Sad as it may be, city-dwellers are no strangers to aching feet. Whether it’s pinched joints from pointy shoes or stubbed toes from careless bumps in the night, our feet are usually the biggest victims of self-inflicted neglect.
And ordinary pedicures just won’t cut it, says Bastien Gonzalez, founder and CEO of Bastien GonzalezAlonso Corp.
When it comes to pedicures, Gonzalez zooms in on the latter half of the word. The usual procedures — which at their most basic involve a rudimentary buff and polish — may leave your feet looking nice and pretty at the end, but they may do more harm than good once you head out the salon.
“Those are ‘fake’ pedicures, I like to say,” Gonzalez says with a laugh. “They damage the nail, they damage the cuticle, and they burn the skin.” Having been trained as a podiatrist, he is well aware of the impact that improper clipping and trimming can do. For instance, filing too deeply can leave the remaining nail brittle, while excessive clipping of the cuticle can open things up to infection.
A different approach — healing the foot, and curing all the damage inflicted from daily life and bad habits — is key to a good treatment, says Gonzalez.
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For the self-proclaimed “foot maestro”, who has worked on the toes of A-list celebrities around the world — including supermodel Naomi Campbell — his philosophy is to “tune” what his clients have. “I don’t just look at your nails. I look at the bed of the nails, I look at the matrix,” he explains.
Gonzalez was led to the world of pedicures after a ski injury left him in need of physiotherapy. He tells us that a trip to a podiatrist had him literally back on his feet, and soon he was ready to take on the slopes again. He later opened his first studio in Paris in 1997, sowing the seeds for a presence in top hotels around the world.
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Most recently, Gonzalez has brought his signature pedicures to the Raffles Spa in Raffles Hotel. A 60-minute pedicure here is priced at $200, with other treatments, including manicures, available as well.
Having gotten used to the idea of “ordinary” manicures, we’re intrigued by the idea of something that goes beyond aesthetic improvements. So we’re here to try it for ourselves, hoping to get some relief from the endless trudges to and from the office.
The pedicure begins with a gentle shaping and filing of the nails. Right off the bat, it’s obvious this is an entirely different experience from the norm. Rather than questions about how we’d like our feet to look, we’re asked about our self-care rituals.
As things progress, we’re given tips on how to take better care of our feet, with everything from not overtrimming to wearing toe spacers to alleviate pressure (Gonzalez has even put out his own, called Happy Feet).
We continue with a skin treatment, and end off with a massage to relieve muscle tension. This extends way past the feet, going up to the calves and knees. All the way through, we’re treated with specialised tools and products from Gonzalez’s Révérence de Bastien line.
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By the end, we are left with a pair of fully relaxed feet, so much so that our entire bodies feel a little more calm. Even without polish, the subtle shine of our freshly buffed toenails looks good enough to show off in a pair of open-toed sandals.
Gonzalez’s advice — that self-care should extend to our feet — may sound intuitive, but heading out of the Raffles Spa, we feel we’re only just beginning to understand what he means. For those with well-worn soles and aching ankles, a trip down might well be a step in the right direction.
