Facial treatments tend to evoke certain expectations — luxurious oils, expensive candles and sigh-inducing massages. The DRx Clinic is very upfront about what its new Essential Facial Rejuvenation treatment is and isn’t: “It’s a functional facial,” says Dr Harvey Ho, who heads up the brand’s latest outpost at East Coast Road. “If you go to a spa, they’ll give you aromatherapy, a massage, and so on — but we don’t do that. We get you good results, and you really see a lasting improvement.”
The Essential Facial Rejuvenation is what Dr Ho — an accredited dermatologist and alumnus of the National Skin Centre — likes to call a “functional” facial. But don’t take functional for bare bones: this three-step treatment might not come with the bells and whistles, but it does do is grant clients with lasting, luminous skin.
We visited DRx’s newly opened clinic on East Coast Road to try the treatment for ourselves — and to hear what else the new outpost has in store.
The Treatment
Makeup and dirt is first sloughed off with DRx’s facelift Foaming Cleanser, a pH-balanced soap-free product that leaves the skin feeling supple — and more importantly, not overtightened — and followed up with the proprietary Arazyme Exfoliant, which targets only dead skin cells without irritating the healthy ones beneath.
Then begins the main event. DRx utilises the much-vaunted Venus Glow machine to really clean out the pores: a soft suction head flushes out impurities using two tiny jet streams of micellar water, while sucking up whatever debris it collects into a separate jar. It’s an especially satisfying — if not liberating — feeling, especially when you can behold the jar of gunk that’s been sucked out of your pores after your treatment.
The tech-assisted treatments don’t end there. Once our skin has been thoroughly cleansed, our therapist selects a customised blend of DRx’s specialised serums to treat our skin concerns — in our case, an acne-afflicted mien, no thanks to constant mask wearing — and rolls out another impressive-looking machine.
This FDA-approved device is built for dermoelectroporation, a prodecure that channels a gentle, controlled current of electricity deep into the epidermal tissue, enabling serums to penetrate the skin more deeply. Despite the menacing name, you’ll hardly feel more than an imperceptible tickle.
The final step of this brisk but meticulous facial is a customised Alginate mask, which is cool and soothing to the touch — not that our blissed-out skin needed much more comfort.
For what DRx’s Essential Facial Rejuvenation treatment lacks in frivolities, it certainly makes up for it with undeniable results; over the next few days, our maskne and skin redness had reduced visibly, a positive change that lasted long after we left DRx’s swishy East Coast clinic.