermis reticularis
Deep dermis
Thick bundles of collagen and elastin. Lines that stay when your face is still are set here, and so is most of what we call texture.
2.00 to 6.00 mm
Subcutis
Fat, then muscle
Fat pads give the face its shape. Under them, small muscles fold the skin every time you frown, squint or raise your brows.
6.00 to 8.00 mm
Periosteum
Bone
The structure everything above rests on. With age it recedes a little, and the layers above settle with it.
Six rules we hold to at every depth.
You hear the depth before the price.
Every written plan opens with a drawing of your skin and the layer each treatment reaches. Costs are listed underneath, per session, with nothing bundled in.
The first visit is only a consultation.
Nobody is treated on the day of their consultation, including returning clients trying something new. If you still want it a week later, it was probably the right idea.
Only nurses and physicians inject.
Our aesthetician does facials and peels, which stay in the top tenth of a millimeter. Anything that breaks the skin is done by a registered nurse or by Dr. Aldous.
Sometimes the honest answer is no.
Some consultations end without a booking, usually because the change someone wants needs a surgeon, or simply more time. We write that down in the plan too.
We keep no before and after gallery.
Someone else’s result tells you very little about your skin. We photograph yours at every visit, in the same light and from the same three angles, and show you those.
The filler reversal is on the tray first.
Hyaluronic acid filler can be dissolved with hyaluronidase. It is drawn up and on the tray before the first syringe is opened, every time.
Back to the surface.
The rest of the clinic is up here, on the third floor.
One floor on Greene Street.
We took the third floor of an 1880s cast-iron building for its tall windows, and kept the room as plain as the building allowed.
Inside the clinic and the team
