Natasha Cuzner didn’t have dreams of helping to make women beautiful when she was a kid. “I was interested in beauty, but I really wanted to be a scientist and ended up getting my associates degree in science, with a view to becoming a midwife,” she explains. “While I was studying, I became more interested in aesthetics and how you could apply science to beauty. Everyone was telling people what products to use, but I wanted to know what would work on a cellular level.”
The Vancouverite went on to enter a medical aesthetics programme in which most of her classmates were doctors. When she completed that and started work, she realized no one was offering the particular blend of science and pampering she envisaged. “There were doctors whose procedures cost upwards of $3,000, or dodgy joints that weren’t especially clean offering treatments that didn’t give results,” she says. She wanted to provide something in the middle – with a fun, relaxed atmosphere, too.
That was three and a half years ago. Now, Cuzner’s Yaletown salon, The Vanity Lab, is about to undergo its second relocation to a bigger space, and has a four- to six-week waiting list for appointments. On the menu: Everything from its Best of the City award-winning facials, to Botox (carried out by doctors) and lasers.
Cuzner says that for instant gratification, injectables like Botox and fillers are great, but people also get the wow factor from fractional laser resurfacing. “Clients do experience downtime,” she says, “but we now offer a post-procedural cream and makeup to conceal, so they don’t need to have the procedure done on a Friday and recover over the weekend.”
Her best piece of advice for those who want to improve their skin is to stop wasting money on products that don’t work. “You can’t buy the most effective products on the high street. We sell only clinical-grade skincare with high percentages of active ingredients,” she says. She also advises talking to an aesthetician and coming up with a plan that integrates the products with aesthetic procedures.
And what do most mature women with great skin have in common? “They all use retinol and they apply sunscreen every day, even when it’s cloudy.”
