I think a lot of people reading this post will be shocked to find out that a month ago I had lip fillers. There has been a huge rise in the number of people getting fillers in recent years, but I wanted to write this post to show that lip fillers can look subtle and natural and – in my case – can even be used to correct uneven lips.
I was invited to see Dr Pamela Benito in her beautiful Chelsea clinic. It’s set up like a (very expensive!) home and I felt instantly at ease, mostly due to how friendly and kind Dr Pamela was. She asked me a lot of questions to determine exactly what I wanted to achieve with the fillers, talked me through the procedure in detail, and answered my long list of questions.
For as long as I can remember, I have overlined my lips with lipstick to make them more even. Due to my piercing scars (oh, the folly of my scene kid youth!) the right hand side of my bottom lip has always been more full than the left, so I wanted to use filler to correct that. I also wanted to plump out my top lip a little to make it more balanced. I’ve included a before photo below so you can see what I mean (excuse the gormless face – it’s actually quite hard to take a photo of your face completely at rest!)
I think when most people think of lip fillers they either think of the over-stuffed-sausage look (à la Kylie Jenner) or things going wrong (e.g. Leslie Ash – who actually had liquid silicone injected into her lips, which is completely different from lip fillers).
We had a long chat about natural versus more obvious lip fillers (which some people request, almost as a status symbol!) and we both agreed that I wanted to keep the natural shape and have everything in proportion, but just given a little oomph.
Dr Pamela applied a numbing cream to my lips and, once that had worked its magic she made small injections around the lip line, massaging as she went. She used Teosyal RHA2 (Teoxane) which is a hyaluronic acid based filler. She took regular breaks inbetween injections to get me to smile and move my lips to see how they looked which was really reassuring. The filler contains lidocaine (a numbing agent) so although the initial prick is a little bit uncomfortable, the pain quickly disappears.
I’ve included some photos below that show my lips immediately after the fillers, in the following days, and then fully healed. In the first images they look sore and very bruised but they look worse than they felt – I also regularly applied an Arnica based cream which really helped with the bruising.
I am absolutely over the moon with my lips – it may not be the eye-catching transformation that you see on some instagram accounts but it’s exactly what I wanted: something to make my natural lips a little bit more even and more full.
If you’re unsure about fillers and whether they could help you achieve your desired look, Dr Pamela offers complimentary consultations so I’d recommend just going in to see her and having a natter.
If you’d like to do some more reading on the topic (and you should!) there are some great tips HERE on how to find a trusted practitioner, the questions to ask, and what to watch out for.
Lex
*This appointment was offered for the purposes of a review, however the opinions and words are all my own.
==SAVE THIS IMAGE TO PINTEREST TO READ LATER!==
