Why Is Everyone Talking About ‘Skin Longevity’?

When I applied for my first beauty editor job, the listing didn’t include, “thinking every day about how you will slowly march towards death”—the cerebral answer that a 20-something actress once gave me when I asked how she thought about aging. Still, on my desk and in our magazine’s beauty closet, there are hundreds of creams and serums focused on anti-aging. The labels promise to prevent, to reverse, to freeze—time, I suppose, and the evidence of it.

But one recent day at Equinox, I saw a new phrase airbrushed onto the wall near the spa like an ancient mythic text: “Skin Longevity.”

The biggest beauty companies in the world are positioning skin longevity moisturizers and serums as the new frontier in wellness—beauty products to go along with your cold plunges and tonal linen sets. In 2023, Estée Lauder founded a Skin Longevity platform, complete with an advisory panel of “pro-aging” dermatologists from top medical and research institutions. Its Re-Nutriv line even includes a complex made of sirtuins, which experts call the “longevity gene.” Earlier this month in Paris, L’Oreal presented its Longevity Integrative Science initiative, announcing its new focus. WWD recently reported that facialist Pietro Simone is opening up a “skin longevity playground” in the West Village. Charlotte Palermino, the founder of the skin care brand Dieux, says that on a recent trip to Seoul, South Korea—largely considered the epicenter of beauty innovation—she saw an entire beauty section devoted to skin longevity. Even on PubMed, an online database of scientific research papers, “you see that the longevity term has gone up exponentially,” says Zakia Rahman M.D., a dermatologist at Stanford Medical School who studies at the school’s Center on Longevity.

In short, skin longevity is the movement towards lasting skin health. “For us, it is synonymous,” says Charles Rosier, co-founder of the science-backed beauty brand Augustinus Bader. The company recently launched an AI-powered longevity metric tracking platform in partnership with Deepak Chopra called AB Chopra Epigenetics. “We’re talking about trying to keep skin cells as healthy as possible to prevent them from aging prematurely, [which happens] when you subject them to environmental stress,” explains Alan Widgerow, M.D., chief scientific officer at Galderma, the global dermatology company that owns Cetaphil and Restylane. Stanford’s Rahman simplifies the concept for her patients as: “Your skin looks better because it’s working better. Longevity is the optimal functioning of your cells.”

Many brands are rooting their formulations to a discovery made years ago by scientists studying cognitive decline and other age-related disorders. They found that the accumulation of non-functioning cells—referred to as senescent, or more colloquially as “zombie cells”—leads to accelerated aging. But zombie cells can also cause wrinkles and the skin to look more dull, obviously of interest to the beauty industry.

Skin longevity is not technically a synonym for anti-aging, in the same way that soft serve is not ice cream, an emoji is not an emoticon, and Meghan Markle’s “fruit spreads” are not jam. The concepts are related, but different and nuanced. As an exercise, I asked experts what treatments or formulations they considered to be skin longevity, versus traditional anti-aging. Sunscreen and anti-oxidants (like vitamin C) are considered protective in nature, so they fall under skin longevity. Anything regenerative or that stimulates collagen, including retinol, peptides, polynucleotides, PDRN (in the form of salmon sperm), or even certain fillers like Radiesse or Sculptra would be classified as skin longevity. (Conveniently, a lot of what already exists in the beauty industry can be classified as skin longevity.)

The discussion got a little trickier when it came to Botox. For instance, Rosier says a neurotoxin injection doesn’t qualify as skin longevity: “According to us at Augustinus, not so much, because it weakens the muscles. Our vision of skin longevity is more about empowering elasticity in the skin.” But according to Rahman, “It absolutely does.” She points to different applications of Botox, including when it is injected into scars to help heal tissues. “Botox affects the quality of the skin” at a base level, she reasons. In those areas where skin is less elastic or atrophic, you can have a depression and thinning of the skin, which Botox can help.

Does getting a facelift at 40 count as skin longevity? Don’t be so quick to scoff. It depends on how you think about it. “When people think about their goals, it includes preparation for how you will age in the future. How do you want to look and how do you want to age?” says Shereene Idriss, M.D., a dermatologist in New York City.

To some, this new thinking feels more positive and proactive. Anti-aging is futile. “You’re set up to fail,” Idriss says. “You’re never going to fight the aging process. It implies that something is wrong with you, that you’re fighting something.” In contrast, Palermino says, “Skin longevity feels truthful because you are actually improving the longevity of your skin. You’re making it stronger for longer, just like working out is good for you.”

It’s also gender neutral, speaking the language of Silicon Valley biohackers and Instagram wellness influencers alike. A tech bro with a “skin care protocol” is not into beauty, but he is into “skin longevity.” The wellness industry is now three times the size of the pharmaceutical industry, and driving the skin longevity trend. “Men don’t want to be seen as feminine. Skin longevity must be a capitalist dream, because it makes beauty palatable to women and inspirational to men,” theorizes Palermino.

Just as wellness can easily disguise diet culture, and emphasize thinness, pseudoscience, and unrealistic expectations, skin longevity could just further exacerbate our culture’s obsession with youth. It could become anti-aging, just with a cuter outfit. “There are excellent things with the wellness industry, but it can go sideways very quickly. With beauty, I could see the same thing where skin longevity is really just a code word for looking young forever. That’s where I would challenge the industry to not go,” Palermino says.

Some people may still roll their eyes at the term. Rahman was speaking to a retired colleague of hers at Stanford who extensively studied epigenetics and big data. When talking to him about the school’s skin longevity program, his reaction was, Of course, people care about how they look. Rahman told him: “I don’t want you to think of it as vanity. I want you to think of it as vitality.” She calls it a light bulb moment. “When people understand it that way, they embrace it the same way that they do optimizing their muscle, cardiovascular, or brain function.”

This “glass half full” approach (as Idriss calls it) has already appeared in some beauty marketing. Shiseido’s new Ultimune Power Infusing Serum has tempered expectations, says Salina Urben, senior manager of U.S. education and training for the brand. “We’re not going to say it carves 20 years off your skin, but there’s something about truly healthy skin that’s beautiful and radiates.”

Ideally, adds Palermino, skin longevity could become a healthier way of looking at getting older. “We need to make aging the beauty standard. It’s okay to age. It’s a beautiful thing to age. How you want to age is what differs.”