“It’s not painful, but it’s not soothing,” says Naomi Campbell with a laugh, referring to her go-to, pre-runway-strut ritual: a lymphatic drainage massage.
In the latest installment of her YouTube video series, Campbell takes followers inside her prep for Kim Jones’s Fendi couture debut, where she joined the likes of Demi Moore, Kate Moss, and Christy Turlington on the catwalk. The morning of the show, Campbell’s getting-ready routine began at Paris’s Olfa Perba studio in the 16th arrondissement for a lymphatic massage treatment by way of maderotherapy—a technique using special wooden tools to manipulate and loosen fascia. From having her thighs kneaded with mushroom cups to her shins being rolled with a rolling pin, Campbell spares no detail in how the treatment works to sculpt and lengthen her mile-long legs.
“I try to do this as much as I can, actually, because I am 50 years old,” explains Campbell as the masseuse performs a deep tissue massage on her legs using a set of different tools. “Women at my age do have water retention.” As the saying goes, sometimes there’s no pain, no gain. But for Campbell, it’s fits of laughter that come with the territory. “The first time we [did this], I must say it tickled me so much!” she admits. “I giggled!”
On top of de-bloating, a lymphatic drainage massage boosts blood flow and circulation, as well as targets sagging skin and cellulite. “It’s kind of like I’m being made into bread,” laughs Campbell, speaking to the body-sculpting treatment’s “smoothing” sensation. “That’s what you want with your body,” she says. “No lumps, no bumps, no cellulite…no, no, no!” Needless to say, Campbell requires a whole different set of rules and rituals for slinking down the runway as only she can.
