Dior's Celebrity Facialist Joanna Czech Spills Her Anti-Aging Tips

In 2020, everyone is a skin care expert. Armed with knowledge from YouTube dermatologists and scientific Reddit threads, women have become more discerning than ever before about the products they're willing to splurge on. So it makes sense that Dior would release its most thoughtful and sustainable skin care line to date this year: Capture Totale.

Modeled by Gisele Bündchen and backed by a real skin care expert—celebrity facialist Joanna Czech—the new Capture Totale is light on the plastic packaging and added fragrance but heavy in actives like hyaluronic acid and something called the energizing cell complex. The line of products—all recyclable—includes a cleanser, milky toner, eye cream, and face cream, but the hero product is the new Super Potent Serum. The aforementioned complex is derived from four floral extracts, which help to stimulate your skin's "mother" cells and boost overall energy function, so your skin acts and behaves like younger skin. There's also a new delivery system to drive the actives deep into your skin, so they can actually get to work. All that's to say that applying these products just once will make your skin soft, bouncy, and glowy—and the results only get better from there.

The new Capture Totale products aren't promising to totally eradicate your fine lines and dark spots. They're not here to replace your retinol and vitamin c serums. But they will help promote overall healthy and plump skin—which is why Czech took a leap and began working with Dior.

Czech admits that an esthetician working with a luxury company like Dior is a bit odd. After all, in this age of know-it-all Internet experts, any skincare loaded with fragrances and lofty claims can often be seen as wasteful or potentially harmful, particularly if you have sensitive skin. "The science behind [the products] is what I love and believe in," says Czech of Capture Totale. "It's all about reenergizing our cells." With minimal fragrance, a focus on natural and safe ingredients, and nearly instant results, the serum has become a staple for Czech. So much so that when she ran out a few weeks ago, she asked the company to overnight her more bottles.

Czech's signature treatment is a facial massage like no other, one that works deep into muscles to lift and sculpt every inch of your face. Combined with LED light therapy and other devices like microcurrent, getting "Czeched" by the facialist is a transformative experience. You'll leave her NYC or Dallas spa wondering why you don't get your face slapped more often. That's precisely the point. Like exercise and eating healthy, facial massage needs to be part of your overall lifestyle. Her exacting technique and holistic approach to skin health is why her celebrity clients—including Carrie Mulligan, Michelle Williams, Rooney Mara, Candice Swanepoel, Lily Aldridge, Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Aniston, Mandy Moore, Christy Turlington Burns, Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, Uma Thurman, Kyra Sedgwick, Minnie Driver, and more—keep her magic hands booked year-round.

Czech's own routine is simple: "cleanser, toner, Capture Totale serum and cream, sometimes I use eye cream and sometimes I don't," she says. She's anti-Botox, retinol, and fillers and doesn't drink alcohol ("it can cause inflammation," she notes). She can always tell when a client has Botox, and she works diligently to revive the atrophied muscles during her treatments. (You can't get a facial massage in the days immediately following a Botox procedure).

Having tried Botox four times, Czech admits that she "never felt comfortable" with her muscles frozen and had to "work too hard" to move her eyebrows. She also believes it impacts the quality of the skin, citing studies done on women getting injected every three months for 12 years. "The color of the skin starts changing because there is less blood flow to the area, pores are becoming larger after a while, skin becomes grayer, [it doesn't have] the same brightness, the skins lowly starts thinning out..." she says. For Czech's clients, regular appointments with her can mimic some of the line-smoothing and anti-aging effects.

More and more, Czech's clients are coming to her complaining of sensitive and reactive skin (sound familiar?). "Everybody is lasered. Everybody is peeled to infinity. Everyone is abusing retinols," she says. "If you use 17 different products, your skin might stop understanding it." Women have been taking their skin routines to the extreme, she adds, either going too hard with skin-thinners and exfoliants or going the opposite route and using only coconut oil and products they consider natural. Czech believes in what she calls "clean science," the marriage of natural ingredients, safe synthetics, and harmless preservatives in a formula that really works. Capture Totale is exactly that.