Nasolabial fold
 Nasolabial fold marked (Wikimedia Commons)
| |
| Field | Face |
|---|---|
| Also known as | smile line, laugh line, nasolabial crease
|
The nasolabial fold is the crease from the alar base toward the corner of the mouth. Everyone has one when they smile. “Fix my nasolabials” in looksmaxxing usually means the crease is deep at rest — a combination of cheek fat descent, skin crease, and a maxilla that does not hold the midface forward.
Filling the crease is the mill move. Lifting or supporting the cheek that folded onto the crease is the grown-up move.
What makes it deep
- Midface descent (malar fat pad slides)
- Skin crease / etched line
- Deep pyriform / recessed maxilla — bone, not a syringe
- Loss of medial cheek volume
- Hypermobile smile (animation fold)
A recessed midface with a deep fold will still have a fold after hyaluronic acid filler. You just added a shelf.
Procedures people use
| Move | What it actually does |
|---|---|
| Nasolabial fold filler (usually HA) | Camouflage in the crease or pyriform. Easy to overdo; look of “sausage” beside the nose. |
| Cheek filler / lateral malar | Can lift the fold by putting volume above it. |
| Fat grafting | Same idea, surgical harvest. |
| Screw thread / mono thread in the crease | Collagen in the etched line; modest. |
| Cog thread midface | Hitch the cheek; duration limited. |
| Midface lift / deep plane facelift | Repositions descended tissue; the honest answer when the problem is laxity. |
| Canthoplasty / lower lid work | Does not fix nasolabials. Different neighborhood. |
| Bimaxillary osteotomy / pyriform graft | Bone. Rarely sold as a “fold procedure”; sometimes it is why the fold existed. |
See also marionette lines (down from the commissure) and jowls. They get bundled in “lower face” packages.
See also
References
Anatomy condensed from standard facial-aging descriptions; Commons file Nasolabial fold.jpg (Mikael Häggström / USAF source), public domain.