Think facelifts and we flash back to Joan Rivers’ wind-tunnel look or Jocelyn Wildenstein’s apparently melted visage. But cast aside such nightmarish visions – new techniques enable those willing to suffer the physical and financial pain of surgery to defy time and still look (somewhat) natural.

This summer, Kris Jenner’s facelift blew up the internet (and threatened to upstage the bride at the Bezos wedding). Her much-discussed ‘work’ wiped several decades off her face, making the reality TV star look closer to her daughter’s age than her own.

At 69, Jenner is the standard age for surgery. Not so Lindsay Lohan. For months, debate has raged about whether the actress has had a facelift, consuming more airtime than many a humanitarian crisis. Lohan is 39.

Emma Stoneanother subject of endless has-she-or-hasn’t-she discussion, is 36. Meghan Markle is now the latest star to be the topic of facelift speculation. She’s 44.

A facelift so young? Previously it would have been unthinkable that women in that age bracket would even consider one – but let me introduce you to the phenomenon of the ‘Forever 35 Face’. It’s a trend The Cut recently reported on, detailing a subset of clients wanting to freeze time by having surgery before the age of 40.

Dr Yannis Alexandrides, a London-based plastic surgeon (and former trauma surgeon) who counts Hollywood actors among his clients, is one of the elite band of medics capable of creating a forever young face. Triple board certified, he trained in Athens, Philadelphia and Miami and now travels the globe teaching surgeons his advanced techniques. Alexandrides also trained alongside Jenner’s surgeon Dr Steven Levine and says, ‘Around 30 per cent of the patients I see now are between 35 and 45. Where once facelifts were performed solely on people in their late 50s, 60s or 70s, when a lot of ageing signs have taken place, now patients are coming to me younger, and want to avoid ever looking older.’

Instead of the more ‘dramatic’ results he gets for his more mature clients, these patients want subtle changes that mean people don’t know they’ve had work done. Results are better, he says, ‘because at that age people have better skin quality’.

Of the younger Hollywood actresses he has worked on he adds, ‘You shouldn’t be able to see them on the street and say, “Oh, this person’s had a facelift”, but when you see a before and after it’ll be obvious that, where the neck used to be saggy, it’s now nice and tight. And where there was once a hollowed-out appearance under the eye it now looks healthy and youthful.’ The adage ‘If you can spot a facelift it’s not a good one’ applies here. Dr Alexandrides says, ‘If they want to stay on that very youthful level, they might need some kind of surgery at a later stage, but they’ll never need a big facelift again.’

Thanks to celebrities such as Jenner owning up to their facelifts – along with the media obsession over who has had what – high-profile surgeons have become the medical world’s rock stars, as famous as their patients. Dr Andrew Jacono (who did Marc Jacobs’ ‘refresh’) has more than half a million followers on Instagram, and I predict a Netflix documentary about their gang: the clients, the god complexes and the squabbling over who invented what technique.

The top-tier surgeons, mainly based in Los Angeles, New York and London, train together (often operating on cadavers for practice) and attend the same conferences. This keeps them at the top of their game, and it means they share the same aesthetic and techniques. That’s good for maintaining standards but it does mean their clients, who want to look the same age and request the same technique, often emerge from the clinic VIP exit looking eerily similar.

But celebrities aren’t alone in having facelifts. The number of people opting for the procedure in the UK surged by 97 per cent in 2022 and saw an eight per cent increase in 2024*.

The celebrity effect

It’s back to stars and their influence. Once upon a time, before social media – and, if you recall such ancient history, the internet – a celebrity’s image would largely be formed from pictures taken on photoshoots and the red carpet, along with the occasional paparazzo shot. From my time as a stylist on a glossy magazine, I can tell you there were (and still are) whole teams dedicated to getting the most flattering result for the ‘talent’. The red carpet and the paparazzi shots were less controllable, but even then the public would only see a still image and, with hair, make-up and styling, it could be managed effectively to minimise anything unfavourable.

Now every phone has video capability and every person on the street can catch a million angles of an A-lister, which can then travel the world in seconds. Dr Alexandrides says this level of ‘social-media scrutiny’ is the reason many famous faces come to see him. And where celebrities go, we follow. Facelifts today are also better. A lot better. And that’s mostly to do with improvements in technique.

Where the facelift began

Although subject to some dispute, it’s believed the first rhytidectomy, to give it its medical term, was performed in 1916 by surgeon Erich Lexer. He made an incision around his patient’s ears, pulled the skin upward, trimmed the excess and then sewed it back together. This created smoother, tauter skin, but also the less-than-desirable wind-tunnel look. Lexer’s method persisted until the 1970s, and the invention of the SMAS (superficial musculoaponeurotic system) technique, enabling surgeons to cut deeper, lifting and tightening the muscles, too.

Then, in the 1990s, came the deep plane facelift, which went further still, going under the SMAS layer and, says Dr Alexandrides, ‘releasing the ligaments that connect the skin to the muscle and the fascia underneath’, thus giving the surgeon ‘the power to lift everything up, especially around the mid-face’. A deep plane requires a high skill level, a longer recovery time and comes with a heftier price tag. ‘You really are a fraction of a millimetre away from the nerves that make the face move,’ says Dr Alexandrides.

The real innovation is that now many surgeons use deep plane and SMAS techniques simultaneously or alternate depending on client needs. One isn’t better than the other. Kris Jenner’s surgery was done using mainly SMAS and US actress Ricki Lake has confirmed that her facelift was deep plane.

As for other areas of improvement, Dr Alexandrides says, ‘We have progressed in how to hide scars from facelifts, and vastly improved post-operative treatment.’ Surgeons now offer add-ons that help healing, as this maximises results: lymph drainage massages, ultrasound, hyperbaric chambers, LED lights (which may or may not promote skin rejuvenation) – all costing extra, obviously.

Meanwhile, weight-loss medications are fuelling the facelift trade, too. ‘These drugs seem to have an adverse effect on the skin, certainly in the medium to short term,’ says Dr Alexandrides. ‘People are seeing a loss of volume, leading to sagging and excess skin.’

The filler backlash

Another reason facelifts are becoming so popular is the move away from fillers. Dr Alexandrides says many patients are ‘seeing complications – lumps or migration’ so have come back to surgery. Now, at 51, after a decade or so of trying to hold back time with a whole range of tweakments, I’m wondering if a facelift is for me. As my Instagram is now embarrassingly full of before-and-after pics of facelifts, I decide to investigate the reality.

First, price: the NHS reports the UK cost to be around £10,000. I’ve found some for as little as £5,000 while Dr Alexandrides’ deep-plane facelifts start at £25,000 and his full-face rejuvenation costs from £50,000. Jenner’s facelift with Dr Levine was reported to have cost well north of $100,000. Comedian Katherine Ryan, who had a consult with him, says he now charges $240,000. The Times has recently reported that some US surgeons are now charging an eye-watering $700,000. Can these prices ever be justified? Dr Alexandrides says that, to operate at his elite level, he must constantly practise and perfect ever-evolving specialist techniques. He is also often ‘dealing with patients whose faces are their careers and managing that responsibility’.

Am I now too old for a facelift? He says I’m not – and he has recently operated on someone who is 84. But how long will it last? Most surgeons agree that it should be between eight and ten years, but Dr Alexandrides says it’s more nuanced than that. ‘Everyone ages in a different way. I can turn back the clock ten or 15 years, but it doesn’t stop ticking.’

Have the fillers and the heat treatments I’ve undergone made surgery impossible? Dr Alexandrides is reassuring, saying that most people he sees have had some kind of cosmetic intervention. But if you’ve had multiple heat treatments, he adds, it makes his work harder as they generate scar tissue: think slicing cooked chicken rather than raw.

Recovery time? Dr Alexandrides thinks you’d be back to most activities in a week. But people I know who’ve had this procedure say it often takes much longer. However accessible it’s made to seem, surgery is a big deal.

I tell him it’s the lower part of my face I’m bothered by; specifically the jawline. It’s saggy. He peers at me through the screen and tells me about the Y Facelift – his invention – which focuses on the lower half of the face, involves a much shorter recovery time and costs significantly less. I look it up and it costs from £15,000.

Suddenly that sounds like a bargain.

Dr Yannis Alexandrides is the founder of 111 Harley St (111harleystreet.com)111 Harley St (111harleystreet.com)

*according to The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons.