It’s a white Christmas
MANILA, Philippines – In this side of the world, that “whiter is better” is a cultural ideal that could mean anything from never having clocked in an actual day’s worth of manual labor under the sun to having a bit of that foreign lineage somehow still generally deemed more desirable, even with today’s ethnically-diverse beauty standards.
Yes, a golden tan evokes a jet-set lifestyle. It tones what your non-existent trip to the gym hasn’t. But the process of lightening the skin, when done in a safe way, can prove to be beneficial in all sorts of ways, whatever skin tone you covet.
Instant, all-over lightening is a too-good-to-be-true claim that could of course only find its truth in Korean science. Now in Manila, Suaviss Lab White is a specialized whitening salon that offers only one service, the four-step, two-hour Lab Whitening Treatment.
It begins with a thorough consultation that probes even your medical history and skincare and makeup regimen. Getting a pimple treatment, for instance, affects your skin’s sensitivity to light that could be making you more susceptible to redness and dark spots. Light is a vital component in what makes this treatment so popular in Suaviss’ other branches in Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, India and Macau.
After cleansing, no-nonsense head-to-toe exfoliation by way of emulsification commences, lifting the dead skin cells off the surface with a water-based exfoliant to be applied by an aesthetician, packing it on in circles. The aestheticians trained in Suaviss’ Seoul headquarters for three months, and true to the school of Korean beauty whose principles involve locking in as much moisture as possible, abrasive scrubs are a no-no.
This preps the skin for the first application of a whitening ointment. Its blend of active ingredients is a trade secret, but it is labeled to be 95 percent natural and five percent functional, backed up by continuous research certified by the Korea Institute for Skin and Clinical Sciences. With you in the buff — it’s just the only way you can get every nook and cranny, so to speak — the aesthetician will slather it all over your face and body, with the option of concentrating more on your darker problem areas. The usual suspects are the elbows and just under the butt, but you will see that exfoliating these areas alone actually already lightens them. The whitening ointment is good on its own, but stepping into Suaviss’ R-630(K) Collagen Light machine activates it like no other.
Light therapy has its roots in traditional medicine, tracing back to ancient Egyptian methods, thanks to vitamin D. The R-630(K) Collagen Light Machine is mounted with 43 lamps that produce one 630nm wavelength. It has the same vitamin D dose of two hours’ worth of sunlight — without the skin-darkening, cancer-causing UVA and UVB rays — in only ten minutes of irradiation. That’s equal to two to three songs you can play from your phone, blasted from the light machine’s surround sound speakers.
Getting vitamin D into your system increases the level of collagen and cell activation in the skin tissue, encouraging the skin to act younger: dark spots and uneven tones are eliminated, large pores are tightened, and wrinkles reduced. Another instant effect its fans love? It gets rid of a hangover and an overall feeling of malaise in just five minutes.
After another layer of whitening ointment to lock it all in, you don’t even need to refer to your “before” pictures to see that just one session actually works. Skin is brighter and any unevenness is gone, just like that.
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Beauty Lab Whitening by Suaviss Lab White is located at 3F, BGC Stopover Pavilion, 31st Street Corner 2nd Avenue, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City. Call 546-4601.
