Health & Fitness: New Rub for the Skin Game

At Marshall Field's in Chicago, hundreds of disappointed customers placed orders at $195 each for out-of-stock introductory kits of Glycel, a new line of skin-care products. In Las Vegas, caustic-tongued but delicate-skinned Comic Joan Rivers complained that the local Neiman-Marcus was out of Glycel supplies. In New York City, Maryanna Mangino was luckier; she managed to walk out of Saks Fifth Avenue with $300 worth of assorted Glycel lotions and potions. "I guess I'm hoping for something mysteriously new that just might work to get rid of wrinkles," said Mangino. "After all, who ever thought you could put a heart back into somebody else's body?"

Her question is not an idle one. Beaming down approvingly on the crowds at Glycel counters and from glossy magazine ads at would-be customers is the image of a handsome, clear-eyed man--not a hunky male model, mind you, but an even more potent lure: Dr. Christiaan Barnard. The South African surgeon who performed the first successful heart transplant is now, according to advertisements, the co-developer of a patented GSL ingredient, the key to "rejuvenating" skin in Glycel products. Barnard's endorsement is the latest and most successful wrinkle in the lucrative skin game. Introduced only last month, Glycel has already topped $5 million in sales. The famed surgeon's involvement has also proved controversial. Declares Dermatologist Albert Kligman of the University of Pennsylvania, who has consulted for a rival manufacturer: "It's one huge piece of hype, and the motive is an ancient one: money."

The stakes are admittedly high. "Skin care is becoming hotter and hotter in the U.S.," says John Ledes, editor of the industry newsletter Cosmetic World. Consumers handed over $1.2 billion last year for various pricy cleansers, scrubs, gels, emulsions, foams and masks that promise to give the skin a healthy, rosy glow. The healthy, rosy sales glow is expected to continue with perhaps as much as a 13% increase this year, thanks to a steadily aging population, the emphasis on a fit, natural look, and newly broadened product lines. As night cream follows day, one thing in the best-selling new prestige lines leads to another. "You don't just get a one-shot, one-bottle solution to facial problems," notes Ledes. "You develop a regime."

To push their treatments, manufacturers have buffed up an old gambit: the scientific slant. Names, and often prices, are suggestive of proprietary drugs: Estee Lauder's Prescriptives, L'Oreal's Biotherm and Revlon's European Collagen Complex. The list of ingredients in many concoctions would make the witches of Hampstead Heath envious, from plant extracts like soybean and avocado oil to miracle chemicals. In May, Shiseido will introduce a 24-hour cream, BH 24, containing biohyaluronic acid. La Prairie boasts that its Cellular Wrinkle Cream has proteins from the placentas of black sheep (because they are so resistant to disease, explains the manufacturer).