My in-box is crammed with press releases extoling the virtues of one beauty ingredient over another. The key to absolutely everything beauty is found daily if I’m to believe a single word of it. It’s almost impossible, without hours and hours of research, to know whether it’s fact or marketing fiction, so I thought I’d ask my Twitter pal, Daniel Whitby (technical guy) and Lauren Kempen (brands expert) from @CorneliusCos, ingredient distributors and formulators, who work hands on with the ingredients to give us all the low down on what’s really useful and exciting in beauty ingredient trends.
- Fluorphlogopite: While mica is the favourite for pearl and shimmer in make-up, synthetic Fluorphlogopite* (which definitely needs a consumer friendly re-name, although its trade name is ChioneTM) is a superior player in the titanium dioxide covered powder category. Drilling down a bit more, it has a much less creviced molecule than standard mica, which allows for more light reflection. Skin care formulations usually opt for pure, brilliant whites but look out for colours at Barry M (Aphrodite Dazzle Dust) that use this ingredient. I first came across this ingredient at a Clinique launch in 2013 (it’s in their Moisture Surge CC) which shows a) who’s at the forefront of new ingredient use and b) how long it can take for something to become a more common trend. *Longer explanation at the bottom of this post!
- Undecane & Tridecane: This is an interesting newbie for make-up textures. Some foundations, especially those with oil, don’t dry very quickly and become shiny after a few hours wear. Including Undecane and Tridecane (trade name CetiolTMUltimate) has what formulators call a volatile effect that gives a soft and powdery dry feel, rather than a wet one, and crucially, no oily shine. You could say that it’s a natural silicone substitute and helps your make up stay on longer, too. It’s already in the Vichy Dermafinish Range (which used to be Dermablend).
- Myrica Pubescens Fruit Wax & Oryza Sativa Wax: In layman’s terms, these are laurel and rice bran waxes and they’re super important because of the decline of beeswax. Waxes are an essential component of mascaras and lipsticks and both laurel and rice bran (mixed together) give a creamy lip feel with strength and oil absorbing properties. Not all waxes are equal, and these two together are turning out to be the cosmetic dream team.
- Sodium Hyaluronate, Castor Seed Oil, Hydrogentated Castor Oil together make Hyacolor TM. Hmm, how to explain this one. The Hyacolor blend is sodium hyaluronate microspheres with castor seed oil put together in such a way that it’s easily incorporated into lipsticks for decent moisturising and plumping effects. Currently, lipsticks that promise moisturising don’t necessarily deliver because they only use a barrier effect through a waxy film; hyaluronic acid has a biological effect with short term hydration (and longer term deeper effects). The key thing here is the microsphere element – they’re slow release for sustained moisture. Previously, it’s been difficult to get HA into make up because of oil solubility (most make up is oil/wax and most skin care is water based), so this is an important one for make up that does more.
- Shea Butter Polyglyceryl-4 Esters: Be excited about this one! Created in France, it’s a twist on an already great ingredient that when used in gloss or lipstick will give phenomenal shine with no tacky feeling. We should start to see this roll out into products by 2016.
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While I’ve been writing this, a US Prescriptives email popped into my inbox. Despite the fact that it’s no longer available in the UK, the brand is clearly thriving because embedded in the email is a video with the New Product Developer from Prescriptives explaining how the product works. NPD and Formulators are the clearly the new PRs!
*Fluorphlogopite is better than mica in many ways; mica is actually an off white shade and not terribly transparent, wherease Fluorphlogopite is a brilliant white colour and highly transparent. You can see where I’m going with light reflection, here! To make colours such as bronze, gold or pink in make up product, the Fluorphlogopite or mica is coated with Titanium Dioxide, iron oxide or various other shades but the colours that come from having Flourphologopite are much brighter and stronger (because of said transparency and whiteness) leading to more radiance in colour. There’s no advantage at all to using Fluorphlogopite in lipstick because it’s a solid colour when applied and mica can do that colouring job very easily, but when it comes to BB creams or skin radiance products (or the aforementioned Barry M shadows), the brightness of the base product (Fluorphlogopite) gives a much stronger sparkle in shadow or radiance in a foundation or BB.
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