Anti Anti-Aging: A New Era Of Beauty

The cover of Allure Magazine’s September issue—billed as “the long-awaited, utterly necessary celebration of growing into your own skin"—proclaims “the end of anti-aging” emblazoned beneath a photo of 72-year-old Dame Helen Mirren, who radiates fierce, fearless, age-irrelevant beauty.

In her opening editorial, beauty editor Michelle Lee declares the magazine will no longer use the term “anti-aging” and goes on to challenge skin care companies to do the same.

“No one is suggesting giving up retinol,” she writes, “but changing the way we think about aging starts with changing the way we talk about aging.”

In fact, it’s something we’d already been thinking a lot about. We don’t know where the term “anti-aging” really began, but it certainly has become a standard in the industry because it’s a simple, shorthand way to put products into a category. We, as an industry, can do better.

Aging is not the enemy. Aging is a slow, sometimes painful, often glorious, evolution toward our best selves. We gain wisdom through life experience. We become more empathetic. We get smarter (hopefully). We develop greater character and resilience. Our confidence grows. We learn to give more and to take what we need. We learn what makes us happy and how to shed what doesn’t. All these things take time. They take age. And they are beautiful.

As a skin care company, our mission is to help people feel the best they possibly can in their own skin. For many, that means retaining a youthful appearance. But the reality is, until science finds a way to completely eliminate senescence, you can prevent, you can repair, you can correct, you can enhance, but ultimately, time will have its say. And that’s okay.

“This word ‘anti-aging’ — we know we’re getting older,” says Mirren in the Allure piece. “You just want to look and feel as great as you can on a daily basis. ”

We believe in embracing our whole selves, and all the years that have brought us to who we are. So while “anti-aging” is an easy way to describe products, it’s a label that perpetuates a negative subtext to our natural evolution and we are taking up the challenge to eliminate it from our marketing vocabulary. We will, however, never stop working to bring you the products that help you look your most radiant at any age.

Thank you, Michelle and Helen, for starting this important conversation. Read more about it in the Allure September issue.