Charlotte’s Most Sought-After Skin Care Specialist
Blair Hayes has amassed a hefty waitlist for her natural result aesthetic
“People don’t come to me for big lips,” says Blair Hayes, founder and CEO of Skin By Blair. “If that’s what you want, I’m not your girl. I won’t give you features you never had.”
Hayes is the skin care specialist and expert injector you probably didn’t know is behind some of Charlotte’s most gorgeous faces. And that’s the point. She’ll enhance your features but make them look as natural as possible. Her specialty is injectables like Botox and Restylane, which relax facial wrinkles or add volume to the skin. But she also offers vein treatments and collagen-stimulating facials that her clients swear by.
Six months after Hayes opened her Dilworth medical aesthetics practice in 2019, she had a waitlist of more than 5,000 people. Some clients fly in from California and the Caribbean for her treatments. “Fridays are out-of-towner days,” Hayes says. “We usually have three or four a day that come from out of state.”
People who inch up her waitlist habitually visit her Instagram page, where she posts short, educational videos on topics like retinol, LED face masks, hair loss, and her favorite products. A board-certified aesthetics physician assistant, Hayes is “a total science nerd,” but she uses plain English to explain the retinoid hierarchy or debunk claims that benzoyl peroxide causes cancer in an easy-to-understand way.
The 34-year-old Charlotte native earned a bachelor’s degree in nutrition sciences at N.C. State and went to PA school at Wingate University. “I was an EMT in college, so it made sense to go into emergency medicine,” she says. But she’d always loved aesthetics and worked part time at local med spas on weekends, where she learned to perform laser hair removal, chemical peels, and other in-demand services.
“I was studying for the medical boards—and I haven’t told anyone this, ever—but I emailed every med spa and plastic surgery office in Charlotte. I was like, ‘Hey, I graduate next week, and I’d love to get into aesthetics.’ It’s such a hard field to penetrate. … and one person emailed me back. At that point, I’d just found out I passed my boards, but I had an interview, and she hired me on the spot.”
Four years later, with a roster of loyal clients, Hayes opened her own practice on East Boulevard in a building that was scheduled to be torn down. With the help of her husband and an army of friends, she tore up the green shag carpet, knocked down walls, and installed sleek shelving to display cleansers, moisturizers, and products from her Blair Skincare line.
Today, Hayes sees 20 to 25 clients a day. She has more than enough to grow her business, but that’s never been her goal. “I’m all about staying in your lane,” she says. “A lot of practices want to offer everything. Every med spa right now wants to do weight loss because it’s so lucrative. That’s just not my business plan. My business model is just to be really damn good at what you do. From day one, I’ve said I won’t bring in lasers or other treatments. There’s extra skill in specificity.”
While most patients come to her to slow down the signs of aging, some see her after medical treatments or with conditions like Bell’s palsy. “People might look like they’ve had a stroke,” she says, “so it’s so gratifying to help these patients feel like themselves again when they look in the mirror.”
Followers often message Hayes to ask how to find a good injector where they live, and her advice is always to find someone they think looks good and ask who they see. “And if they don’t,” she says, “I guarantee it’ll still make their day because a stranger stopped them to say they look good.”
THREE THINGS SHE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT:
“It’s my ride-or-die product. I went to Miami for a Taylor Swift concert, and I left it at home. I had to go get another sunscreen, and it just didn’t cut it.”
“I have one in my work bag, one in my car, and one at home. I have really thin, fine hair, and it makes it look more full.”
“I order one every year. It’s changed my life.”
