Sometimes, you just have to take pity on your poor, neglected hands. Sure, your nails are smooth and polished and sometimes decorated. You’re not a barbarian. But your skin? And your knuckles, which kind of look like elephant knees when you really study them? My advice: Maybe don’t. Because you have bigger things to think about, like your neck.
I was at a party last August standing on a dark lawn when someone joined the conversation and asked, out of nowhere, “What are we going to do about our hands?” It took me a minute to register that the questioner, the “we,” was Tom Ford, which means we, meaning me, took the issue seriously. I hid my hands behind my back. Even in the dark, they were not good.
I said I’d get back to him with some research. Sorry it took so long, Tom.
Most of us, unlike Mr. Ford, think that we’re stuck with the dry, veiny, speckled situation on our hands. In a survey of U.S. women over 40, the majority of them sadly believed “there is nothing that could be done to prevent signs of aging on their hands,” according to Wakefield Research, which conducted the study. The hands are “always neglected,” says Dr. Ellen Marmur, a board-certified dermatologist and professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. Part of the reason is “we’re so focused on other areas.” Exactly.
I am here to tell you that things can be done. But I bet you assumed as much.
Almost no one has hands that are younger looking than their face, says Dr. Marmur. “We put sunscreen on our face. We put anti-aging products on our face. We do our occasional lasers or chemical peels or whatever we can do, and we just never even moisturize our hands.”
The hands’ condition can tell a lot about the person connected to them. “Hands have way more significance in a story or in a look than people give credence to,” says Linda Dowds, an Academy Award–winning makeup artist for The Eyes of Tammy Faye. She pays attention to the finest details for Jessica Chastain’s roles as Tammy Faye Bakker in that film and as Tammy Wynette in George & Tammy. To age an actor, she tells me, “you do the neck, and then the hands become significant.”
The technique she uses is called “stipple.” Dowds stretches the skin, covers it with liquid latex, dries the latex, and releases the skin. The resulting texture is puckered and crêpey. From there, she intensifies the veins by “popping up some of the blues” and paints on sunspots.
Many of us get our sunspots the natural way, by forgetting to cover our hands with sunscreen. “And 90 percent of the aging on our skin, including the hands, is caused by the sun,” says Dr. Robert Anolik, a board-certified dermatologist and professor at the N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine. If sunscreen feels too sticky and filmy, either get a better sunscreen (I suggest Supergoop Hand Screen) or follow my friend Jane’s example and wear U.P.F. 50 fingerless gloves on your elegantly manicured hands. She never hikes, paddleboards, walks the dogs, or drives a car without them.
There’s no harm in treating your hands as kindly as you do your face, meaning a dab of retinol, lactic acid, or vitamin C serum, especially in the area between the thumb and index finger that Dr. Marmur calls the “cocktail glass.”
“Brown spots are the No. 1 concern for the hands,” says Dr. Marmur. “Crêpey skin is No. 2. And then just that shriveled-up sort of look like the prominence of the underlying structures is the third thing.” In other words, veiny, bony, witchy hands.
“I love to treat the hands,” says Dr. Anolik. There’s a whole array of approaches, but surgery isn’t one of them, because there’s nowhere to hide the scar. “Unless,” he says, “you’re going to be committed to a bracelet or a watch.” Forever.
As we age, “we lose volume in the hands like we lose volume in the face,” Dr. Anolik tells me, as if I couldn’t see it with my own eyes. When I was an editorial assistant at Condé Nast, making my weekly trip to the petty-cash coffers (nickname: Pettycash Junction), a woman next to me once grabbed my hand and said, “Oh, it looks so young.” I was 22 and never gave a thought to the youthfulness of anything, especially my hands. Now I care a little more but still probably not enough.
To provide skin with that fresh, petty-cash plumpness, there are injectable fillers, two of which are F.D.A.-approved for the hands. Restylane Lyft is a dissolvable hyaluronic-acid filler, and Radiesse smooths the skin’s surface and stimulates the production of collagen and elastin on the back of the hands. “Don’t forget the fingers!,” Dr. Marmur adds. She injects tiny droplets of the filler she usually uses for lips into the sides of the fingers to make them less Nosferatu.
Brown-spot eradication takes a little more time and motivation. Dr. Marmur is a fan of Intense Pulsed Light therapy, as long as you don’t mind looking temporarily insane. After a session, the hands can turn red or even maroon for up to two weeks. “But it works really well,” she says. Dr. Marmur also likes the Fraxel laser. “I actually did my arms and hands two weeks ago,” she tells me. “It takes a month for all the little paprika spots to come off, but it’s also a great way to prevent skin cancers.”
The hands seem to age overnight, she says. And then one day “it’s like, Oh, my God, where did those spots come from?”
To counter that alarm, Ashlie Johnson, a manicurist who works with Kate Hudson and Gwyneth Paltrow, believes in subtle, tasteful nail colors or even nail art. “It makes you feel good,” she tells me. She’s especially fond of almond-shaped nails because they “elongate the fingers and make everything look soft and feminine, if that’s what you’re into.” Perhaps, once again, Tammy Faye is a cautionary tale. Dowds leaned into the character’s love of purple, adding grape-colored press-on nails for verisimilitude. “Everything played more to age that way.” Noted!
Worrying about the way your hands look seems like a waste of energy when you consider all they do. It’s one more thing to add to the list, one more part of the body that is visible to all revealing our age as reliably as rings on a tree. Perhaps Tom Ford would like to help, even though he’s left the business, presumably for good. Just this once, would he please come back and make gloves fashionable again? We thank you.
Linda Wells is the Editor at Air Mail Look
