The “Quiet Luxury” Facialist’s Skin Bible: A Face Oil Reset For Acne, “Burgundy” LED Face Masks and is Salicylic Acid “Out”?
Breaking Beauty Podcast
Dear Media, Jill Dunn and Carlene Higgins
4.7 • 996 Ratings
🗓️ 11 March 2026
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Athena Hewett is the cool girls’ master aesthetician (she counts stylish faces like Chloe Sevigny, Sofia Coppola and Greta Lee as clients). She’s also the hands behind the glowing skin at Khaite and Victoria Beckham’s (!!) A/W 2026 runway shows. Plus the San Francisco-based facialist holds artist-in-residences at the iconic Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan and most recently, with a limited pop-up at Vie Projects Gallery during Paris fashion week, in collaboration with the iconic Dover Street Market Parfums Market.
Listen in as Athena reveals all of her quiet luxury secrets, like her unique breakout-busting philosophy that involves a skincare diet of nothing but face oils, her innovative pimple extraction technique that promises to reduce skin damage, along with details on how as a skincare formulator, she chooses ingredients for her small-batch botanical skincare range, Monastery.
You’ll discover:
- How Athena’s creative collaboration with the Coppola Hideaways came to be (and yes, it’s as special as it sounds)
- How the facialist preps skin for the runway vs red carpet – and the lessons we can borrow at home
- How her skin “reset” philosophy for acne sufferers is totally different than standard approaches– and why she swears you’ll see results on her face oil-based plan
- Why salicylic acid and tea tree oil are big time no-no ingredients for acne-prone skin, according to the master esthetician
- The differences between carrier oils vs essential oils, and when Athena says you should use each
- Why Athena believes you don’t need blue light to treat breakouts, but powerful “burgundy” light therapy to help calm skin instead
For any products or links mentioned in this episode, check out our website: https://breakingbeautypodcast.com/episode-recaps/
Related episodes like this:
- Skincare Guru May Lindstrom: From Living in Her Car to Creating a Cult-Favourite “Blue Cocoon” Balm
- Celebrity Facialist Lord Gavin McLeod-Valentine Reveals His Top #Skincare Secrets! #beautytips
- Celeb Esthetician Candace Marino (The LA Facialist) Spills Her Secrets on How To Get #RadiantAF Skin
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Hosts: Carlene Higgins and Jill Dunn
Theme song, used with permission: Cherry Bomb by Saya
Produced by Dear Media Studio
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Transcript
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| 0:29.7 | The following podcast is a dear media production. |
| 0:37.0 | Welcome to Breaking Beauty, the podcast, all about the breakthrough people, products, and moments |
| 0:42.2 | and beauty. |
| 0:42.9 | We're your host, Jill Dunn and Carleen Higgins. |
| 0:50.4 | Welcome back to Breaking Beauty podcast, the podcast all about the breakthrough people, products, and |
| 0:55.3 | moments in beauty. I'm Carleen. This is Jill, and we are just days away from spring. We're |
| 1:00.9 | almost at the finish line. Couldn't be happier, honestly. I did sneak away to Palm Springs for a few |
| 1:07.2 | days, so I felt like that was my little hiatus getting to the desert. It really did |
| 1:13.2 | energize me to get through the rest of the winter. So I'm sorry you couldn't join me, but next time. |
| 1:18.3 | That's okay. We're going to be taken away a little bit in today's episode. There's like a little bit |
| 1:24.5 | of a, I don't know, dreamy travel quality to it. |
| 1:28.0 | That's true. |
| 1:28.8 | That's true. |
| 1:29.7 | And of course, we are here in your feeds on this fine Wednesday, like we are every single |
| 1:34.3 | week chatting with the elite talents of the beauty world, everyone from makeup by Mario to |
| 1:39.7 | Bobby Brown, Gloria George. |
| 1:41.9 | And today we are joined by a very exciting skin expert. It's Athena |
... |
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