“Ready for Georgia to slap you around?” a uniformed staffer asks me. No, I’m not in a boxing ring or an underground fight club — I’m swaddled in a plush spa wrap at the Georgia Louise Beauty Longevity Atelier, whose eponymous founder is about to treat me to the same sculpting facial stars like Anne Hathaway swear by.
“You’ll truly feel like you’ve had a facelift,” Louise promises me as she gets to work on her signature Lift + Sculpt method, a mix of pinching, kneading and, yes, slapping. At one point, she whips out a pretty rose quartz gua sha tool shaped like a butterfly and scrapes it methodically over my cheekbones, forehead and jawline. It’s a surprisingly intense experience, but I can feel my TMJ tension melting away as her fingers move along my face.
“What put me on the map, truthfully, was the hands before the machines,” says Louise, whose famous facials combine her trademark manual massage movements with microcurrent, radiofrequency and/or LED light therapy. They can cost anywhere from $365 (for a simpler, sculpting-focused session) to nearly $1,000 (for the fittingly named Bespoke Royal, which includes all the aforementioned add-ons and then some).
REVOLVE $75.00 GEORGIA LOUISE $75.00 Mastered over the course of many years of practice, Louise’s Lift + Sculpt technique is aimed at lymphatic drainage, fascia release and facial contouring, in addition to reducing puffiness and boosting circulation.
“Early in my career, I realized you could structurally change the skin by putting what we call elbow grease into it,” she explains. “It’s truly remarkable how when you have hands and know how to use them, you can lift and sculpt the muscles, remove the toxins, get the blood flowing and get your skin glowing.”
Glowing is right; even after the first few minutes of having my face pummeled by the beauty pro, my oiled-up complexion is flushed, dewy and radiating with warmth, as if I’d spent a whole day at the beach.
“You can feel the heat underneath the skin now, right?” Louise asks me. “The warmer the muscle gets, the more of a lift you’re going to get.”
The acclaimed aesthetician got her start as a masseuse working in the English countryside before opening her first studio in London (located right beneath a fashion boutique frequented by Princess Diana and Kate Middleton, as she recalls).
In 2011, she moved to New York City and got “very lucky” by landing Linda Evangelista as her first stateside client. The legendary supermodel introduced her to neighbor Gucci Westman, one of the industry’s foremost makeup artists, and word spread fast about Louise’s magic hands.
“Gucci [asked Evangelista], ‘Why are you looking so good? Who is lifting your skin? And that just basically funneled me into the fashion universe. That’s how I got my break, really, was because of Linda — and now she’s my BFF,” the British beauty whiz says.
Fifteen years later, Louise’s lengthy celebrity client list includes Jennifer Aniston, Cate Blanchett, Emma Stone and Gwyneth Paltrow in addition to Hathaway, whom she’s been treating for over a decade.
“She heard about me through Anna Wintour, trusted me with her dermis and never looked back,” the star facialist says, calling the “Devil Wears Prada” actress an “incredibly hard worker” who “doesn’t stop” when it comes to her job.
“We’ve created some wonderful skin care moments together, whether Annie’s tired and needs a soothing, calming treatment, or she’s been flying and is suffering with breakouts and toxins, or she’s getting ready for the Met Gala and taking my 7 a.m. slot and I’m sculpting her skin so she feels lifted.”
As a self-described “longevity aesthetician” who offers IV drips, vitamin shots, nutritional coaching and hyperbaric oxygen therapy at her atelier, however, Louise knows beauty is more than skin deep. So does Hathaway.
“She works really, really hard at it. It’s not just about me as her aesthetician, giving her an incredible facial at many different times of the day, depending when she needs me,” the founder explains.
“She’s a true testament of my beauty longevity model. She doesn’t drink alcohol. She eats a beautiful diet. She works out. She has such good discipline. She does mantras. She’s a very healthy, very nurturing mother who works hard but knows how to take care of herself.”
Given her A-list customers’ crazy schedules — Hathaway, for instance, has no fewer than five major movies slated for release in 2026 — Louise often finds herself working unconventional hours. But she’s taken great effort to make her elegantly appointed, warmly lit space feel like home to all who enter.
“For a lot of my celebrity clients, this is a sanctuary,” she tells me. “It’s quiet. It’s safe. There’s no paparazzi outside the door. And I really nurture them, so they come out of here like butter — like melted butter.”
While I can’t exactly relate to the experience of walking red carpets or being chased down by cameramen, that’s exactly how I feel as I float out of Louise’s studio onto a sunny block of the Upper East Side: relaxed, calm, and like my face just had the ultimate workout.
“Those epidermal growth factors are terrific for turning your skin around.”
“I’m obsessed. If you don’t have it in your arsenal, run and get it.”
“I’m a huge believer in retinol, and have been using this onesince I was 20.”
