In a swanky white-walled London salon, I am having my face pummelled by a softly-spoken Geordie called Andrea. She crunches her knuckles along my jaw and sears my skin with 40C heat, then uses both hands to flap at my cheeks, which can only be described as feeling like I’m holding my face against a hamster wheel. “It’s like a treadmill for your face,” she tells me, before reaching for an electrical device that makes the muscles underneath my skin jump like crickets.
No pain, no gain, they say - which makes me think vegans must be masoch*sts, this being a treatment designed specifically for a very twenty-first century problem: vegan face.
Veganism is becoming more fashionable by the minute and ‘Veganuary’ bigger every year, with around 150,000 people believing to have given up meat, fish and dairy products during January, more than double the number last year. Around 542,000 of us were full-time vegans in 2016, according to the Vegan Society, making it one of the “fastest-growing” trends in the UK.
But switching to a vegan diet is not without its problems. Many find their skin becomes clearer, but only after they’ve got used to eating enough alternative protein, say in the form of avocados or split peas. A lack of protein can make skin look sallow, gaunt and washed out, while hair can lose its shine.
“Vegan face is definitely a thing,“ says Sarah, 26. “When I decided to go vegan last year, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I hadn’t organised my diet with substitutes for the foods I was giving up and so I lost a bit of weight. Mainly it showed in my face; I looked gaunt, a little ill and really washed out. I was trying to do something I thought was better for my body, and it was making me look worse.
“A year later, I know what to eat, but initially I didn’t - and it showed.”
Others find they break out in spots and - call them vain - but it can turn them off the diet completely. “My skin got really bad at first,” says Fay, 29. “It was so frustrating because I had acne as a teenager and had always been told that dairy made it worse. When I gave up dairy completely and became a full-time vegan six months ago I thought my skin would be the clearest it had ever been. But I suddenly got loads of spots.
“After three or four weeks, it went down. But if I’d had it for months, I’d probably have given up the diet, which sounds vain, but having blotchy skin makes you feel really self-conscious.”
Full disclosure: I’m not vegan. But, like many, I dabbled with the idea last month. And, after a few weeks, I did look different - my skin was drier and more pallid. Admittedly it’s harder to tell in winter, when everyone looks a bit colourless, but there was a marked change in my pre and post vegan visage.
“More and more of us are reducing our meat intake and adopting a plant-based diet, and it can negatively impact our skin,” says Inge Theron, the founder of FaceGym. Her salons in Chelsea and Selfridges on Oxford Street (which use only vegan products), are known for high intensity manual facial workouts and have won fans including Princess Beatrice and Poppy Delevingne
One of the most popular is the vegan face “work out”, which costs £1,000 for a course of six hour-long sessions, or £200 for a one-off. Designed to improve circulation, encourage collagen production and build up facial muscle, each session follows the structure of a gym class - albeit with the trainer doing all the work. “It’s the lazy girl’s workout,” quips a well-spoken woman in the chair next to me.
“If your body doesn’t get the protein it needs, your skin can become dry, sallow, crepey and lacklustre, with saggy jowls and a loss of muscle tone and elasticity,” Theron adds. “The vegan face workout is designed to give vegan customers a radiance and glow that can be lost from reducing your protein intake.”
During the “warm up,” a ball the size of an apple is rolled over your face and pressed hard on your chest to help your breathing. Then your face and neck are covered in gel and a radio frequency machine is used to “boost collagen” under the skin (collagen being the protein that keeps the face looking full and youthful). It heats my face to 40C which is almost unbearably hot and means Andrea can’t keep the machine still, running it over my skin like you’d dash across scorching sand barefoot.
Then the “cardio” starts. Essentially, this is a massage designed to improve circulation. It seems quite tiring but I remember it’s supposed to be a workout, so I refrain from asking Andrea if she’d like a rest half way through.
The device that makes my facial muscles jump is, in fact, a bestseller. Called the ‘FaceGym Pro’, you can take one home for £400 and it’s recommended as a non-invasive alternative to Botox.
During the cool down, a derma roller that resembles a tiny metal lawnmower (£30) is run over my face to prickle the skin into renewing cells, then I am pressed with a refrigerated jade stone (£35) and sprayed with flower water that smells like the Eden Project. Leaving, I certainly look rosier-cheeked.
While a diet overhaul is usually the first port of call for new vegans, many soon start to analyse their use of other animal derived products. Sales of vegan deodorants, for men and women, were up by 900 per cent on Amazon in January. Vegan lip balm sales increased by almost 60 per cent and vegan mascaras, makeup brushes and beard grooming kits were also among their bestsellers.
While few makespecific claims to improve vegan skin, they contain no animal ingredients, which in cosmetics can include carmine, a dye made from crushed beetles; guanine which gives many mascaras, lipsticks and nail varnishes their shimmer and is found in fish scales; and retinal, a powerful source of vitamin A found in many anti-ageing products, but which is almost always derived from animals.
Fay and Sarah say that switching to vegan cosmetics was easier than overhauling their diets, with The Body Shop and Lush, particularly good.
But, adds Fay, “vegan friendly” products weren’t good enough. Her hair became so dry and straw-like that she “needed deep conditioners that restored the follicles and were specifically intended for vegan hair.”
Karine Jackson, who owns a salon in central London, has seen a huge surge in vegan customers over the last 12 months, with many phoning up ahead of their appointments to check that the products she uses are vegan (they are, bar two).
“Most of my new clients are vegan now,” she says. “It’s causing a shift in the beauty industry. Many normal hair products contain honey, milk or lanolin, so at the hairdressers clients often feel that they have to check everything is vegan.”
The salon offers specific treatments to help “fix” problems associated with vegan hair. “We use Organic Colour Systems Power Build products (shampoos and conditioners cost around £11), which contain wheat protein that helps strengthen hair that might not be getting enough protein from diet,” she explains.
Even more modern-sounding are their vegan highlights - which start at £92 for a full-head and come in every colour you can imagine. Jackson tells me violet shades are very “in” this year.
Possibly not for me, though. As someone who was concerned enough about telling her family she was dabbling with veganism, I think purple hair might just be a step too far.
View the latest The Body Shop deals
