BY DESIGN : Saving Face . . . and Chins and Necks : Cosmetics: You don’t have to go under the knife to fight the pull of gravity. Some over-the-counter products do the trick temporarily. And they all cost <i> lots </i> less than surgery.
Forget about what her hairdresser knows. It’s what she buys in her favorite Hollywood beauty supply store that counts.
Old-fashioned appliances and liquids that temporarily lift and reshape a face--some of them created decades ago--continue to sell in this era of plastic surgery. They come with such names as Beaute Lift, Mark Traynor’s Temporary Lift, No Lines and Dr. Harold Clavin’s Non-Surgical Eye Lift. They promise to erase at least 10 years. And not a single product costs more than $40--thousands less than the surgical variety.
George Masters, the hair and makeup artist who converted Dustin Hoffman into “Tootsie,” has used the Beaute Lift for years. “And on more women than you think,” he says. “It’s fabulous. It lifts the lower part of the face as tight as you want.”
Makeup artists and movie stars know where to find these secret beauty helpers--places such as Cinema Secrets, Columbia Stage and Screen Cosmetics, Friends and Naimie’s. They are situated conveniently close to television and film studios. The products are occasionally touted in the back pages of tabloids.
But recently, they were introduced to a whole new crowd when Allure magazine showed a model who had taped on her four Traynor lifts, theoretically fighting gravity around her forehead, eyes, cheeks, chin and neck.
Could these products--the little secrets of the cosmetics world--forestall the need that some women feel to go under the knife?
Santa Monica plastic surgeon Harold Clavin says his non-surgical device, for example, is an effective alternative for people who, for one reason or another, cannot or will not undergo surgery.
“I get a lot of calls from universities and from (Veterans Administration) hospitals. A lot of people are poor,” Clavin says. “They can’t afford surgery. They have visual field obstruction, and the government is not going to pay for an eye lift. But they don’t mind buying my product.”
Helen of St. Moritz, who is actually Helen Batlin of San Francisco, makes the most popular temporary lift. And while Shelley Winters is the only actress to ever admit wearing it, Batlin bandies about two more names: Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie” and Robin Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire.”
Embarrassing accidents, on- or off-screen, are exceedingly rare-- if the tapes are applied correctly. The Beaute Lift ($30-$35) is a simple system of surgical tapes (replaced after each use) attached to elastic cords, which Batlin says, “you pull up like a Venetian blind” and hide in the hair.
“Once it’s on, (wearers) don’t know it’s there,” says Masters about the device. Except for the socialite who called Masters from a dinner party to say one of her tapes had fallen into her soup. He couldn’t do much, except tell her to take off the other tape and strive for facial symmetry.
Masters sometimes adds a little extra lift with false eyelashes. He trims them to look more natural and curls the existing lashes. He graduates the placement of the false ones, so by the time they reach the outer corner of the eye, there is a tiny amount of exposed lid, which he fills in with eyeliner. “That will give you a lift similar to (those of) Sophia Loren and Zsa Zsa Gabor,” Masters says. “That almond look.”
L.A.-based makeup artist and author Michael Maron says: “I would rather deal with the face with my makeup tricks. As a woman gets older, everything has to go up. And you can do that with shading.” But he has been known to use a secret lift or two; he prefers the Mark Traynor Temporary Face Lift ($15 at Naimie’s in North Hollywood) to the St. Moritz. “It has eyelets so you don’t have to deal with wrapping elastic string around and around to get the desired length.”
Traynor, a New York makeup artist with a mail-order lift line, quotes a letter from one woman: “ ‘Could you please send me X amount of tapes in a hurry? Because I’m getting married in two weeks, and my husband has never seen me without my tapes on.’ ”
Anyone who chooses to wear the device 24 hours a day, which Traynor never recommends, is asking for trouble. “She’d better be ready to say: ‘Don’t touch my hair,’ ” he sighs. “And to go to bed with the lights out.”
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To correct drooping eyelids, Clavin introduced his non-surgical eye lift almost a decade ago at Neiman Marcus. The crescent-shaped “adhesives” are now sold by telephone and mail order through his Santa Monica office and at Cinema Secrets in Burbank.
The adhesives tuck and lift excessive skin above the eyelids and can even change the shape of the eye. Clavin recommends his $35 to $37 starter kit with small, medium and large adhesives for initial experimentation.
In addition to the Clavin lifts, Cinema Secrets stocks a wide assortment of temporary face and body fixes, including a special German tape used for body sculpting.
Maurice Stein, a makeup artist and Cinema Secrets owner, creates neck, jaw and bust lifts with the tape, mostly for photo opportunities. And not always on celebrities. A 40-year-old woman, who didn’t want to wear a bra for a glamour shot, chose tape instead, Stein says.
The store also carries No Lines ($12), a liquid lift and smoother that Stein recommends to men and women. When applied skillfully (he uses Q-Tips), Stein says, it can give a lift to the entire face, neck, backs of hands and cleavage area.
These quick fixes aren’t always a snap. There are secrets behind the secrets, and those who work the counters of the beauty supply stores are happy to share. Some of the needed tools are Q-Tips, eyelash curlers, false eyelashes, wigs, special foundation, rubbing alcohol and steady hands.
Inventors and purveyors of the products say they were designed for special-occasion use only: a movie role, a TV appearance, a night at the Oscars, a date with an old beau or a high-school reunion.
