Beyond its action on the appearance of the skin, an anti-aging treatment will also be a factor in maintaining or even improving its health.
Everything will therefore depend on the formulation of the treatment which must provide effectiveness, safety and also sensoriality.
In terms of formulation, some brands have created the marketing trend of “less is more”.
What should we think about it?
The answer is simple, and will take 2 minutes to read!
A cosmetic product formula is broken down into 2 large groups of ingredients:
- Excipients
- The Assets
1. Excipients
Excipients in a cosmetic product are substances that are not the active ingredients, but that play a role in the formulation of the product. They are used to "envelop" the active ingredients, give a texture, protect, stabilize, preserve, color the product, while providing pleasant sensory properties to the product.
Here are examples of categories of excipients commonly used in cosmetics:
- Thickeners : They give consistency and texture to cosmetic products
- Preservatives : they protect products against bacterial contamination
- Solvents (such as water or alcohol): These dissolve other ingredients to create a homogeneous formula
- Emulsifiers : they allow water and oil to be mixed, which naturally do not mix.
- Dyes : they make the product visually attractive.
-
pH regulators : they maintain product stability and prevent ingredients from breaking down
2. Assets
The active ingredients in a cosmetic product are the ingredients that provide direct benefits to the skin.
Unlike excipients, which serve to stabilize and structure the product, active ingredients have specific properties that aim to treat a particular problem (hydration, anti-aging, anti-blemish, etc.).
Depending on the product being formulated, we can use active ingredients with various properties: moisturizing, anti-aging, anti-oxidant, anti-blemish, exfoliating, restorative, regenerating, anti-spot, lightening, etc.
From there, things are simple.
The skin has multiple needs: the more complementary active ingredients you provide, the more you meet the skin's multiple needs.
And you have 2 solutions to bring a lot of assets:
- Either you use products that contain few (or very few) active ingredients, and you will need a lot of different products to meet the needs of your skin. So you provide your skin with different active ingredients but by loading it with very large quantities of excipients, and that is not the goal. The manufacturer will have sold you a lot of products...
- Either you use products that contain a lot of active ingredients, and in this case, you will need few different products. And with this small number of products, you will meet a very large number of skin needs. You will not unnecessarily load your skin with excipients. And finally, even if these products can be more expensive (because the manufacturing cost is higher), with much fewer products, your wallet will appreciate it.
So the answer to "Less is more" is simple: For the number of products, yes! But on condition that the number of active ingredients in each product is really high. So for the number of active ingredients per product, Less is more: no!
While most cosmetics on the market have 1, 2 or 3 active ingredients, at Laboratoires du Cap Ferret, the number of active ingredients in each of our products is absolutely remarkable. For example:
- L'Illuminant Mask : 18 active ingredients
- La Superbe Anti-Signs of Aging Face Cream : 14 active ingredients
- La Superbe Universelle face cream : 12 active ingredients
- Eye and Lip Contour : 13 active ingredients
- L'Onctueuse body cream : 14 active ingredients
- Etc ...
Look for equivalents…!