A pink door painted in Farrow & Ball’s Cinder Rose provides a glimpse of what’s to come at Le Petit Saint, the sculptor turned doctor Joseph Hkeik’s first London clinic, tucked inside a sprawling Georgian townhouse. Le Petit Saint is the latest in Hkeik’s clutch of cult All Saint clinics, in Sydney and now Mayfair, where the Lebanese-Australian cosmetic doctor and his team dispense his “church of skin” philosophy to a client list that includes Rita Ora and Elle Macpherson.
The aim of this dreamlike space, designed with Hkeik’s longtime friend and collaborator Blainey North, whose own little black book is sprinkled with A-listers such as Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe, is to act as an emotional recalibration. “I want people to feel calm, held, unrushed. I want them to feel safe enough to soften,” Hkeik explains. “I deliberately stripped back the environment. I believe that restraint allows the nervous system to settle.”
The end result is elegant, the antithesis of the more typical stark clinical space. Each of its five stories is dedicated to a different sculptural medium — resin, paper, wood, clay and stone — the colours becoming more diluted as you ascend each level. “Almost like you’re going up to the heavens,” Hkeik says.
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Dr Joseph Hkeik in his London clinic
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The front door is painted in Farrow & Ball Cinder Rose
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The water feature is topped by a model of the famous Winged Victory
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On entering, guests are greeted by the muted rose reception space with its curved timber and leather reception desk below a hand-painted Greco-Roman bas-relief and a plaster and opal-glass pendant, a homage to classical drapery, by the lighting designer Lee Broom. The sound of running water — courtesy of a pink onyx and clay water feature — is a motif here and in Hkeik’s Sydney clinics. “Quiet is not an absence, it’s a presence without pressure,” he says.
The celestial pièce de résistance? An angelic pair of glittering crystal-encrusted wings, designed by the Melbourne-based artist Christopher Boots, suspended in a two-storey glass void at the end of the reception area.
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Indeed, there is a sculptural element in every space — from a pair of paper sculptures depicting Neptune and Venus, by the English artist Andy Singleton, embedded into the ceilings of two of the treatment rooms, to Hkeik’s own Henry Moore-inspired reclining female nude in clay in his first-floor office-cum-treatment room.
Le Petit Saint’s VIP suite is “the ultimate healing room”, lit by surrealist wall sconces by Paolo Moschino, inviting complete surrender on a treatment bed covered in sumptuous French linens beneath a roof light opening to the London skies. As Hkeik explains: “This is where you’ll come to lie down and forget completely about what’s happening in your life right now.”
The soothing pink water feature is sculpted in onyx and clay
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The crystal Wings of Pegasus sculpture by the Australian artist Christopher Boots is suspended over a two-storey void
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Hkeik’s consultation room showcases burlwood panels
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Two more superchic clinicsThe gallery space: Teresa Tarmey
Six years ago Teresa Tarmey fell in love with an old synagogue in Notting Hill, transforming the 19th-century building into her flagship clinic moments from the hubbub of Portobello Road. Here the Yorkshire-born facialist offers microneedling, LED therapy and radiofrequency, in a pared-back setting sprinkled with Guy Bourdin prints and de Sede sofas, which Tarmey sourced via 1stDibs, the Lancashire antiques dealer Lord Browns and the 20th-century specialist Golborne 44. She has retained nods to the building’s past, from original stained glass to a bimah (the raised platform used for Torah readings). teresatarmey.com
For antiques lovers: Dr David Jack
Glorious antiques are littered throughout the Dr David Jack Clinic and Skintech Studio (a facial bar offering Korean-inspired skin treatments) in Belgravia. Ranging from 1970s abstract Finnish artworks to a 17th-century Chinoiserie tapestry and a brass Chippendale-style bamboo console table from the 1960s, many of the pieces have been sourced by Jack himself. Clients can admire the check flooring — a medley of Rosso, Nero Marquina and Carrara marbles arranged in what Jack describes as “a 1930s to 1940s Italian design” — while waiting for a featherlight tweakment or to be anointed Cleopatra-style during a £250 multistep Egyptian facial. drdavidjack.com