Vanishing Act
With new technology, the antiaging business is moving from the doctor's office into the home
By Kristina Zimbalist
Fall 2005 Style & Design
Ever since word got out that Dr. Patricia Wexler can not only erase your
acne and heal your rosacea but also make you look younger, patients have
gone to Odyssean lengths to seek an audience with her.
They descend on her Manhattan dermatology office from Los Angeles, Miami
and Houston and from the far reaches of Australia, Japan and Brazil—one
woman flies in from Hong Kong for her regular monthly appointment. They
include men and women, old and not so old, political figures, fashion
designers and celebrities, and they pay, depending on the treatment, up
to $20,000 a visit. Her waiting room is none the emptier for the
plumped-up price tags. So overloaded is her client list that the last
time she moved offices, she didn't send out announcements. "It was sort
of 'If you can find us, you can come,'" says Wexler. New patients must
wait more than six months for an appointment, and they do.
All the fuss is about a slew of scientific procedures developed during
the past few years that erase, reverse, repair, halt or otherwise hinder
the effects of aging. Miracles or not (to a growing segment of the
population, they are), the treatments do in fact deliver on the dubious
promises that beauty products have been making for centuries: they erase
lines, plump lips, shrink bags, lift sags, fade freckles, inject
moisture and obliterate blemishes, all in the breezy ease of a doctor's
visit. The catch is the less-than-breezy price tag. One of Wexler's
45-second skin-rejuvenating LED procedures—which is repeated six times
in the course of six weeks—costs $2,000.
Wexler has been busy polishing the idea of bottling the science behind
these treatments and making them available to the masses. She has
developed formulas that she says deliver, albeit in a milder form, the
same results she achieves with the in-office procedures, including the
LED treatment. She has incorporated the formulas into a line of products
that, starting this month, will appear on shelves in 1,600 Bath & Body
Works stores. Unlike their doctor-administered counterparts, these
over-the-counter products do not require a six-month wait. Their cost:
$16 to $65, about the price of a pair of Gap jeans. "Sometimes people
can't afford to do all these things in the doctor's office," says
Wexler. "The whole idea is sort of getting me in a consultation and
bringing that availability to a much greater number of people."
Wexler joins a growing number of doctors and cosmetics companies that
are pioneering products dubbed cosmeceuticals. These are not your
grandmother's face cream. Cosmeceutical is a term for almost any
cosmetic product containing ingredients capable of producing visible
changes. Call them smart cosmetics. Companies from L'Oréal and
SkinCeuticals to N.V. Perricone M.D. and Rodan + Fields are creating
toners and serums and creams that claim to work less like makeup and
more like medicine. Each product has one or more active ingredients,
straight from the labs of the doctors and scientists behind them, that
purport to make varied and sundry improvements to the skin. In fact,
many of the ingredients would qualify as prescriptions in different
combinations or strengths. "Surface results are not what we are talking
about," says Dr. Katie Rodan of Rodan + Fields. "If you put Vaseline on
your face, you can see a 30% improvement. We are talking real, ongoing
changes." But because cosmeceuticals are not recognized by the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA), they are not federally regulated or approved.
The credibility of each product relies on that of the scientists behind
it.
Until quite recently, most visible results could be achieved only with
plastic surgery. Beginning in the late '80s, however, skin researchers,
who had focused primarily on treating or curing disease, began studying
healthy skin and ways to improve it. Alpha hydroxy acids were the first
by-product of that research, followed by retinoids and antioxidants.
Today the profusion of treatments available at the dermatologist's
office provides spot remedies so effective that women are using them to
replace, or at least significantly delay, surgery. Some are technical
and complex (Fraxel lasers and LEDS, for example). Others are so
familiar they trip off the tongue like state capitals: Restylane.
Collagen. Botox. Cosmeceuticals are the latest option, and new breeds
like Wexler's are so accessible that they are poised to democratize the
once exclusive realm of the dermatologist's arsenal.
"They are huge, absolutely huge right now, and I think they're here to
stay," says Wendy Nicholson, managing director of Smith Barney in New
York City. "The number of new products that keep hitting the market is
phenomenal in all classes of trade, in department stores [with brands
like StriVectin and Estée Lauder], in the mass area [Procter & Gamble],
even on television [with names like MD Formulations]."
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