24-06-2025
I Might Never Age Backwards, But I Still Love Fatma Shaheen's Facials
A view of the entrance to Montage Palmetto Bluff, a resort located in South Carolina's lowcountry.
When I arrived at Montage Palmetto Bluff in South Carolina for a facial with Fatma Shaheen, the founder of Skin Design London, I expected to have a luxury experience. The hotel, where Justin and Hailey Bieber were married, is renowned for its luxury and exclusivity. It's so exclusive, in fact, that security almost didn't let me through the front gate because they couldn't find a pass with my name on it.
What I didn't expect was the deeply empowering conversation I had with Shaheen about being a woman. In the hour we had together, during which I was mostly on my back with my eyes closed, we talked about everything from divorce to motherhood to wanting to achieve financial independence as middle aged women.
Some of Skin Design London's products.
Occasionally, Shaheen would puncture our conversation with information about the products she was using on my face, all of which she designed personally. The Face Bath, for example, which smells like vintage rose, evokes Victorian manors and stained glass, and sits on your skin like hot wax from a candle you drip on your hand at a dinner party. And the Cherry Gloss Peel, which treats hyperpigmentation and smells exactly like Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream tastes. I've had many facials in my 42 years, and I've sampled many products that purport to treat my fine wrinkles and aging skin. My genetics are almost 100% Irish. I'm white as a ghost and deeply freckled since toddlerhood. As a result, there's almost nothing I can do to prevent myself from aging more rapidly than my peers. I knew from smell alone, however, that I'd use my Skin Design London samples until I was scraping them out of the packaging with my pinky finger, even while so many other products sit in my medicine cabinet unused.
Shaheen is known as a facialist to the stars, and counts Naomi Campbell, Suki Waterhouse, Naomi Watts and Irina Shayek, among many other beautiful people, as clients. She was at Montage Palmetto Bluff to train the staff in the Montage Spa on two of her signature treatments, which include the FaceTight Facial I was receiving. After Palmetto Bluff, which is located in the low country of South Carolina, she was off to Deer Valley, and then Los Cabos, to train staff at other Montage Hotels & Resorts locations. From her biography — CEO, founder, celebrity beautician — you might assume that Shaheen is used to jet setting. But during our time together, Shaheen expressed guilt for leaving her family — a husband, three children, aging parents — in London. It's hard to be a woman and have faith that the time you're spending on yourself is worth the time taken away from those who depend on you, even when you're on the path to become a beauty tycoon.
I left the facial feeling transformed. In the mirror in the changing room, my face looked flushed and youthful. It could have been the HydraFacial machine, which Shaheen used like a tiny vacuum cleaner on my skin, pulling up impurities the way I suck crumbs from the couch my children use with the crevice attachment on my Dyson. Or it could have just been that Shaheen told me that I should travel around the world giving lectures on feminism after I mumbled a few anodyne observations about how hard it is to be a working mother. After an hour in her presence, I looked in the mirror, and for the first time in a long time, felt confident in myself.
It wasn't until I got back to my bathroom in Savannah that I realized that I still had remnants from the Cherry Gloss Peel, which uses real pieces of cherries, all over my face. After the facial, I had lunch by myself at the Octagon, a restaurant overlooking the pool, and then chatted up the valet, all while sporting pieces of dried cherries like gigantic spots of hyperpigmentation. No one told me. Maybe it was that the FaceTight Facial took me back to my early twenties, when I couldn't walk out of my apartment in New York without getting asked out on a date. Or maybe it was that those poor waiters and valet guys could see that I had to fight for a pass in the first place, and felt kind of bad for me.
Unfortunately, you probably have to be a celebrity, or a very important person, to book an hour with Shaheen. But her signature treatments, and her products, are now available at six Montage Hotels & Resorts locations. By experiencing them, you can feel the care she has for women. Every night, while my kids go wild in my bedroom, I take a minute to myself, and wash my face with the FaceBath. I inhale the scent of roses; I feel the luxe thickness of the product on my cheeks. Sometimes, it's the only minute I have in my day when I consciously slow down. I know Shaheen would be delighted to hear that she designed the product that I use to care for myself every evening.
