Founder & Training Director
Kirsty Stevenson.
Founder of Model Standards Skincare Clinic on Rodney Street, Liverpool, and MSTA, the UK’s leading medic-led skincare training academy. Still in clinic every week, by choice.
“I teach what I actually do, not what I once did.”
The beginning
Five years of obsession.
Kirsty's route into skincare wasn't a traditional one. She dropped out of school and went straight into beauty, then spent five years training, testing and obsessing over skin before she would put her own name above a door.
When that door finally opened, it was at 31 Rodney Street: a Grade II listed building on Liverpool's most storied medical street, home to Model Standards Skincare Clinic.
The clinic
One rule: assess first, then prescribe.
Model Standards ran on a single rule that set it apart: clients don't choose their treatment. The skin is assessed first, then a treatment is prescribed, exactly as a clinician would approach it.
The results were extraordinary, and a reputation grew with them. Other practitioners started asking the same question, over and over: will you train us in your methods?
The turn
Seeing what training was missing.
When Kirsty looked at the existing skincare training landscape, the problem was obvious. Courses taught individual treatments in isolation: dermaplaning here, peels there, microneedling somewhere else. Students left qualified in a procedure but without a deep understanding of the skin beneath it.
So she built something different: an academy that starts with the skin, its biology, its problems and its needs, and builds every treatment on top of that foundation. One that teaches you to think like a clinician, not just perform like a technician.
Today
The UK's leading medic-led skincare academy.
That academy became MSTA: Model Standards Skincare Training Academy. Over 1,000 graduates have trained with Kirsty's team since 2018, with hundreds more qualifying every year across two Liverpool academies, on Rodney Street and Chapel Street.
And Kirsty is still in clinic every week, treating clients alongside teaching. That's deliberate. It is the promise the whole academy is built on.
Train with Kirsty and her team.
Every MSTA pathway is built on the same skin-first philosophy Kirsty built the clinic on. Start with the brochure, or meet the rest of the team behind the academy.
Follow Kirsty on Instagram @modelstandards