New directions in anti-ageing

No longer confined to facial skin care for mature consumers, anti-aging is for everyone and for everywhere on the body. That, in combination with the fast pace of ideas and trends driving the industry, ensures that the right sort of product advancement will let the category grow.

Younger with color​

Much the way eyebrow products are relevant to consumers across demographics, so too is anti-aging. Brow color, grooming, and styling items allow for numerous looks. Younger women love the category for its statement-making potential, while older women appreciate products that restore fuller looking brows and accentuate bone structure.

Effect pigment is making its way into formulations for cross-demographic consumers too. By creating optical effects that distort the look of lines and wrinkles, pigments deliver instant anti-aging benefits and are advantageous for those looking to be always camera ready.

Accordingly, effect pigments are showing up in color cosmetics meant for the selfie generation as well as in functional anti-aging formulations that promise to deliver both immediate visual results and long-term benefits. (Read more on this trend from Cosmetics Design here​.)

Beyond the face​

Anti-aging, personal care, and wellness practices have substantially shifted the way mature consumers look and expect to look. Fresh faced adults don’t want aging skin elsewhere.

So the category is expanding its reach with more and more products that target specific areas, like the neck, décolleté, and hands.

“Thanks to advancements in anti-aging, our face no longer reveals our true age but our hands do,”​ Hand MD co-founder Kara Harshbarger told the press some months back when the wellness product distributor Synergy CHC bought a 50% stake in that company.

The mask trend comes into play here too. Private Label beauty maker Biomod Concepts recently launched hand treatment masks​ along with other mask styles to deliver actives to the face and neck. 

Certainly, skin treatments that address the neck and décolleté are growing in popularity. For instance Revision makes a cream called Nectifirm that promises to reduce the crepey look of neck skin for all skin types.

And, the Coty brand Philosophy sells a product called Amazing Grace Skin Firming Lotion that’s meant for full body use (but some consumers opt to use the lotion only for face and neck care). 

New actives ​

Multifunctional products may speed up consumer skin care routines, but formulating to ensure a single product has several real benefits can be very time consuming. Ingredient suppliers are stepping in with a solution: multifunctional anti-aging ingredients.

TRI-K is just one example. The New Jersey-based cosmetic ingredient supplier created and distributes Fision WrinkleFix, which has been shown to minimize fine lines as well as deep wrinkles, fade age spots, and smooth skin texture.

Specialty chemical company Elementis launched an anti-aging active just this month that is derived from Meadowfoam seed oil. This ingredient seems to reduce the skins stress response to things like UV exposure and showed a reduction of lines in the eye area in a majority of in vivo test participants.

Finished goods companies are in on the innovation too. Within the past year, Avon presented in-house research results on how skin aging happens​ and what ingredients could be used to intercede.