Mia's Review: Mordecai Skin [Sponsored]

Recently, with thanks to Street Directory and Mordecai Skin, I experienced my very first facial IPL!
Started out as a franchise of Face of Men, Mordecai Skin still mainly targets male youth, who faces embarrassing facial problems. Yes, they're actually a men's facial parlour, however, also welcomes ladies. In fact, as according to their management, they do have a substantial number of female patrons, who placed themselves as 'guinea pigs' for their partners.
And frankly speaking, after my session, I am indeed contemplating to drag T over for one as well. If only he's not so against facial. T.T  

Located at Ang Mo Kio, 5 minutes walk from Djitsun Mall, my first impression as I made my way over slowly from AMK Mrt station was, 'Wow, is this some facial parlour heaven?' As I walk along the shop houses, facial place after facial place just came into sight. I totally lost count of how many facial beauty parlours I saw before I came to Mordecai Skin. With this crazy amount of competition in just the neighbourhood, much less to say against the big franchises, I was filled with nothing but respect for their beliefs and ideals of doing proper business.
Now what's that about? We'll get to it in a while.

If you didn't know, Mordecai was the cousin and guardian of Esther, Queen of King Xerves, who taught her the meaning of both inner and outer beauty. And by adopting his name, Mordecai Skin shows their belief that beauty runs deeper beyond the surface of our skin and their ideal in treating their customers' skin issue from inside out.

Using only Eve Taylor's products, which do not contain Lancolin, Mineral Oil Artificial fragrance or SC alcohol, and are natural and gentle to the skin,

And let's get back to the proper business I've mentioned earlier, shall we?

I believe many of us (me included) is always hesitant or even shun such beauty facial parlours all because of one fear. 

Hardselling of packages. 

Some hardsell tactics are so unethical, they even resort to lying to get customers to top up for better, more expensive treatment. Halfway into your 10 sessions package, and they'll start goading you to sign on another set of 10 sessions for a better treatment, telling you ala carte prices will be $300 per session but with 10x package, 1 session is only $150 etc. And if you take 20x package, you get free mask every session! 

I'm sure most of you will know the painful annoyance of such hardselling tactics. 

And guess what, at Mordecai, you'll never need to undergo such stress at all. With strong beliefs in not just doing good business, but also to do good in business, Mordecai decided to do away with those special per session pricing of large packages and strongly recommend that patrons stick to a pay-per-session ala carte system, by making the cost of an ala carte session exactly the same as a package session. Their trusted therapists also do not go on a commission based remuneration package, which totally eliminates any tendency of pushing for any sorts of packages, ever. Rejoice, men... and ladies! 

Now, let's get on with my first facial IPL treatment experience, shall we?

I was ushered into a comfortably dimmed, clean treatment room and immediately asked to lie on the bed. First thought, "You forgot to pass me my robes to change...?"

It turned out, as Mordecai Skin mainly caters to males, they do not provide shoulder and back massage like other facial parlours do. They decided to extend this exclusion to the ladies as well, due to the thought that it will probably cause inconveniences to the ladies dressed in skimpy robes in the rooms while other male patrons are walking about outside. Well, you do understand that the therapist do exit and enter the treatment room many times in a single session, yeah? 

Thoughtful indeed. 

And after putting my hair out of my face, the therapist removed all traces of make up and cleansed/exfoliated my skin thoroughly before putting me under the steamer to open up my pores for a very thorough extraction. 

See how red (and swollen) my face was, right after the long extraction! I personally wouldn't term the extraction pain as okay, but it's definitely bearable for me, having survived my usual home facial therapist for years. 

And of course, after extraction was high frequency to kill all the bacteria...

Then a layer of cooling gel was applied onto my face and a pair of eye protection was placed on my eyes, and the IPL session commenced! Initially, I was bracing myself for the pain but was pleasantly surprised to know that actually facial IPL are at much lower degree to prevent burning of the skin and hence, there's no pain at all! Just a slight warming sensation coming from the part of the machine that's in contact with my skin. 

After the IPL, the therapist did a acupoint facial massage for me to 'detox' the skin and melt my stress away, coupled with an ampoule that smelled strongly of tea tree oil. 

And finally, the mask was applied, which was pretty cold (to further soothe down the redness) and smelled of apple and yogurt, a pretty yummy scent actually. 

Looking really nerdy intelligent in my favourite (actually is one and only) pair of thick black rimmed glasses.
But that's actually not the focus. See my face, no signs of redness or swelling at all! Pictures were also taken under normal lighting and I've not done any sort of filtering to make my skin look any better than how it looks on the mirror.
Even though facial IPL, other than to rejuvenate the skin, also helps to gradually shrink our open pores, I was obviously unable to see any visible changes in my pores size after this one session. However, my skin definitely felt softer and smoother, and the effect was pretty lasting. I was truly amazed at how smooth my skin felt when I was washing my face in the showers when I got home, and the soft and smooth feeling actually lasted even up till now (been 1 week!).

And you know what, Mordecai Skin only charges $130 for the entire IPL treatment session. The management actually very humbly admitted that they're not exactly very cheap when it comes to their treatment prices, even though they've tried their best to give customers the best price possible. But after checking with a friend, who has been doing facial IPL treatment at a home salon, I realised that prices at home salons can go up to $110 per session!
With just $20 more, we get much more convenience of not needing to head to a stranger's home alone, better services, and promises of NO hardselling.
Why not?

Mordecai Skin is located at
Blk 728 AMK Ave 6 #01-4214 Singapore 560728

For more information, visit their website HERE

Till then,
Mia