The foundational story of the Belo empire started on a school playground with a sentence that would break any child’s heart. Adopted at birth, Vicki Belo, then five years old, was told by her classmates that the only reason her biological parents gave her up was that she was “ugly and fat.” Until that exact moment, she says, she had "no concept of ugly or beautiful." But right then, the little girl made a radical vow to dedicate her life to making people feel beautiful "so they could be loved and wouldn’t be given away."

It’s a heartbreaking statement. But instead of letting a cruel world break her, Vicki decided to master it.

A Matter of Appearance

Today, Dr Vicki Belo is the Philippines’ most influential figure in aesthetic medicine, having pioneered the industry in the country. Her Belo Medical Group now operates 14 clinics nationwide, supported by a team of 60 specialised doctors. 

She counts some of Asia’s biggest stars, including Anne Curtis and Pia Wurtzbach, among her clients. Yet her philosophy on beauty is surprisingly pragmatic. “Good-looking people earn more,” she says with conviction. “If everybody were equally good-looking, you'd be judged on character, intelligence and integrity. But the reality is, the girl with glasses and pimples who is smart and kind? She's almost invisible.”

She is not saying it is right. Rather, she is calling out the realities of a world where appearance still shapes opportunity. In her view, helping people look their best is a way of levelling an uneven playing field.

Belo knew that invisibility firsthand. She battled severe acne until she was 33—a struggle we bond over across our screens (she in Manila, I in New Zealand). We end up laughing about the universal experience of using heavy fringes and bob hairstyles to hide our skin. 

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The Family Promise

While her drive is often written off as vanity, its true anchor is family. When she was just 11, her adoptive father walked into her bedroom with an odd request: "Can you do me a favour? Can you make our name famous? Because people spell it wrong all the time. It's B-E-L-O, not B-E-L-L-O." So, she went to the sticker store and plastered "Belo" on every notebook and tumbler she could find. Now at 69, she is the brand.

But while her media shoots often portray her looking decades younger in body-hugging couture, today she is sitting in a loose robe, completely makeup-free. In fact, she confesses she doesn’t even know how to apply lipstick—a makeup artist has to do it for her. For a woman who spent 36 years perfecting other people's appearances, it’s surprising how little she fusses over her own.

When she talks about her work, you get completely sucked in. She glows when discussing her non-invasive Vertical Axis Lift—which she says gives traditional facelift results at one-tenth the price. And then, her latest pride and joy: “I'm so proud. I think I found a cure for keloids. I'm going to [write a paper] about it because there has been no cure up till now.”

Her path into medicine actually came from being an incredibly unsatisfied customer. She spent her teenage years waiting in cold, clinical offices for doctors to prick her pimples with zero results. At 13, she opened a notebook to map out a rebellion: "When I become a dermatologist, my clinic will be beautiful. It will have fresh flowers—not plastic ones—and I will have new magazines”, referencing the torn, six-month-old glossies always found lying around at clinics.

When explaining how she finally cured her own acne, she uses a hyper-visual analogy of killing cockroaches. "You hit it once, and it turns over—but it's not dead. It gets back up and runs away. You have to keep hitting it... Till it's dead-dead." (She actually demonstrates the blasting motions with her hands.)

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Against the Prognosis

Right on cue, her husband, 46-year-old Dr Hayden Kho, pops onto the screen to drop a tender kiss on her forehead. “Make sure your recorder is on,” he warns me with a knowing grin. “Because this girl is a chatterbox.”

Their love story reads straight out of a manifestation journal. At 18, Vicki prayed for a husband who was a doctor and looked like a model. "I just forgot to put the date on that request," she jokes. Decades later, she met Hayden while judging a beauty pageant. After hours of late-night medical debates, sparks flew between them. Quark, Belo's son from her first marriage to Filipino businessman Atom Henares, gave his blessing on one condition: “Sure, as long as he’s older than me!” Hayden is older by exactly six months.

But for all the control she had over her life and appearance, she could not control the ultimate plot twist: A Stage 3 breast cancer diagnosis in 2016. The prognosis was grim. “Fix your affairs. You have two years,” her doctors told her.

The tumour in her left breast measured 5 cm by 7 cm and required surgery to remove, along with three nearby lymph nodes. Following the operation in New York, Belo underwent intensive chemotherapy in the Philippines and radiation treatment in Atlanta, Georgia. The aggressive regimen left her battling hair loss and dramatic weight loss—hardly ideal timing with her daughter Cristalle’s wedding on the horizon.

The internet, entirely unaware of her secret battle, was savage. Online trolls mocked her appearance and uneven chest, assuming it was the result of a botched cosmetic procedure at her own clinic. They weaponised her own industry against her while she was fighting for her life. “I don't even read Reddit anymore,” she says quietly. “I don't want any negative thoughts in my head.”

She could have cleared her name in an instant, but she kept her cancer a total secret for years until she was fully cured. Why? Because of that promise she made to her father six decades ago. “It's my dad's name… I didn't want people to think of cancer when they think of Belo,” she says, tears filling her eyes. “I need to associate the name with beauty.”

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Behind the Mirror

The tears are flowing now, leading to the ultimate, dizzying contradiction of her life. The woman who built a fortune on modifying and beautifying faces suddenly looks away from the camera and dismisses the physical form entirely. "I pay so much attention to this body," she muses. "But it’s really just an earth suit. We need the suit to live on this planet, but it’s not who I am."

It is a startling admission from a beauty mogul. But as the interview winds down, it becomes clear that the outer armour she builds for others stems from her own experiences. "The memories of feeling ugly, bullied, fat—they're still there. It still hurts sometimes when I talk about my adoption. I thought I would finish [this interview] without crying. But anyway..."

Perhaps that is precisely what has made her life's work resonate with so many people. Vicki Belo understands, more intimately than most, what it feels like to be overlooked, insecure, or unseen. And it is that understanding that continues to drive her mission today: Helping others see in themselves the beauty she spent a lifetime searching for.

Hairstylist DORENE LOW at TRESS & CURVY using Balmain Hair Couture
Makeup Artist BOBBIE NG using Chanel Beauty