It takes a little getting used to, a pedicure by Bastien Gonzalez. First off, there isn’t any soaking - or water for that matter. It’s a painstaking process that can take up to 90 minutes and at the end, you leave without toenail polish. Then there is the price - Dh510. Is it worth it though? Ann Marie McQueen finds out.
The practitioner
Jeremy Jeune, the Tahitian studio manager in charge of my feet during my session at The Spa, One & Only Royal Mirage, is an actual podiatrist trained in France. Bastien Gonzalez, the French chiropodist behind these unique treatments, only hires podiatrists trained in France to execute them.
The treatment
The Bastien Gonzalez pedicure takes about 60 to 75 minutes, although Jeune tells me that it can stretch to 90 minutes for feet that are in terrible shape. Although I am comfortable laid back in an elaborate, barber-type chair, I feel smug when mine is done in under an hour. Since this is a dry treatment, there is no soaking and no water touches my feet. There are three tools used: a gouge, a glass file and a tiny drill. The drill is much less scary than it sounds. Essentially Jeune uses it to remove the superficial layer of each nail and with it, the brownish-yellow hue that has taken up residence there from the constant use of polish. I grow slightly uneasy with a thin stream of smoke rising, but Jeune calms me.
“It’s scary,” he confirms. “Because sometimes the guest has already seen this machine at a saloon, and they have removed too much.”
After drilling away at each toe - I couldn’t feel a thing - Jeune massages a very, very fine buffing cream containing mother-of-pearl onto them.
He then spends 15 minutes with a gouge removing hard skin from my feet, but not cutting the cuticles because they are “the waterproof barrier of the nail against fungus, bacteria, infection”. Filing is done expertly with a glass version - glass is washable, which cuts down on bacteria - and when I witness the flair with which Jeune buffs up each nail with a tiny chamois, attached to a natural horn buffer, it is as exquisite as Salt Bae seasoning a piece of meat.
Also, there is a delicious foot massage with water-based lotion. A podiatrist knows, I think.
The natural look
I hadn’t considered that I’d leave the treatment with naked toenails. Many women are taken aback at the prospect, Jeune explains, but 85 per cent of them are so pleased at how their toes look they willingly go without. I was the same. Since the top layer of my nail was gone - and with it, any discolouration - and all 10 of them gleamed healthy pink after Jeune’s vigorous buffing, it would have felt ungrateful to demand any. My feet looked fabulous. And when Jeune told me that the nail absorbs the nail polish, with the polish burning the nail and damaging it, and that I should be regularly giving my nails a break from that punishment anyway, I feel even better going without.
The verdict
If you can afford regular Bastien Gonzalez pedicures, or semi-regular, you might be tempted to swear off nail polish altogether. If you can’t afford regular Bastien Gonzalez pedicures, go do-it-yourself for a couple of months to save so you can try one out. They truly are nail-changing. Three weeks later, I had to give my toes a little clip, but the nails are as shiny as ever.
The pedicure is available at Pedi:Mani:Cure Studio by Bastien Gonzalez at the One & Only Royal Mirage, One & Only, The Palm, both in Dubai, and at Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi. A pedicure is Dh510; a manicure is Dh295 and manicure and pedicure combination is Dh775.
This review was done at the invitation of the venue.
amcqueen@thenational.ae
