Skin-deep worries

Superfoods guru shepherds young people who fear getting old overnight

In the past decade, Dr Nicholas Perricone has become an outspoken platoon leader in the battle against aging. Mostly, his troops of true believers were the wrinkled middle-aged. They bought into his theory that inflammation causes aging, and that eating wild salmon and blueberries would make their skin glow anew.

Perricone, a dermatologist from Meriden, Connecticut, has spent time and capital establishing his Perricone MD brand among his consumers as a serious "cosmeceutical" contender. In numerous books, including The Wrinkle Cure, on his PBS specials and on his blog, the Daily Perricone, he extols a "three-tiered" way to get radiant skin: an anti-inflammatory diet, his nutritional supplements and his expensive potions. The RX3 Repair Kit, which includes six dark-brown bottles with an apothecary feel, is $482.40 at a reduced price on Perriconemd.com. (Otherwise, the set is $603.)

Making its nationwide US debut in October at Sephora, his new topical skin-care line, Super (which contains antioxidant-rich "superfoods"), is anything but somber. The dozen products, priced from $20 to $50, are packaged in cheery colors offset by white, with whimsical copy. Supermodel Legs, a cream with chili pepper, is meant to be applied whenever "you need runway-ready legs", the box says. A melon-infused unguent called Bright Eyed claims to give users "wide-awake peepers that look perfectly perky and impossibly fresh".

Is Perricone, a 62-year-old prone to pontification, trying to have fun?

"Not a lot of brands talk to a 28-year-old," says Daniel Giles, the senior vice-president for marketing at Perricone. "That's where Super is positioned, to 25- to 30-year-olds."

He adds, "It's a happy, friendly way of approaching skin care."

A Super store in Berkeley, California, which opened in July, displays the slogan "Feed Hungry Skin" in fuchsia on a wall. Its products, including a watercress toner, almost resemble iPods. Staff members offer quickie treatments like the "Big O", a micro-current facial that "hits all the right spots" - quite a contrast to the staid, clinical-seeming Perricone MD flagship store in New York.

Pinpointing such a narrow demographic is "unusual and innovative" for a brand, says Stephan Kanlian, the chairman of the master's program in cosmetics marketing at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "Normally the target is much broader, in order to make it more economically feasible."

New York-based apothecary lines like Keihl's and Malin+Goetz have been well-received, he points out. But, he says, "we're waiting for a niche lifestyle brand in skin care to come along and catch fire," especially one with a nutritional component.

In the past, Perricone acolytes listened to the doctor's orders because of crow's feet or smile lines. But how will dewy-skinned 20-somethings respond to his anti-aging message? Five women invited by The New York Times to sample Super liked it, but cost was a concern. Only one of those women, Rebecca Wiegand, a dating blogger from Brooklyn, says she'd actually buy it.

"I was thinking about the SATs in the ninth grade," Wiegand says. "So it only makes sense I am thinking about wrinkles at 27."

Another woman who sampled Super, Andrea Lavinthal, an author of the book Your So-Called Life (for women on the edge of 30), believes she must act now if she wants her face and decolletage to look good in a decade.

"Thirty is not baby-faced," says Lavinthal, a beauty editor at realbeauty.com. "I feel like I'm on a landslide to 40. If I want to look like Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love, either I need to get a lighting crew or skin-care products."

Both women's concerns jibe with what Jody Crane, a marketing consultant, has found in her research into the skin concerns of women between 25 and 30. They say to themselves, "I want to be beautiful, desirable, sexy and even if I don't see lines on my face now, I'm petrified I'm going to get them tomorrow," says Crane, the president of New Solutions Marketing.

But Crane suspects there are limits to the appeal of Perricone's program.

"The three-tiered thing, I can't imagine a 25-year-old doing that," she says. (And leaving aside the $50 price for Super's ginger facial, Wiegand says in all seriousness: "A three-minute facial? I don't have time for that.")

Dr Ellen Marmur, the chief of the division of dermatologic and cosmetic surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center, agrees with Perricone that some types of inflammation contribute to signs of aging, and she sees merit in eating well and using soothing products. But Marmur cautions that it's not clear what amount of, say, melon extract in an eye cream is effective: "The billion-dollar question that the entire cosmetics industry is built on is the fact no one knows how much of these ingredients are necessary to make a difference on your skin."

Kat Fay, a senior analyst at Mintel who writes an annual skin-care report, thinks Super is part of a trend of getting women involved earlier in the fight against aging.

"They are trying to hit them up with the prophylactic angle," she says. "You look dewy and sweet now, but what about 10 years from now? Your life is over!"

At the St. Regis hotel recently, Perricone defends his grab for a younger demographic.

"Vanity is a great motivator," he says between sips of jasmine green tea with cinnamon (a "superfood" he adores). While it's one thing to say "eat this way and reduce your cancer risk", he says, it's far more stirring to say, "you'll look younger and more glamorous within three days".

Perricone's complexion had the gleam of a man a decade his junior. He says he never ventures to downtown Manhattan, but a Super store may end up in the nightclub-heavy meatpacking district next year.

When he was still practicing as a dermatologist, he says, he had patients age 27 to 30 complaining, "I got old overnight." He explains this as an accumulation of microscopic scars to the dermis.

"I call it the birth of a wrinkle," he says.

New York Times

(China Daily 10/02/2010 page8)