How I ended upholding a bladeto somebody’s face.
A criminology degree, three VTCT qualifications in the order they had to be taken, and a practice founded to do the work the way I think it should be done. This is the whole of it, without the tidying.
Criminology, first
My degree is in criminology and sociology, from Royal Holloway. People tend to hear that and assume it was a false start, and it was not. Three years of it is three years of learning to ask better questions, to distrust the first explanation that presents itself, and to sit with somebody long enough that they tell you the true version rather than the tidy one.
That is most of a consultation. The rest is technique, and technique can be taught.
The turn
What pulled me across was watching how much of what people are sold has nothing to do with their skin. A shelf of products bought on a promise, a treatment booked because it was trending, a course of something started and abandoned at session two because nobody had explained that session two is where it always looks worse.
I did not want to add to that. I wanted to be the person who says what is actually going on.
Training, in order
Level 2 and Level 3 in beauty therapy first, because there is no shortcut past the foundations and anyone who offers you one is not worth learning from. Then Level 4 in laser and IPL, which is the qualification that governs working with light on skin in this country and the one that changes what you are legally allowed to touch.
Alongside that: Dermapen microneedling with DermapenWorld, the Skinbetter Science range with AestheticSource, and the Skcin accreditation in melanoma and skin cancer early detection — which is the one nobody advertises and the one that matters most. A great deal of what walks into a treatment room is not a treatment-room problem, and knowing the difference is part of the job.
Tasya Beauty
Tasya Beauty is the practice I built to do this the way I think it should be done. Peels, dermaplaning, laser and IPL, microneedling, and the consultation that decides between them — in a room where nobody is upsold, nothing is rushed, and the plan is written for your skin rather than read off a price list.
Founding it was the point at which the standard became mine to keep rather than somebody else’s to set.
What I believe about skin
That it is a long conversation and nobody has ever won one in a single appointment. That consistency at home beats intensity in the chair, every time. That half of this job is knowing what not to do — and that the treatments I decline to sell are as much a part of the practice as the ones I perform.
And that the point of any of it is not a different face. It is the particular ease of not thinking about your skin, which is worth more than it sounds.
Skin is a long conversation. Nobody has ever won one in a single appointment.
I would rather talk you out of a treatment than take money for one that was never going to work.
Consistency at home beats intensity in the chair. It always has.
If any of thissounds like theright fit.
Tell me what your skin is doing and roughly what you have already tried. I will say honestly whether it is something I can help with.