A moment of zen at the airport? It's possible
There’s a reason you typically disembark a flight with skin drier than the Sahara Desert. But one Vogue editor has found the ultimate business travel (beauty) hack.
Here is something entirely unexpected to hear upon arriving at your destination after some 30 hours of travel time — ‘you look so fresh!’
Truly unprecedented scenes and yet exactly what I experienced having landed in Switzerland from Sydney to attend a watch conference earlier this month. Knowing I would be heading straight into meetings (I did not know that I would be cutting it so fine timewise that I would not have time to shower before my first one, the horror!) I booked a facial at the new La Prairie Art of Beauty at the Sydney airport.
Created in partnership with Heinemann Tax & Duty Free, the lounge is the first permanent skincare treatment service at the airport. The menu of skincare treatments is calibrated to protect the skin against the stressors of flying, which is mostly centred on skin becoming dehydrated thanks to the dry cabin air and low air pressure. There’s a reason you typically disembark a flight, especially a long-haul one, with skin drier than the Sahara Desert and spotty too, for added insult.
This time would be different — for no amount of in-flight facial mist spritzing can truly counter both the dehydrating air, patchy sleep, one too many wines and the unholy mix of trepidation and excitement of travelling toward a week of the unknown.
So as is the answer for many of life’s forks in the road — a facial was decided upon.
The Art of Beauty lounge is found in the Duty-Free area once you’ve cleared customs. This is the point when you’re generally trying to stuff your little bottles of decanted shampoo back into your ziplock bag and are reminded of how much waiting and low-level frustration is involved in the very great privilege of travelling.
But that sense of fluster is put to the side the minute you open the door to the spa, all clean-lines and gleaming with art that nods to La Prairie’s affinity with Bauhaus by the New Zealand-born, Australian-based artist Dion Horstmans. Soft spa music is playing and it smells heavenly. The key thing is, you don’t feel like you’re in the airport until you glance outside and see everyone else schlepping their wheelie suitcases and looking vaguely stressed. Unfortunately the other side effect of having a facial at the airport before a flight is an immediate sense of smugness, along with all the relaxation and wellbeing.
My session begins with a consultation with my beauty therapist Freya (who is also the retail manager for the brand) asking me about my skin concerns. On this day these are mainly a distinct lack of brightness and a hopefulness that my skin can be plumped enough to withstand a long haul flight and an exhausting conference week. But also generally I am a tired mother of two small children who still wake me up most nights, my skin is a little uneven with some pigmentation and I am often simultaneously struck with both fine lines and spots (unfair!).
The options
The personalisable treatment options include the Gold Radiance, Caviar Illumination, Caviar Indulgence and Platinum Haute-Rejuvenation. Based on my desired outcomes Freya and I decide on the Platinum Haute-Rejuvenation, which happens to be the super luxury brand’s creme de la creme range. The Haute-Rejuvenation Elixir serum alone, infused with the range’s Platinum Multi-Peptide and La Prairie’s Exclusive Cellular Complex, is around $2000 per bottle and comes encased in cylindrical packaging that’d you’d absolutely display on your mantle. The brand recently celebrated its one year anniversary by introducing 30 minute express facials in the four La Prairie collections, and complimentary pre-flight treatments with eligible purchases at Sydney International Airport until September 30, 2024.
The treatment
The treatment begins with Freya asking if I’m a lake or mountain person. Truly it’s a question I’ve never considered but I surprise myself by definitively deciding that I am a lake person. I’m instructed to take in some deep breaths and take in the aromatic oils scenting the room. Then begins the facial with a double cleanse and then via a series of pinching, massaging and tapping motions a series of serums are applied to my skin, followed by mask — during which I am treated to a hand and arm massage — and finishing with moisturiser that I swear I can literally feel my skin drink in. I feel so relaxed it seems impossible that I am actually in an airport and not floating in my lake.
The result
There’s no getting around it, my skin is glowing. It immediately looks more hydrated and juicier. Usually when I book a facial I’m after hardcore chemical peels, LED lights and any other module I can add on, and yet my skin looks and feels so plumped from 45 minutes of being massaged, tapped and pinched with La Prairie products I’m a tiny bit stunned. Freya assures me that this will last throughout the flight and for my arrival, and she turns out to be completely correct. I didn’t do anything to my skin on my flight to Switzerland and while I did get some sleep, it certainly wasn’t the regulation eight hours (what must that feel like anyway?). After a flight delay I arrived to Switzerland panicked, yet still, apparently glowing, for I made my first meeting and the first thing my editor said was that, yes, I looked so fresh. I was not quite as zen as I was when I floated out of the La Prairie spa some 387456394569326593659 hours I ago, but somehow a glimmer of it remained.
I also now have two official, tried and tested business travel tips: always travel with a steamer in case the hotel iron isn’t up to scratch, and get a pre-flight facial — it’s the skincare equivalent of finding the holy grail travel blazer that doesn’t crush.