The Voice of Aesthetics, Vol. 1

Dr. Andrew Timberlake on "baby lifts," the undetectable trend, and the career-propelling power of word of mouth

Welcome to The Voice of Aesthetics, a new column spotlighting buzzworthy personalities in the plastic surgery space.

Andrew Timberlake, MD, PhD, is having a moment. A rather enduring one. I first connected with the plastic surgeon on the cusp of his rise, just as New Yorkers were starting to whisper his name. And my earliest impression, based mostly on occasional DMs, was this: He’s a really nice guy. While I haven’t met him in person (yet) or interacted with him as a patient (only as a reporter—a different dynamic), our hour-long conversation last Sunday firmly cemented in my mind his nice-guy status. (Please never give me reason to eat these words.) Of course, the letters after his name, coupled with his wunderkind reputation, suggest that he is more than nice. Indeed, he possesses the pedigree, proficiency, and artistry one would expect from a person in his position—which is right alongside renowned facial plastic surgeon David Rosenberg, MD, at Manhattan Facial Surgery Suites on East 64th Street.

Dr. Timberlake joined Dr. Rosenberg’s practice in 2024, after a two-year apprenticeship, undertaken to master Rosenberg’s signature facelift technique. “I was looking for deep plane facelift training, because that's not really part of a general plastic surgery education,” he tells me. (It wasn’t in his case, at least. I’ve heard from some plastic surgeons who had different experiences in residency.)

“To my knowledge, I'm the only person who’s done this kind of crossover—a general plastic surgery residency and then an apprenticeship [with a facial plastic surgeon], where I was learning this operation incrementally, stitch by stitch, stroke by stroke,” Dr. Timberlake says. “David and I sat together and did, like, 200 facelifts. We went through the nuance of the operation until he thought my work was perfect.”

Dr. Timberlake now specializes in facial rejuvenation surgery and is currently booking about four months out.

How much? is, understandably, the million-dollar question, but since facelift fees are so volatile—and especially prone to surging as surgeons gain experience and esteem—I can’t offer concrete numbers in this case. I know some of you have consulted with and/or had surgery with Dr. Timberlake, however, and if you’d like to share your pricing experiences, please feel free. Just remember: Surgical fees are generally nontransferable. The sum your friend paid last year or even last week probably won’t match the quote you get from the same doctor next month.

Ahead, Dr. Timberlake talks “baby lifts,” the secret to a speedy recovery, and why he’s embracing word-of-mouth success over social-media fame.

What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned from Dr. Rosenberg?

That the quality of your product will always speak louder than any kind of marketing or anything on social media. If you do beautiful work, you’re incredibly safe, and your patients recover quickly, the rest will fall into place. I mean, there are surgeons with zero social media who are sensations, because people tell their friends, Hey, this was an incredible experience: I got everything I was expecting and more.

What’s unique about the deep plane facelift that you perform?

We have a way of addressing the platysma muscle that I think is special. By doing a really extended low release of the platysma, both medially and laterally, and by doing a really nice platysma suspension both in the midline [of the neck] and on the sides, we get a comprehensive rejuvenation that looks natural and lasts a long time.

Aside from that, we're not rushing through things. We have a process that we outlined in the article we wrote for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. We're using cautery as both a dissector and a nerve stimulator to keep our nerve injury rates extraordinarily low.* When I talk about nerve injury, I mean a neuropraxia [temporary nerve weakness]; there is a 0% nerve cut rate. So, with our technique, people recover quickly and get a beautiful result without complications.

*The PRS paper that Dr. Timberlake co-authored provides additional details on the benefits of cautery, explaining that during the extended deep-plane dissection, “the assistant watches carefully for lip twitches, indicative of proximity to the marginal mandibular or first cervical branch of the facial nerve. If twitches are observed, dissection stops at this point. The Bovie [cautery device] is kept at this low setting, as it is adequate to perform this dissection without generating excessive heat, allowing for twitches to be observed if the surgeon is in proximity to a branch of the facial nerve before causing thermal injury.”

Your patients seem to heal at warp speed. Granted, Instagram isn’t always reflective of reality, but it appears that at least some of your patients are getting back to life quickly, with minimal signs of surgery. What’s your secret?

If I had to distill it down to one thing that really, for me, puts Rosenberg in the gold-medal spot, it's that [rapid recovery]. Our patients don't have time for a six-week heal. They don't have time to take a month off of work. Our patients are going back into the office in a week. They're running companies. They're in board meetings. They're back to playing whatever role they're playing in a movie or on TV.

Careful surgery and technique are where you can really shorten the downtime. We also have a post-op recovery protocol that's pretty much mandatory with private-duty nursing, specific medications, icing—and it works. David has figured this out over many, many years.

Do you send patients for hyperbaric oxygen following facelifts?

No, we don't do any hyperbarics or IV infusions. We don't want for patients to have a lot to do after surgery when they should really be resting and relaxing. It's just careful surgery, a medication regimen, icing—that’s it. It’s easy for the patient.

What’s your take on the “undetectable era” trend?

To me, it doesn't mean that there's never a point in your recovery or in your life that someone might think you've had cosmetic surgery. It more so means that when you are healed from surgery, you’re not left with any stigmata of having undergone cosmetic surgery. And, for me, this is where the deep plane facelift shines.

When you don't release the ligaments of the face [ligament release is a hallmark of deep plane surgery] and you pull tissue tightly and trim a lot of skin, then, when your suspension in that lift falls, the skin tightness is what's holding up your lift at that point. And that’s when you can see sweeps and widened scarring, and where I see this kind of characteristic tightness in the lateral face and looseness in the central face. People who’ve walked up and down Park Avenue for decades know what I'm talking about—there’s this tight-loose disharmony of the face [with certain SMAS lifts].

Our operation avoids that. It ages like a normal face. So, patients aren’t going to be chasing their tails in a few years, because they have something that looks like cosmetic surgery. Whether they choose to come back and do it again in 10 or 12 years or they decide to never get another cosmetic procedure in their life, their face looks like theirs. It doesn't look surgical. I think that’s what people really want when they're talking about undetectable surgery.

“Baby lift:” Is this your term or a Stacey-ism? [Stacey Bendet, the founder of Alice + Olivia, is a patient of Dr. Timberlake’s. She popularized the term “baby lift” while sharing her facelift experience on Instagram.]

Stacey Bendet. She's a genius, as evidenced by her own business success. She’s been very open about her experience. Basically, she and I had a conversation about how she’d taken a lap and met with a bunch of surgeons in New York, and she didn't feel like anybody was giving her what she was asking for. She said, I don't want a million other things. I want my jowl addressed and I want the looseness under my chin addressed, but I don't want an extended deep plane facelift.

I have a patient population that skews fairly young, so I do a lot of deep plane mid-facelifts [which require an incision in front of the ear], with or without a deep neck lift—through a nick in the chin, I contour the platysma, the subplatysmal fat, the digastric muscles, whatever the case may be. The beauty of that operation—what Stacey calls the baby lift—is that there are no cuts behind the ear. There's no lateral platysma dissection or pull. So the recovery is easy and fast. There’s a little bit of swelling the first week, but we don't expect much bruising. It’s not uncommon that if you did this on a Thursday, you’d be out to eat on Saturday or Sunday.

The traditional mini lift has its share of critics, with “mini lift, mini results” being the common refrain. How is your baby lift different?

Despite the name, it’s really not a baby operation. Most of the time when people talk about mini lifts, they're talking about skin lifts or short-scar SMAS lifts. What I’m doing is a deep plane facelift, only it doesn't extend into the neck. Extending that muscle cuff into the neck and doing that dissection and opening up the skin behind the ears—that’s what makes the heal a little tougher and requires a bit more in terms of a recovery.

Who’s a candidate for your mini deep plane facelift?

There’s a select patient that it’s right for and I won't offer it to somebody who has more considerable facial aging, like low neck laxity. It's not going to address those problems. And Stacey was really great in kind of crystallizing this idea that the facelift is not a one-size-fits-all operation—there’s a spectrum of deep plane facelifts.

There are people who have just a little bit of early jowling, because of weight loss or genetics, who could be even in their 30s, and they don't need their lower neck worked on. There are people who have a little bit of a jowl and a little extra tissue under the chin. They don't need an extended deep plane facelift. But when you start to see low neck laxity or more signs of aging farther down than the chin, that’s when we start talking about an extended deep plane facelift.

Does the baby lift have the durability of your standard deep plane facelift?

There’s great durability in the face and in the chin. When patients eventually come back, it's probably going to be for laxity in the lower neck, where we haven't done anything yet. When that lower neck starts to get saggier, that's when you’d come back for a secondary extended deep plane.

Is the price of your baby lift comparable to that of your full facelift?

Without giving specific numbers, I can say it is less than an extended deep plane facelift. It’s more than half [of that cost], but not the full price.

You seem to have made a name for yourself among the NYC fashion set. Are these just your people? Or, like, how did this happen?

In every surgeon's rise, there are patients who play an incredible role in getting your name out there. Some you see on social media and some you’ve probably never heard of. They're nowhere on my social media, but they told half of New York about me. I’ve had patients say, You're never going to see me on your social media, but if you do a good job, you're going to be a very busy man—and they weren’t lying.

New York is a place where some people yell and some people whisper, and both of those things can have an incredible impact on your career. Of course, when a surgeon is newer to the scene, people aren’t going to hear their name just once and come in. They're going to need to hear it from three different points.

Also, I think people have a lot of trust in me, because I'm under Rosenberg's roof. They've trusted him in New York for over 20 years, and they put a lot of faith in the person he's picked to do facelifts with him. It’s that combination of forces. I've really benefited from lovely patients—some willing to share publicly, others sharing privately but widely—and from working with David, who I think is one of the greatest facelift surgeons New York has seen.

We’ve seen how success and fame in plastic surgery can sometimes be a double-edged sword. Do you ever worry about getting too big too fast?

I do one big case a day. I'm not packing more in. There aren't plans to change that anytime in the near future. And I think it's up to each surgeon to regulate what they do in a day while still providing A+ results to every patient who comes in the door.

When the majority of your patients are coming in through word of mouth, it keeps you on the ground. Marketing and social media can drive an influx that is maybe not the best thing. But every surgeon is different and to each their own. 💫

On a related note, I want to thank those of you who’ve shared with me your personal experiences with plastic surgery. Being privy to your encounters—good and bad—helps me make informed decisions when reporting. Because, again, as a reporter, my impression of a doctor may be very different from yours. Heck, even the most discerning surgeons in the field will sometimes misjudge their peers, believing their skill set or patient-care standards to be something they’re not. You, dear readers, offer an invaluable perspective, so thank you for trusting me with your stories. xx