The first time I met Dakota Katt (now one of my closest friends in L.A.), I was lying face-up on a table at Vanessa Hernandez Skincare in Brentwood with a face full of acne. It was sometime around 2018, and I had been struggling with stubborn, cyclical hormonal breakouts for years. At the time, I had pretty much given up all hope of ever having the clear, radiant skin of my dreams. But after meeting Vanessa Hernandez and receiving a customized facial protocol (I was to come in every few weeks for a “BootCamp” of sorts), I was intrigued.
After my initial appointment with Hernandez, Katt became the esthetician I saw for all my follow-up appointments. And slowly but surely, my skin started to improve. Every session with Katt felt more like a date with a friend. (For context, I’m pretty sure I once started crying on the table when I was having a particularly bad week—embarrassing, but true.) Eventually, we started hanging out outside of my scheduled facial appointments until we became fast friends.
