Would you pay $1,800 for a facial?

Ms. Czech, an esthetician trained in Eastern European facial massage, likens the skin to dough that one can manually knead, shape and manipulate. Her experience proved prescient; she has worked on the faces of Kim Kardashian, Hailey Bieber and Jennifer Aniston, and will open a third spa in Los Angeles in March. (The other two are in New York and Dallas.)

Ms. Greene, the founder of Crystal Greene Studio in SoHo, uses a similar method. La Sculpture, a manual facial for $525 for 60 minutes, makes up almost 85 percent of her treatments, she said. In February she will introduce a souped-up version: 90 minutes of manual massage, microcurrent and buccal massage, where she goes into the mouth to shape the jawline. It costs $750.

People may be more aware of it these days, but social media, where the birth trends of Instagram and TikTok happen overnight, remain the most powerful manipulator of beauty standards. The ‘new facial’ could be seen as a response to the cyborgian ‘Instagram face’ that has dominated our feeds in recent years.

“Pumped up and filled out,” Mr. Pol described the aesthetic that, he said, is passé.

Mr. Pol, a former makeup artist, is the founder of the Beauty Sandwich, the name of both a radiofrequency-targeted facial treatment that costs $1,600 ($1,800 for the first session) with, he said, a yearlong waiting list, and a skin treatment. -care line that sells a Secret Sauce, $295, and a Snatching Sauce, $250. The products are not serums, Mr. Pol said, but rather a “new category of skin care – a sauce.” (If you had to guess, “serum” would probably still be the correct classification.)

Last summer, Tea Hacic-Vlahovic, a novelist and podcast host, tried a FaceGym “workout,” as it calls its facials. Halfway through, her facialist showed her half of the face she had treated.

“It was a big difference,” Ms. Hacic-Vlahovic said. “Half of my face looked like I had a facelift.” The lift took a few days, she said.