It’s all in the eyes: A pioneering new beauty treatment promises a more alert look without a scalpel in sight

Scientists say our eyes are the first things people notice when we enter a room. They give a clue to our personality, our disposition, our mood. But they’re also the biggest hint of fatigue: staring at screens leads to droopy eyelids and late nights mean dark circles under the eyes.

Broadly, though, the cures offered have either been early nights and digital detoxes, or surgical treatment. The first is unrealistic, the second invasive (and expensive). But there is a paradigm shift in the industry: insiders are talking excitedly about a new wonder treatment that brightens and restores the eyes. Bleph21, an eyelid lift that doesn’t require surgery, scalpels or fillers.

It’s a revolutionary technique: the first in the UK that uses a patient’s own stem cells to create new tissue and repair the skin around their eyes. Fat and stem cells are taken from your lower body and injected into the facial muscles, fat pads and eyelids, making your eyes appear brighter and more awake. Using your own tissue means there’s virtually no chance it will be rejected — and any change will look natural, because it contains your DNA.

Dark circles disappear, surgeons promise, and the loose skin on your upper and lower eyelids fills up, lifting the brow. Results are immediate and because stem cells keep reproducing, the effects can last indefinitely, unlike fillers.

Bleph21 was pioneered by French plastic surgeon Dr Roger Amar at the London FAMI Clinic in Chelsea. He reports that the cutting-edge procedure is increasingly popular with Londoners hoping to reduce bags under their eyes safely, and without surgery: since it launched in January, almost 100 people have had the treatment, and demand continues to grow with word of mouth. It costs around £2,700 but the results persist indefinitely.

“With today’s way of living, you get dark circles around the eyes, even in your twenties,” explains Dr Amar. “But at that age no one dares to go to the surgeon for a procedure with a scalpel. There can be a lot of complications with surgery, even in the best hands. It’s risky.”

Indeed, during a 30-year career as a specialist facial surgeon, Dr Amar has seen his share of complications, including blindness. Duly, he set about creating a more natural non-invasive method to restore youthful volume to clients’ eyes.

Who are his clients? At the moment it’s mainly women in their 30s, 40s and 50s, though he says a growing number of men are requesting the procedure. Patients are getting younger, too: in many ways, he observes, getting the treatment done in your twenties is more effective, since stem cells will still be young and active. “The more you age, the more the stem cells become weak because of the DNA,” he explains. His youngest patient was 28.

Dr Amar also sees a number of women who’ve been through pregnancy and developed eye bags through calcium deficiency. Like Leyl Ali: the mother-of-one underwent the eyelid lift in May after a sleep- deprived three years following her son’s birth. “It really had a terrible impact on my eyes,” she explains. “I always had very stubborn bags and circles, my top eyelid started dropping and I lost weight on my face from exercise. I suddenly started to look very old.” She didn’t want to have plastic surgery and end up “looking like someone else”;

Dr Amar’s treatment “sounded too good to be true,” she says. “But the results have been amazing. I don’t have those bags any more, and I can see the changes every day.”

Like fillers, a key factor in the procedure’s popularity is speed and convenience. While patients can take weeks to recover from conventional eyelid surgery, the Bleph21 treatment has no downtime, no scarring and patients don’t require any kind of recuperation period afterwards. It’s typically a straightforward, two-hour procedure.

After hers, Ali was able to return home immediately and take her son to school. They don’t say beauty is in the eye of the beholder for nothing.