Remember when you would check into luxe London hotels like The Landmark and The Lanesborough in order to eat, drink and sleep? Well these days London’s leading hotels don’t just offer excellence: they’re keen to help guests become fitter, healthier, slimmer and yes look younger.
And the anti ageing treatment du jour is argubaly the bird droppings facial – popular with the A-list likes of Tom Cruise, Victoria Beckham and Harry Styles who swear by its effectivesness at keeping wrinkles (or in the case of 20- year-old Styles, spots) at bay.
Billed as an alternative to Botox injections, the bird droppings facial – which is also known as the Geisha facial because it originated in Japan – involves a steam treatment before a paste made from nightingale feces, collected on the Japanese island of Kyushu, is applied to the pores for an hour.
Only nightingales’ droppings, which are mixed with rice bran and water to form the paste, work as they contain enzymes said to break down dead skin.
In London, the Japanese Nightingale Dropping Facial is offered at the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane and priced at £180 for 60 minutes. Emma Hu, director of the Hilton’s Spa to You centre, confessed to the Daily Mail that clients were “intrigued” by the unusual facial. However she added that “after the hour-ling treatment, users say it gives them a shimmery, iridescent effect to the skin.”
Is the new anti-wrinkle treatment brilliant or bird-brained? You decide.
