The Medispa Clinic and Rachel Jones Salon

Feeling in need of a little skin rejuvenation? Is your epidermis looking tired, or worse older than you feel? Are you strapped for time and sick of running all over town for your beauty treatments? Well if you answered yes to all of the above, the new Medispa Clinic in Mossman might be just what you’re looking for. Heralding a new age in beauty maintenance, Medispa, run by Kim Zacharia, has joined forces with the Rachel Jones Boutique Salon & Spa. What that means is that busy women on the look out for quality beauty treatments can now get everything done under one roof. That also includes those little cosmetic ‘extras’ most beauty salons don’t offer like Botox, Restylane and the new ‘It’ lip plumping product of the moment, Juvederm. But if injections or fillers are not for you, yet a plumper, firmer skin is the new non-invasive, yet highly effective Thermage might appeal. Gaynor Flynn sat down with Kim Zacharia and her good friend Rachel Jones to chat about their new concept for top to toe beautification.

Gaynor Flynn: How long have you been in this salon now and why did you decide to merge with Rachel Jones?

Kim Zacharia: We’ve been friends for about 13 years. I was working at Manly hospital and I went down to Rachel’s salon in Manly and that’s how we met. The Medispa Clinic has been here for two weeks, we had our official launch on May 9th which is very exciting. And Rachel who owns the boutique salon and spa here and I have been saying for years we’d like to integrate what we do. So we’d like to help people come to one place and just have everything done. Whether that’s having your manicure done, pedicure done, have a bit of Botox if you need. Have a micro dermabrasion for skin rejuvenation, all of these things are standards we have to keep up to now and to maintain ourselves.

We also wanted to create a place that’s very private and it’s a boutique so clients feel like their going to get something really special when they come here. We’re not necessarily about having huge volumes of people coming through the door we’re about delivering high quality treatments and procedures. I also like to be able to offer something special and extra to my patients. So if you come in for a procedure, I like to be able to shout them something special at the end so they feel great when they walk out the door. Whether that be a manicure a pedicure a blow dry its just that extra add on treatment that we like to do and we obviously absorb it in the costs so we’re quite competitive with all of our procedures we offer here.


Gaynor Flynn: Tell me about Thermage: What is it?

Kim Zacharia: It a machine that delivers radio frequency down to the dermis of your skin where all the collagen sits. And the radio frequency the energy, causes the collagen that’s sitting in the dermis to contract up, so it provides subtle tightening for your skin and then the radio frequency also causes the body to respond by producing more collagen and that will be produced up to a six month period. So you wait to see the full results for six months and people love it because there’s no down time with Thermage, there are no wounds. It’s perfect.


Gaynor Flynn: Is the treatment aimed at a specific age group?

Kim Zacharia: Women and men up from 30, so anybody who wants to have non-surgical rejuvenation from those ages. I’ve even had a couple of girls in their late 20’s talking about it and anybody who’s maybe lost weight, and they want to improve the elasticity in their skin. We can do it on the face, we do eyes as well. We can do mid face rejuvenation with the machine so it just brings volume back into the face, into the cheeks. Its not necessarily having tightness its about having the volume and that’s what’s youthful. It can also tighten the abdomen, so if you’ve had kids or lost weight. And we do arms and above the knees as well.


Gaynor Flynn: How often would people have the treatment done?

Kim Zacharia: We say it’s a one off procedure but we always educate our clients that its one of those great procedures that you can have every year. So if you want to avoid the knife or just rejuvenate yourself and not go down the surgical line you can have it done every year. I’ve already had it done twice. We’ve had the machine for 18 months and its just fantastic because you just see the results evolving over six months.


Gaynor Flynn: How long has Thermage been available in Australia?

Kim Zacharia: 18 months. We had one of the first machines in Australia. It’s American originally and it’s been available there for a few years before we had it here so it had to go through rigorous regulatory approval before it was available on the Australian market.


Gaynor Flynn: Would you say, it’s a preventative procedure? If you started having it in your late 20’s early 30’s would it act as a long term anti-ageing treatment?

Kim Zacharia: Yes. Definitely. It will keep your skin nice and plump and supple. It’s not going to change any pigment in your skin. It’s not targeting pigment at all. So any pigment that you have is going to stay there.


Gaynor Flynn: So is that a separate treatment?

Kim Zacharia: Yes that’s a separate treatment and we can treat that with other processes like skin peels, micro-dermabrasion.


Gaynor Flynn: Have you seen some amazing results with Thermage?

Kim Zacharia: Yes we have. We obviously like to consult everybody before they book in and have a procedure because not everyone’s a candidate. We don’t want anyone having unrealistic expectations about what results we can achieve. So we get the photos out and say this is realistic. These are the types of things you can expect and if you’re happy with that outcome and we’ve assessed you and we think you’re a good candidate then you can go ahead. But anyone who thinks they’re going to get a surgical result from a non surgical procedure should walk out the door. It would be money mis-spent. The most important thing with Thermage and with any of the treatments we do here is to make sure that people have realistic expectations. We don’t want anyone disappointed. We can focus them in another direction if they’re not satisfied and we offer everything. We offer the non surgical processes and then we can also refer them to our surgeon, Dr Michael Zacharia. So if what we offer here is not available he consults from these rooms as well and he can consult someone for surgery if somebody wants to go down that road.


Gaynor Flynn: Zacharia? Any relation?

Kim Zacharia: (laughs) Yes we’re married. He’s an ear, nose and throat surgeon who has specialised in facial plastic surgery.


Gaynor Flynn: What’s your background?

Kim Zacharia: It’s interesting because as a child I had really bad ezma and it use to flare up and I use to go to the dermatologist as a high school student and I use to look around at all the machines and I wondered if there’s anything in here that could fix my skin. And of course there was nothing new that was out there that could fix my skin. And at that stage I was working and umpiring netball and doing all sorts of things but it was really beginning to get me down. I wanted to find a solution so I started working for the dermatologist when I finished uni waiting to go and work in a hospital before I became a registered nurse and he opened up my eyes to all these cosmetic procedures that were out there and things people were having done to rejuvenate themselves. During that time I found a solution to my skin problem through contact with doctors and dermatologists. So I really feel for anybody if they’ve got something they’d like to change it’s not necessarily about vanity its about maintaining self esteem and feeling good about who’s inside and being able to present yourself to the world.


Gaynor Flynn: Is Thermage for men as well?

Kim Zacharia: Yes and its surprising the number of men we do have coming in here. We’re also open later one evening each week so we work in with everybody that has busy professional lifestyles and then again on a Saturday. And then we do have a VIP day on a Sunday we do obviously charge a little bit more but you can have a private room with me doing a private treatment in here and then have a private hair session, private makeup the works so if someone’s going to a function or something like that we can do it all, or if their just busy or just don’t want anybody to know that their coming in.


Gaynor Flynn: Rachel, tell me about your background?

Rachel Jones: I’ve been hairdressing now for 18 years. I did my apprenticeship here in Sydney and then I moved to London and I worked underneath Andrew Collinge, I was in his creative team and then I came back here and worked for Philip Zavier in Mossman for a couple of years and then at the ripe old age of 24 I opened my signature salon, Rachel Jones Hairdressers and that’s been running for 9 years and ever since I was little I wanted to open up a spa. And I married a Texan and so I get to travel a lot and last time we were over there my brother in law took me to the most incredible day spa I have ever seen in my life. It was in Texas in Dallas and it was absolutely unbelievable. This woman set it up. Her husband is on $5 million a year so it wasn’t as if she was lacking money to spend and it was just extreme, it was fresco’s over the ceiling and I just walked in there and I went, I can do this. I mean not so much grand scale but I was so inspired by this girl and I thought if she can do I can do it. So I came back, this was one year ago and I virtually got off the plane and went hunting for a property and I saw this site and I walked in and it was an absolute tip and I just had a vision that it would all work in here and here it is, one year later.


Gaynor Flynn: Why the interest in owning a spa?

Rachel Jones: Because I want to look after my clients from top to toe. I don’t want them going anywhere else because I feel like I have a lot to offer in that industry and I know what the best things are for people and tt’s a time efficiency thing. People come in, they’re getting their hair coloured, what are they going to do in that half an hour? Women are sitting there thinking gosh I have so many things to do if I can get something else done, waxing anything while I’m sitting here why not.


Gaynor Flynn: You’ve created a very warm environment here, unlike a lot of other salons.

Rachel Jones: I’m very aware of my surroundings and I’m really over that sterile feeling of a lot of salon’s. I wanted to create somewhere with a lot of warmth, not having that stereotype hairdressing salon beauty salon look with pictures of people everywhere and its in your face and you think, god look at her she’s so beautiful on the wall and then look at me. I think it’s a negative thing that we’re portraying what you should look like all the time by pictures of people. I think we should just look in the mirror, see how we look and work on it from there and the same with the hairdressing salon. There are no pictures of women throughout the whole place. Its just going to be you in front of a mirror and making you look fantastic and not being compared to a model on the wall because that’s an unrealistic world and its all photo shopped anyway.

Freebies:

To celebrate the merging of Medispa and the Rachel Jones Salon, Medispa will give away 10 micro dermabrasions valued at $130 each.

All you have to do to win is call the salon on 02-9904 9901and tell them you saw this article on Girl.com.au. Every tenth caller will win one absolutely free. In addition to that, Rachel Jones will give away a free blow dry (worth $50) with every Vichy Shower in the month of June. Again, when you book the shower mention Girl.com.au. This is an experience you will want to have at least once in your lifetime because when it comes to top to toe pampering, the Vichy Shower wins hands down.

Imagine lying back on a cushioned Vichy bed, under a strategically placed rain bar with six shower jets. Then imagine your entire body being scrubbed with aromatic salt from the Dead Sea. First one leg then the next and so on. While the therapist is working on one part of your body, warm soft jets of water cascade over the rest of you (like warm rain) massaging away the tension and stress. Warm towels are strategically draped over you, so that between the scrub, the water and the thick soft towels you are continually wrapped in a warm cocoon of deliciousness. Then imagine the same process all over again, but this time warm oil is massaged into your entire body. The treatment lasts for an hour and a half and afterwards your skin tingles and glows and will feel softer and more alive than it has done in years.