The Swiss company was at this year’s in-cosmetics Asia trade show in Bangkok, Thailand, to showcase three ingredients that all relate to the concept of mitigating how stress affects or skin or hair.
“That’s what drives all our developments at this time. Managing stress is really what drives our R&D,” said Alexandre Lapeyre, global head of marketing and business development actives and natural origins.
This approach to beauty has taken root over the past few years as we collectively coped with the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic.
“This is something we are seeing more of. Stress is something that has always been there and now we openly talk about it and try to address it – that’s something which didn’t happen before. That’s also helping us come up with products that focus on stress,” said Vipul Bhatt, head of sales and application, home care and personal care, industrial and consumer specialty, APAC.
One of Clariant’s ingredient highlights is Prunizen, an active ingredient made from a plant with adaptogenic properties and used in Asian medicine.
This ingredient tackles psychoemotional stress-induced hair loss and stimulates hair growth and it works by inhibiting cortisol production while increasing oxytocin levels.
“Most of the time, when you look at the market, you will see anti-hair loss products which focus on hormonal disbalance, especially on men, but here, we are targeting a different cause of hair loss. It's the first product on the market which has this positioning,” said Lapeyre.
To mitigate the accelerated damage comes from external stressors like UV exposure, the company developed Galactinol Advanced after studying the so-called ‘resurrection plants’, which can survive under harsh conditions for years and be revived with a few drops of water.
“We were very much interested in these plants and trying to understand how they are capable of survive so long without water. And we discovered that they could do this because they synthesise sugar to protect themselves from this harsh environment,” said Lapeyre.
However, because there are very low amounts of sugar in the actual plant, the firm synthesised this sugar and found that it could improve skin barrier function and hydration. “We basically see complete skin resilience,” he added.
Last but not least, one of the firm’s latest innovations is Rootness Awake, an extract from sweet potato plant roots that contain the compound Dicaffeoylquinate esters (DCQE).
The company claims can improve dark eye circles and puffiness in as fast as seven days.
“In seven days, you can see a clear benefit, that’s very fast. The market in general you can expect to see results in two weeks or one month. But we know that consumers are expecting faster and faster results – they want instant results almost,” said Lapeyre.
This active is made through plant milking, a process that allows the extraction of cosmetic ingredients from aeroponic plant roots.
