POWER PLAYERS

It’s a rare day when I don’t have at least one conversation about skin with a friend, colleague or family member. More specifically, about the cream or serum that will transform their complexion. Inevitably, I always answer a question with a question: what ingredients do you already have in your regimen?

The transaction we enter into with the pots lining our bathroom cabinet is anything but simple. At a basic level, we know the time we invest in our beauty regimens (a process that used to be called moisturising, but is now self-care) pays dividends in terms of how we feel about ourselves. But at the end of the day, we also want returns … and that’s where actives come into play.

“One of the things we learned from our genomic research,” says David Khoo, the skin principal scientist at Olay, “is that skin goes through major changes at the cellular level that lead