Joanna Vargas

Esthetician • www.joannavargas.com • New York, NY

How did you develop your interest in your profession as an esthetician?

I studied photography and woman’s studies – I was always very fascinated about how women felt about themselves and how that played out image wise for a woman. I moved to New York after I graduated from the University of Chicago in hopes of pursuing photography as a career, but there were a lot of things I did not like about the industry. I wanted to participate in creating a woman’s image some how, but not through photography. So I went to school for esthetics pursuing skin care and make up artistry. And I just fell in love with the idea of personal care, and taking care of someone one-on-one.

Clientele

I have a wide range of clients. In a business like mine, you end up doing the daughters of your clients and your client’s mom, aunts, cousins, and best friends. So the age range of my clientele is from fourteen years old to women in their seventies. I would say the majority of women that come here are between thirty and forty-five.

Typical Problems

Pimples, wrinkles, or sagging and they don’t know how to take care of it to make it look better. And that is where I come in. I do treatments on people, but I think my main focus is on teaching people how to take care of themselves so that they can feel good about themselves every day.

What is your philosophy about skin care?

My primary goal is to get clients to use organic products on their skin, and their bodies. Products with chemicals in them tend to create a lot of different issues such as breakouts, sensitivity, and redness. Whereas organic products have a tendency to not create any negative results, in fact most clients notice a huge difference in their skin right away. When you put an organic serum on your skin you get a nice healthy glow because it increases the circulation in your skin right away.

I really love it when a client exfoliates, uses a mask, and then follows the mask with a serum. You can get either an exfoliating scrub or an enzyme exfoliant, and a lot of different lines have them. I sell products from my website that are really good – but any kind of enzyme or scrub, followed by a hydrating mask and then a face oil it is incredible.

When I first opened, clients would tell me, “if chemicals are going to get us more results, I rather just use the chemicals.” However, people have found that they actually see more results with the organic skin care than anything else.

I do believe in using modern technology to our advantage. There are a lot of treatments these days in the world of esthetics that are completely healthy, non-invasive, that make you look incredible without injecting chemicals or Botox or anything in your system. So even though I believe in organic skin care, I believe in using technology to do what you can for your skin.

I don’t like my clients to speak negatively about themselves when they are with me. I encourage them to not be like that about themselves. Women are their own worse critics. They would never speak about another person in the way they speak about themselves. So I encourage people to be more positive about themselves. It makes people feel better and you feel like you look better. For long time people wanted to hear, “take this magic pill and it will all go away,” and now we are finding out that it does not. We are finding out that there is no magic solution, but you have to find out what the right steps are for you, for your body, and for your skin. Then take those steps every day to maintain yourself. When people just do the simplest things like buy an organic cleanser and use it every night, they come back and tell me they saw a huge difference in the way that their skin looked.

Major skin problems you see with ethnic skin?

Women of color have a tendency to think that they do not need to wear sunscreen. The sun is extremely damaging for anybody no matter what tone of skin you have. It destroys your elasticity and causes all sorts of problems with oil production and pigment. I can’t say enough bad stuff about the sun in terms of the skin. So I encourage everyone to wear sunscreen and to wear a hat, especially when you are on the beach because you shouldn’t let the sun beat down on you. Women who are younger do not have a reality about that, but it is easy for me to get a client who is thirty-five or forty to understand that she will have more lines and wrinkles very quickly if she does not start doing something about it.

Women of color need to know they can get skin cancer too. I think women of color have a tendency to not realize that their skin can be very sensitive. I would discourage women of color from using a cream with a retinal in it because so many have such sensitive skin.

Hyper-pigmentation

I see it a lot around the eyes and the mouth, and it is a big issue for all women especially women of color. And again, the sun brings all of that out. I sell a 58 SPF sun block that is really incredible. I do a treatment that addresses hyper-pigmentation called LED Light Therapy, and that is amazing for evening out the skin tones. It’s amazing for getting rid of sun damages in general. It just leaves you skin looking glowing. And it is a noninvasive treatment option, it is not a laser, and it does not harm the surface of the skin. There is no risk of you getting burnt from it basically just heals any damage presently in the skin. You would do it in a series and it just incredible – all my clients to do it. I have had clients with severe acne do a series of LED light therapy treatments and most of the acne completed vanished.

Nutrition

I always check up on the diet of my clients and their lifestyle. Women need to take a lot of vitamins because we lose a lot of minerals with our menstrual cycle and we sweat it out everyday running around – stressing out. Drinking coffee and smoking depletes vitamins, so we need to fortify our bodies in order to have the energy to get on with our day. One thing that I encourage all clients to do is to always have a huge salad for lunch with as many different colors of vegetables as you can possible get into your salad. It is very healthy for the skin and the body – you will have a lot more energy to go on with your afternoon.

If people really want to be serious about nutrition, I encourage people to do juicing. A green juice a day does amazing things for the body and for the face. It is very detoxing, gives you energy and it is an incredibly healthy snack. A green juice and a handful of nuts give you a lot of energy.

I discourage people from drinking tons of coffee. I understand that one cup of coffee a day might be necessary, but I don’t like when clients drink a lot of cups of coffee a day because it dehydrates the skin and the body. People need to get in their heads that they should be drinking at least a liter and a half a day for good health.

ILA – From Great Britain

ILA makes the most incredible face oil. It has something called argan oil in it which is an extremely high anti-oxidant. Argon oil is found in Morocco and comes from this one kind of fruit that grows from this one kind of tree in Morocco. It is used for massages, put in food and used for medicinal purposes. It is like the cure all there. The ILA product line has argan oil in almost everything. They also make an amazing face mask that revitalizes the skin. It is green clay and argan oil mask that is unbelievable for making the skin look revitalized, healthy, hydrated and beautiful.

Final Thoughts

Taking care of yourself properly has a lot rewards – more energy, you feel better and you get more done during the day. It is not just about being beautiful, but feeling good about yourself. Feeling good about yourself is sort of better than any outfit or pair of shoes you ever bought.

Must-Have Product

ILA Face Oil
ILA Face Mask
Pure Inventions
Suki
Emergen-C

Copyright 2010 Cris Simone. All rights reserved.