Here’s How to Look as if You Haven’t Had Work Done

On a recent Sunday, Lisa Goodman, the founder of GoodSkin, was talking about her medical spa’s signature approach. “We believe in leaving signs of life, like wrinkles and crow’s-feet,” she said. “It’s a look so subtle, you can’t tell exactly what someone had done.”

Call it the untouched look. Ms. Goodman does, and even trademarked it.

She opened her original salon, in Los Angeles, in 2015 and has been coming to New York City to treat clients every three months. As her client list grew, she began scouting locations for an East Coast branch. On July 1, a Manhattan location of GoodSkin opened in NoHo.

Ms. Goodman, 35, thinks of GoodSkin as an alternative to injectable beauty bars like Ject or Alchemy 43 or Plump that are banking on mass appeal for their success. For one thing, at GoodSkin there is no handy menu to order lip or cheek filler à la carte.

“We take our clients’ social history, genetics, and ask them to bring in photos of how their parents aged, and we spend a lot of time touching their face,” Ms. Goodman said. “Very simply, it’s science first, beauty second.”

Then Ms. Goodman comes up with a plan. For hollowness under the eyes, a common side effect of aging, she may recommend a combination of under-eye filler to restore fat pads, a filler injected under the muscles of the cheeks to restore fat loss and provide lift around the eyes, and threads that reposition fat pads to provide lift without adding volume.

“Our look is subtle but not the treatment,” she said. In other words, be prepared for liberal use of injectables.

Clients can of course decide which treatments they want, and the clinic’s signature look comes with a cost. “For clients aged 35 to 45, they might spend $3,000 per year on the low end,” said Ms. Goodman, most of whose clients are over 50.

When Ms. Goodman was 17, she said, her mother, Rosa, was diagnosed with vitiligo, an autoimmune disease that causes change to skin pigment. It spurred an interest in the skin.

Now her mother is one of the before-and-after photos that are displayed in the office. Ms. Goodman, whose mother is Mexican and whose father is of Eastern European decent, has sample photos of clients of different races and ethnicities so potential clients can see what a procedure may look like on someone who looks more like them than the Caucasians many dermatologists and cosmetic surgeons often see.

Ms. Goodman, who has a master’s degree in physician assistant studies, worked in Los Angeles for the dermatologist Ava Shamban for a decade. In 2013, Ms. Goodman spent a month working with a surgeon in France whose approach informed her own style of aesthetic work.

“The French are all about the details, and everything has to blend on the face,” said Ms. Goodman, who lives in Los Angeles and New York, where she has offices, and Paris, where her fiancé lives.

Because of her frequent travel, Ms. Goodman often finds herself jet-lagged and unable to sleep. One such night she decided to look at the products she stocked.

“I obsessively went through every single product to make sure they had no endocrine-disrupting ingredients or silicone that doesn’t dissolve in the environment,” she said. “I won’t stock anything the E.U. wouldn’t allow to be shelved.”

GoodSkin, which has discreet treatment rooms enclosed in frosted glass and a refrigerator stocked with different kinds of San Pellegrino waters, carries beauty lines that aren’t widely known, including Alastin, SkinMedicine and Defenage.

Ms. Goodman’s sister, Lauren Pack, is a nurse who also works for GoodSkin. The company requires its staff to take a three-day injection course at EuroMediCom, a clinic in the Netherlands that teaches facial anatomy, and then work with Ms. Goodman for 500 hours before they are allowed to inject anything.

The desire to show one’s real age, albeit the best possible version, runs counter to the approach many people take to aging. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Ms. Goodman thinks of a French actress, Catherine Deneuve, as a good example of her did-she-or-didn’t-she philosophy. She is “finding grace at every age,” Ms. Goodman said.

What about some names of American celebrities who may have had work done, but in a subtle way?

“I can’t say people I treat or they’ll kill me,” Ms. Goodman said, laughing. “But remember that it’s always the good stuff you don’t notice.”

GoodSkin New York

14 East Fourth Street, Suite 406, 310-400-6534; goodskinclinics.com.

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