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I N T H E B A G

A skincare queen and a meditation maven tell all

133 H A R PE R S B A Z A A R . C O M . AU September 2016

With a cult following and a client book filled

with celebrities, skin whisperer Melanie

Grant is now opening shop in Melbourne.

She talks social media, signature results and

Linda Evangelista with tracey Withers

R“I think people with a profile come here because they get the facial they want, they pay for it like everyone

else and if they’re inclined to post online, it’s honest.”

and work done — she hasn’t. She just knows her treatments,” says Grant, who is far too discreet to tell exactly which ones she had.

Less quietly, skinfluencers such as Nicole Warne (Gary Pepper Girl) drop Grant’s name all over Instagram with pictures of their off-Richter facial afterglow. “Social media has been an incredible platform for beauty,” Grant notes. “But we’re at a point where people are, rightly, suspi-cious about who’s being paid. I never pay anyone.” She has no ‘blogger agreement’. “I doubt I could afford Nicole anyway!” she says with a laugh. “I think people with a profile actually come here because they get the facial they want, they pay for it like everyone else and if they’re inclined to post, it’s honest.”

Authenticity is, of course, now the battle cry of every business coach. Brands that cut through know their own DNA, under-stand what their clients need, and stick to the sweet spot where the two intersect. “My business has been structured that way from the beginning,” Grant says. “I say that I don’t do signature treat-ments; I get signature results. So we can innovate and evolve what we do at Melanie Grant, but only if it fits that standard.”

For Grant, standards mean restraining the empire. Although she works with some of the world’s top skincare brands, her own range isn’t on the agenda “unless I can produce something as good as what’s out there or better”. Even as appointments book out at her new clinic on High Street in Melbourne’s Armadale, Grant says this expansion is the last. “I can split time between two cities now that my children are 10 and 11, but I couldn’t be everywhere,” she reasons. “I’m a control freak — nobody can run your business like you do.”

In a 150-year-old building rewired by Kelvin Ho (the interior designer behind flagships for Dion Lee and A.P.C.) to riff on Carine Roitfeld’s Parisian apartment, the Armadale clinic mirrors Double Bay’s black-and-white aesthetic, menu and warm vibe (Grant’s right-hand woman, Rachel Murray, moved down to make sure). As Grant says, “Results keep a client and culture keeps a brand.”

Photographed by JULIAN KINGMA

The SKINFLUENCER

un a search on Melanie Grant and Google will tell you she’s the skin whisperer Jessica Gomes and Nicole Trunfio will fly home for. You’ll see holiday selfies of her

in New York with devotee turned friend Lara Worthington. But when you meet Grant, 35-year-old celebrity facialist, you realise hype has little to do with how hot she is right now. “I’m flattered by the buzz, I’m grateful and I don’t mean to sound aloof, but buzz doesn’t run a business,” she says. “I can only trade on being great at skin for my clients, celebrity or not.

“There’s always a lot of noise — the latest, greatest — in this industry, and I’m a beauty nerd who [distils] all that. I don’t use modalities that aren’t clinically proven; I’ll research stem cells and growth factors. I’m extremely conservative.”

Conservative can also be ballsy. When Grant hung her name above the door of her first clinic, in Sydney’s Double Bay, back in 2012, offering only bespoke, upscale skin treatments, she was an outlier on a scene choked with coupons from beauty-plex salons cranking out waxing, facials, brow tattoos and Botox, all inside a lunch hour. “I had 13 years of experience just in skin. I’d trained in traditional-school massage and ritual facials; I’d learnt technologies like laser under some of the best skin doctors, but there was nobody combining those two worlds. When I wanted to see someone like the facialists I love in New York or Paris or London, there was nobody here,” she says. “I realised success could not be about competing with the crowd — it had to be about valuing my craft.”

As it does now, the Melanie Grant Skin Health menu spanned light, laser and radio frequency as well as organic detox and French gommage facials. No injectables, because Grant isn’t into that. No upselling. “We make some-thing like laser, not usually pleasant, feel more of a luxury experience, but doing a serious Fraxel on a 25-year-old for ‘general rejuvenation’? Absurd,” she says. “Likewise, if someone wants the kind of result we can’t truly deliver, we’ll refer them to the best surgeon.”

The boutique philosophy gained the trust of TV and fashion types, whose faces are their live-lihoods. When Linda Evangelista jetted in to judge Australia’s Next Top Model in 2014, Grant was called to her hotel for nightly sessions. “It was the dream! I grew up worshipping ’90s supermodels. People think Linda’s had fillers

Grant wears Maison Margiela dress, $2290, from Harrolds. Below: Chanel top, $7750, and skirt, $4960.

Melanie Grant, in her new Melbourne salon, wears

her own Céline dress and jewellery (worn throughout); Saint Laurent shoes, $950, from Cosmopolitan Shoes

(worn throughout).

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H A R PE R S B A Z A A R . C O M . AU September 2016134 135 H A R PE R S B A Z A A R . C O M . AU September 2016

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