CEBU, Philippines — Skin care is all the rage these days. Along the rise of many make-up trends throughout the years, the emphasis on maintaining a good skin care routine has also taken the spotlight.
It’s not a rare occurrence to see your friends posting all sorts of skin care products on social media—from product hauls to selfies of them donning face masks for moisture, radiance, anti-aging, and even sheets of cotton on their faces doused with product all to achieve that enviable natural glow.
However, there are just some things you can’t DIY your way out of. Luckily for Cebuanos, Piel Acne and Anti-Aging Skin Center offers professional help on various skin-related dilemmas, with successful New York-based Cebuana esthetician Sylvia Cancio at the helm, alongside her good friend, singer Dr. Zeno “Nonoy” Zuñiga.
“We analyze your skin, we get your tone, your texture, your skin type and skin condition so we know how to treat you. You cannot tell us what you want, instead I will tell you what you need,” Dr. Cancio, who founded La Manille School of Esthetics, begins of Piel’s certified professional services.
Before clients undergo any procedure, everything begins with a consultation which lasts for more or less an hour. Clients are educated about all there is to know about their skin situation. Piel maps out every feature and scar on your face, thus an accurate and efficient treatment can be provided. Clients have to go through tests to see if anything needs to be done before treatment.
Piel, which opened in the second quarter of 2017 in Cebu, is nicely tucked at Vibo Place, Escario Street – away from the prying eyes of other people and harsh sunlight.
With successful branches in New York and Makati, the skin center is now sharing its services to Cebuanos. For their third branch, the professional vocalist and multi-awarded recording artist acts as the head doctor.
Cancio and Zuñiga go way back, and the singer didn’t hesitate when she told him about opening a branch in Cebu, saying that he loves the province. He now considers himself an honorary Cebuano since he spends a lot of time here.
Since Zuñiga made his musical career his bread and butter then, even after attending medical school, his becoming a doctor has become some sort of vocation.
“I was a singer first, so medicine was kind of in the backseat. Singing was my profession, and this [medicine] had become my vocation. Here in the Philippines, wala pang course on becoming an esthetician. We would like to professionalize that since dermatology in the country is so big and covers a lot of things,” says the Los Angeles-trained Zuñiga.
Entrusting Zuñiga with Piel comes naturally for Cancio, noting that it was about time they shared Piel with her hometown. They said the question wasn’t why they decided to branch out in our island, but rather, why not?
“We protect, maintain and take care of the skin’s health. In Europe, children, their mothers and grandmothers go to the same esthetician because they know their skin type well. That is their practice and I would like to do that here. And hey, what’s not to like about Cebu?” Cancio explains.
According to Cancio, acne is many things: mainly hereditary, made worse by one’s lifestyle. She also advises that upon entering your teenage years, one should already wear sunscreen. By 30 years old, one should already be dabbing eye cream, and by 40, serums should be your best friend.
For Zuñiga, he notes that Filipinos tend to have oilier skin and can be more stubborn than others. Cancio adds that Filipinos also have the tendency to want the next big thing.
“Filipinos love to get the next shiny object. It’s always like that, and it’s one product after the other,” she says.
Employing the expertise of licensed estheticians, Piel Acne and Anti-Aging Skin Center also utilizes materials and equipment imported from the United States, since the Philippines doesn’t have their sort of technology just yet. For Zuñiga, it’s very important to also look into where your estheticians trained.
Piel offers micro-current, micro-needling, and micro-blading procedures. Micro-current is a process of re-educating the facial muscles into becoming more supple and firm through electric currents like that used by the brain to send signals to the body, enough for the muscle to know what to do.
“We never bring our faces to the gym. I heard that micro-current is the secret behind Madonna and Jennifer Lopez, so I wanted to learn that and do it here. It’s basically a non-surgical facelift where the muscles in the face go back to what they used to be,” Cancio explains.
Micro-needling procedures are done with tiny needles that create a superficial wound on the skin which rebuilds the collagen. But unlike most procedures, Piel’s micro-needling service doesn’t need the heat from machines and promises a more organized and less brittle collagen development, while micro-blading gets rid of the dark circles around the eyes and lips for a fresher, brighter look.
Piel also has several skincare products, and boasts a new glutathione technology in the form of Luminous, a transdermal glutathione patch.
If you want to feel what it’s like to be treated not only by a musical icon but also a licensed professional, Zuñiga personally attend to the eyebrow micro-blading and scalp micro-pigmentation procedures by appointment basis, given that he travels a lot and is planning on working on new music written in English and Bisaya.