Ivan Pol is a beauty pioneer, founder of The Beauty Sandwich and celebrity facialist. Sculpting and lifting the worlds most beautiful and well known faces, including Salma Hayek, Cindy Crawford, Kim Kardashian, Victoria Beckham and Emma Stone. His legendary facials and innovative techniques fuse advanced radio frequency technology with high performance nutritional supplements, resulting in a tailored, non-invasive solution to volume loss and wrinkle reduction, the benefits of which can last up to a year. Launched in 2022, Ivan’s skincare sauces used in his treatments, designed to nurture, sculpt and lift the skin (and the spirit!) from home contain all natural plant derivative ingredients to achieve inner and outer glow.

1. What’s your skincare and beauty routine?

Morning Affirmation and Meditations: I'm a firm believer that beauty can be started from within. So I begin with an affirmation, a meditation, even if it's just for five minutes. I listen to a grounding frequency, such as the Schumann Resonance, which is 732 Hertz to make sure that I'm nice and grounded. Then I do a little bit of ayurvedic tongue oil pulling, before I drink almost a liter of Hallstein alkaline water which comes from the Austrian Alps. Next, a pinch of gray Celtic sea salt underneath my tongue to remineralize my body. 

Morning Skincare: I’ll do a couple of spritzes of my Amuse Bouche mist to give to my face a drink of water, then I'll cleanse and put on my Snatching Sauce. Once a day is all you need, but I make a smaller size that is super handy for when you have a zoom, or need a pick-me-up. During the day I re-mist with the Amuse Bouche - it has peony flower in it that boosts your body's own system to produce more hyaluronic acid. So it's like when you have a glass of water throughout the day to keep you hydrated. 

Exercise: I do a Tracy Anderson class first thing in the morning, or I see my trainer. Sweating’s a really important detox pathway and a great way to get the stress and toxins out of your body, especially first thing in the morning. 

Evening routine: In the evenings, I have been doing a little bit of LYMA laser with my SS01 Secret Sauce, which is the one for cellular turnover. It’s richer than the SS02, more like a cashmere blanket for your face, so I prefer those oils more in the evening. I'll do that and watch something like The Crown or Ru Paul’s Drag Race - something easy to unwind with.

I apply Chanel Sublimage L’Extrait de Nuit serum which helps with the sleep rhythm of my skin. It’s almost as if it puts your skin into a full beauty sleep. I don't moisturize, as my products have enough moisture in them for my skin. So it makes sense to keep things really simple.

2. What are your other current favorite products?

I love your deodorant. I'm currently using the one that you did with Shiva Rose. I'm obsessed with it - that's one of my holy grail products. Also Shiva is a friend, we lived in LA at the same time, and she was a client too. I think it's really important to use a clean, beautiful deodorant, like the ones you carry - there are so many toxic ingredients in some deodorants, and that's something that you're putting into your system and that's gonna be a full endocrine disruptor. 

And then a newer product I can't live without from Dr. Diamond. He has a line called Metacine and there's a serum called The Plasma. He makes the plasma - not from your own blood - but a product that’s supposed to mimic that plasma from your blood. It’s red and I love it because it has a proprietary cocktail of growth factors so it’s just amazing.

For the body I really love Tina Craig’s U Beauty Super Body Hydrator - we neglect the body, sometimes - especially our legs. It's funny, when I started to see my aging happen to me, it wasn't really so much in my face, but it started to happen in my legs and kind of my arms. My skin wasn't as supple and soft. So using a really good body cream like hers, you really see the results very quickly.

3. How do you prepare to look your best for a big event?

It's all about a good haircut. So I I see Sally Hershberger or her right hand who is Jae-Manuel Cardenas. If I’m abroad, it’s David Mallet all the way. I recently got a boy perm. There’s a woman in LA that does a lot of these for guys at The Curl Cult. It's a non toxic perm with no scary smell or anything like that. It’s pretty amazing.

I really cannot do without my groomers!!  I have two ‘male groomers’ that are really great - Carissa Ferreri who is amazing. Or when I can, Kristen Shaw - but I have to share her with that British actor in Bridgerton - Jonathan Bailey!

I don't get extended sun, but I do like a bronze. So for a spray tan before an event I see SKJ - Sunkissed by Jenny - which is great as I’m Cuban and she matches it to your skin tone. Also Jimmy Coco in the UK is really good. He does a lot of my clients. Then for additional preparation, I do a lymphatic. I do not do a red carpet without seeing Flavia Lanini. I'd recommend her for anybody before a red carpet. She does this de-bloating tea that you have to take, which contains Brazilian botanicals. I start taking it the night before, though I take it on a daily, but if you're doing it within 48 hours, it's great.

4. Are there any challenges to your beauty routine when you have to travel? Have you ever made any lifestyle changes to support your wellbeing?

Yeah, I travel a lot, so it's really important that I can keep up with my spirituality. I don't like to take pills and when I’m seeing so many different people and traveling, it has really helped me to listen to frequencies, even when I’m doing my facials - it's been a game changer for me. I try to book a hotel room that has a bathtub as opposed to just a shower so that I can take a salt bath at night.

Agent: Do you have a specific brand of salt that you like for your salt bath?

I just use Celtic sea salt right now. Or get some Epsom salts with the magnesium salt in there - that really helps, for example with your frequency. I’ll still do my morning workout class but do it virtually. Another thing I love when I travel is the Chanel under eye patches. 

When flying, I wear compression socks and some compression wear so that I’m not as bloated when I arrive. And on the plane, I’ll make sure I'm layering my SS sauces and the Amuse Bouche mist - the mist is super important when I travel because there's something called osmotic stress, which happens more to people that travel with frequency, due to the change of the water and the pH. Water is very hard on the skin because it's filled with chemicals unless you have some insane filtration system. So when we were formulating the mist, we put in a very special distilled bamboo, and Persian rosewater - that distillation takes like a month alone. It’s designed to help with osmotic stress. So I will cleanse with my mist or I'll just use a micellar like the Chanel micellar water, which I'm obsessed with - instead of actually using hotel room water because I don't want to have my skin freak out from the pH.

5. What’s your go-to healthy snack?

I love fresh fruit -  either yellow watermelon or diced papaya.  I love a double duty product that's gonna give you multiple benefits! So with watermelon you're getting a lot of electrolytes and with papaya you're getting a lot of digestive enzymes in there. If I'm gonna do something crunchy, I love a brand called MASA - they make a tortilla chip that has zero seed oils - they use beef tallow. So that’s my crispy treat.

6. When you were younger, who was your beauty icon? Who inspires you now?

When I was younger Cindy Crawford.

Agent: that's so fabulous that she went from being your icon to your client!

I was like, Oh my God. In my Junior High School era, boys my age had photos of quarterbacks on their walls. I was completely obsessed with how to style. And then Tom Cruise - the later 90s Mission Impossible Tom.  And I want to throw in a David Beckham there. From like, 22 on I had the shaved head and the diamond earrings, you know, and the lines in my eyebrows! And then Fight Club Brad Pitt. That was the first time that other guys were saying “Oh my God, that's who I want to look like”. People wanted to look like Brad Pitt in Fight Club - that choppy, messy hair? Was that bedroom hair? The Ripped bodies like that. Perfect. When other people liked Steve McQueen or James Bond, it was all about Brad Pitt in Fight Club. 

7. Any ‘tweakments’ (skincare and non-surgical) procedures you’d recommend or have planned for ‘one day’?

I'm big into Dr Diamond, he’s the one I trust. He’s been an expert in this field for over 25 years. So he’s in charge of my face! His instafacial is one of the treatments that I do the most - I like the Clear + Brilliant light laser and then the PRP treatment -  it’s where they spin your blood and he then uses microneedling or injections to get the PRP into your face.  

Another thing that I discovered lately that really intrigues me - especially for the body - is mesotherapy -  in the UK. It’s just starting to get going here and that's something that I do with Flavia - in fact I just did it to get ready for summer.  The combination of the mesotherapy with sculpting machines is amazing.  Flavia was the one that rescued me after a bad experience with CoolSculpting and got rid of it. - I have abs again! 

8.  What is your go to/favorite beauty look to create and what inspired this look?

Definitely the natural look. Because when I started in this field, when I started The Beauty Sandwich, I saw everybody's face. And I looked for clients that looked so natural and so amazing, and I'd ask who they went to. Because with Beauty Sandwich I can snatch your face. But I can't re-volumized you know, when there's bone reabsorption and things like that. I can't put that magic back - so that's when you need someone like Dr Diamond. I like when people look so good but still look natural, and you can never really see the change in their face, they're just looking fresher and younger.  So that’s the look I create and what inspired it. 

I look to elevate and maintain someone's beauty, not change it. We’ve all seen very beautiful women get work done and then all of a sudden, they're a feline… That’s why I trust Dr Diamond so much - he’d rather turn work down than change someone - I think he is the King of Natural and can refresh you the best. He’s got the eye. And that’s why I created Beauty Sandwich. I worked at a dermatologist's office for 11 years. So I remember women getting an enhancement and wanting to come back in two weeks to get a fix, right? Now, when you Google ‘snatch’, I think the new urban dictionary says ‘an elevated version of oneself’. I was pioneering that 16 years ago. That's what the Beauty Sandwich is about - I can elevate you without having to change you know, not overfill you … I'm not messing with you. I'm making people the best version of themselves.

9. Biggest beauty mistake?

One time I had a disastrous spray tan - one of those with the undertones. And I was attending the Baby2Baby charity gala, where I was one of the main auction items. I got there and the lights were a maroon red.  And oh my god so was my skin under those lights. I was burgundy! That probably explains why I did not post any photos. 

10. And finally… what can you NOT do without? What’s the holy grail of the products you use and need?

Your Agent Nateur deodorant as I mentioned, and I love your holi (mane) supplement. I take that in my coffee. And I absolutely cannot live without my sauce. I wanted to create a product that would seal everything in and it has everything that my skin ever needs - it has the fatty five so I feel everybody needs it. We all need omegas to have hydrated skin and lock in that hydration and have really beautiful sealed pores. You need Omega Z fat, you need to feed your face. That's why my sauces have a fatty blend. You don't want to put petroleum on your skin.