elen Duke dosen’t
do spa facials any
more. For the last
eight years, the
Indianapolis bou-
tique owner has
been going to
Stephen Perkins,
M.D.’s office for regular facials, peels and
microdermabrasion, as well as using his
line of skin care. This yar, for her fortieth
birthday, she asked him to inject her brow
and forehead lines with Botox. And some-
time in the next decade or so, she says, she
might even ask him to do beauty ►388
what he's trained to do: give her a facelift.
Three nights a week (including Satur-
days), the OR at Steven Pearlman, M.D.'s,
Park Avenue practice morphs into a beauty
lounge. Aesthetician James Kivior uses
Oriental screens to hide the surgical equip-
ment, puts out a heated feather bed, lights
some aromatherapy candles, and Operation
Rejuvenation begins. The socialites and
professionals who swoop in for the service are
greeted with a baby cheesecake and a virgin
piña colada before settling in for the $125
beauty sampler, which combines a facial,
peel, and microdermabrasion with hot stone
massage and a salt foot scrub. Afterward,
they can pop next door to get Botox from
the doctor himself. Pearlman describes it as a
"comprehensive
approach
to
facial
rejuvenation. I hate to use the term, but it really
is one-stop shopping."
Suddenly, plastic surgeons' offices-
traditionally the places to go for full-scale
"procedures" like rhinoplasties, tummy
tucks, and browlifts-are feeling a lot like
dermatologists' offices, offering wrinkle-
filling injectables (Restylane, Perlane),
collagen-plumping lasers, and complexion-
polishing microdermabrasion. And yet it
was only a year or two ago that der-
matologists' offices-where women his-
torically went to find solutions for acne,
and to have moles checked-started to feel a
lot