Beauty Sleuth: Salicylic acid peel at Debbie Thomas

Battling a sudden spot breakout is stressful enough, but with my best friend’s wedding in less than a week’s time, I had no time to fuss around with potions and tinctures at home. Dubbed one of London’s ‘superfacialists’, and specialising in acne-prone skin, Debbie Thomas looked like the person for the job.

I visited her London HQ, above Hari’s Hair Salon on Brompton Road, in my lunch hour. It’s a small operation, with only three treatment rooms, about 12 appointments a day and no annoying pan-pipe music to distract you. Instead it’s straight to business; I had a brief skin diagnosis (‘some hyperpigmentation, scarring and very sensitive skin’ — tell me something I don’t know) before heading into a treatment room for a salicylic acid peel.

Debbie started with a quick cleanse before performing some ‘extraction’ — teasing out the dirt, bacteria and other nasties that have been lurking inside my pores — with a fine surgical needle. It was uncomfortable, but the pain was brief and she quickly moved on to applying the acid peel, which was left to tingle on my face for ten minutes as the ingredients gently sloughed off the upper layers of dead skin.

When Debbie removed the peel and I inspected my face in the mirror, I found my complexion brighter, tighter and pleasingly pimple-free. When I returned to the office, a colleague commented that my skin was ‘literally glowing’ — an impressive transformation given that the treatment only took 45 minutes in total. Yes, it’s a pricey peel, but when you need fast results, Debbie is worth it.