Everyone’s chasing Russian lips. Not patients — practitioners. Because let’s be honest: it’s trending on Instagram, and it’s become the lazy shorthand for “look what I can do.”
But here’s the inconvenient truth: Russian lips are not a technique — they’re an aesthetic trend masquerading as one. And blindly injecting for tented, vertical lip volume without understanding underlying facial harmony is how you create distortion, not beauty.
Let’s step back.
The lips are a functional, complex, dynamic organ. They’re responsible for
speech, eating, sensuality, and social cues. They’re soft, mobile, and rich in
neurovascular structures. When you compromise form for fashion, you fail
both the anatomy and the patient.
Russian lips ignore patient diversity. What looks proportionate on a 23-year-old influencer with high maxillary projection and no perioral aging will look grotesque on a 55-year-old peri-menopausal woman with poor skin elasticity and dental wear.
Same product, same technique, drastically different result.
What’s worse? Most Russian lip attempts are done with high G-prime
products in a tenting fashion without considering oral function. The lips feel
stiff, don’t move naturally, and often suffer from delayed vascular issues due
to over-compression.
And let’s talk about profiloplasty — not just lips in isolation. A 1:1 lip ratio looks good on TikTok but rarely in real life. The classic Caucasian balance is 40:60 (upper to lower lip). African Caribbean patients may have a natural 50:50.
What’s your patient’s baseline?
What’s their facial structure?
Are you injecting based on a trend or a principle?
Contrarian advice:
- Start by saying no more often.
- Respect ethnic diversity and natural lip shape.
- Focus on lip eversion, definition, and harmony with the nose and chin.
- Understand Glogau-Klein points and lip biomechanics before injecting anything.
And stop defaulting to “Russian” when “refined enhancement” is safer and better. Because in five years, the trend will pass. But your patient’s lips — and your
reputation — won’t.
