I Corrected My Facial Posture with New York’s Premier Face Sculptor

Welcome to Behind the Veil, a monthly pop-up wedding column from The Love List founder Jess Graves. She's prepping for her New Year's Eve wedding, testing all types of bridal beauty treatments throughout 2025. First up: correcting her facial posture with esthetician to the stars Joseph Carillo.

Late last year, the beauty retailer Violet Grey threw a swanky party at New York member’s club Chez Margaux. I was seated at a table with my friend Sofie Pavitt. Sofie is a renowned esthetician in New York who knows her way around the beauty industry, so I trust her recommendations implicitly. “This is Joseph,” she said, gesturing across the table to fellow esthetician Joseph Carillo. “He’s a facial sculptor. He works on everybody. He’s unbelievable.”

Joseph squinted, studying my face. “This is gonna sound forward, but facial structure is what I do,” he said. “And I can tell that your jaw is really f*cked up.” My mouth fell to the ground. “Oh my God,” I breathed. “Yes.”

I told him about a lifetime of bite-related dental issues; mouth breathing and being a tongue thruster. Joseph nodded knowingly. “Mmmhmm, yep. I bet your tongue doesn’t rest in the right place in your mouth because there isn’t enough room for it. Over the years, that has influenced your posture and defined the entire structure of your lower face. If you got your palate expanded, maybe with orthodontia, it would push your cheekbones and raise your jawline. You’d look a lot more snatched. But I can help too, with correctly-applied facial massage.”

I blinked at him, incredulous. I wasn’t even offended; I was impressed. Joseph had given me better advice in two minutes than 20 years of dental visits. I told him I was getting married at end of the year, on New Year's Eve, and was considering masseter Botox or something along those lines to fix my jawline for wedding photos. He insisted I visit him instead.

“I’m not a dentist. I’m a sculptor,” he told me. “I know that sounds like a made up thing, but I know what I’m doing. We can re-train the muscles in your face. I can help fix your facial posture.”

The next day, I visited his website and saw photos of the models, founders, influencers, and actresses he counts among his clients, all of whom rave about him. Three weeks later, I was on his table.

Joseph has a small studio in his New York apartment, and the first time I saw him, he asked me to surrender. I am a chronic clencher, so I released everything I was holding in my body and did as I was told. “People love microcurrent, and I’m a big proponent of it. But for this session, I think I’d like to just do a manual sculpt if that works for you," he explained.

Having had a buccal massage once before, I was prepared for something rather intense. But Joseph quickly put me at ease. “You don’t need to beat the face up,” he laughed. “Lymph doesn’t need a ton of pressure to get moving!”

Over the next 90 minutes, he performed a series of sculpting exercises to move fluid retention out of my face, neck and shoulders, followed by gravity-defying facial sculpting—many of which were techniques he was the first to develop.

As I laid there, he told me a bit about his background as a makeup artist, which led him to develop his current skill set. Working with models on set, he noticed a great deal of difference when he gently massaged their facial features to sharpen up for the camera. As he perfected his craft, he became known in the fashion and beauty industries for his magic hands. He began leading education workshops so other makeup artists and estheticians could help their clients similarly.

I saw him change gloves. Then his hands were in my mouth. As he kneaded and pulled, I could feel fluid draining down the back of my throat. My shoulders, which I didn’t even know I had been holding, dropped. The time flew by. “Okay,” he said, “go look!”

I peered into the mirror. Joseph said nothing, just a smug grin on his face. “Holy shit!” I said. I leaned in closer to the mirror. My cheekbones and jawlines were noticeably lifted, but what I wasn’t counting on was how my neck looked. I had a little tech hump from hunching during COVID quarantine, and it was gone. My neck looked swan-like for the first time since before the pandemic. I looked taller.

The real test was when I got home. As soon as I walked in the door, my fiancé tilted his head at me. “What did you do, babe? “You look good—you look….taller?” I showed him my neck. His eyes widened. “Oh my God, it’s gone! Who is that guy? That is miraculous!”

For my second visit, he made a house call and set up his table with my dogs at his feet. “I can tell you’ve been using mouth tape!” he said approvingly. You got the ones with the little breathing holes in them, like I told you?” I did.

Are the results temporary? Sure, but so is Botox, a hair cut, a manicure, and most other beauty treatments. My facial results lasted about ten days, while my neck results were permanent. Joseph recommended a monthly cadence, ramping up about a week before the ceremony. Over time, with his advice and technique, my face posture has slowly changed; I notice everything on my face looks higher than before, and it’s only been a few months. And we still have ten months left before the wedding to do work. I’m going to look snatched on my big day, because I’m in the best possible hands: his.