Skincare Has Created a Monster

NAYA UNFILTERED · By Sarah Zimmer, Founder of NAYA

Apparently a good formula is no longer interesting enough.

Bone marrow.

I think that was the moment I wondered whether skincare might finally have lost the plot.

Not because bone-marrow science cannot possibly be interesting. It might be fascinating. But because apparently putting something sensible in a cream is no longer sufficient.

We need a story. Preferably one involving a body part.

Something from the deep sea? Interesting. Bone-derived? Better. Connected to organ preservation? Now the press release practically writes itself.

Give it another eighteen months and somebody will announce POST-MORTEM CELLULAR LONGEVITY™, extracted from a woolly mammoth discovered beneath a Norwegian glacier. €285. Waitlist only. Clinically inspired, obviously.

SKINCARE HAS BECOME TERRIFIED OF BEING BORING

I have spent seven years in this industry and increasingly I feel as though I am watching skincare turn into competitive attention-seeking.

Nobody wants to make the excellent moisturiser. Everybody wants to make the moisturiser you tell somebody about at dinner.

Those are not necessarily the same product.

Imagine the launch meeting. You announce: “We have made a really excellent moisturiser.” Silence.

“It has an intelligently balanced lipid system, excellent humectancy, a beautiful texture and supports dry, stressed skin.”

Someone from marketing slowly closes their laptop.

“But what's the hero ingredient?”

There isn't really one.

“The technology?”

It's a very good emulsion.

“The innovation story?”

We formulated it extremely well.

By this point somebody has called security.

You cannot launch extremely well formulated, apparently. You need something people can repeat. Something an influencer can hold up and say: “You guys. This contains WHAT?”

GLYCERIN MUST BE ABSOLUTELY FURIOUS

Poor glycerin. There it is, quietly doing useful work in millions of formulations. Well understood. Effective. Affordable. No drama.

No waiting list. No launch dinner. Nobody has flown twelve influencers to Copenhagen to experience THE GLYCERIN JOURNEY.

Because glycerin has made a catastrophic marketing error: it is useful but not interesting.

Meanwhile somebody discovers an extract from an organism living 4,000 metres beneath the Pacific and suddenly we've got ABYSSAL REGENERATION TECHNOLOGY™.

Glycerin must be sitting at the back of the INCI list thinking: Oh, fuck off.

LET ME BE VERY CLEAR: BIOTECHNOLOGY IS NOT THE PROBLEM

In fact, I think some of the most exciting developments in skincare are coming from biotechnology.

NAYA uses it. We formulate with peptides. We work with exosome technology. I am fascinated by cellular signalling, fermentation and what biotechnology may allow us to do differently.

This is not a column arguing that advanced science has gone too far. Quite the opposite. I want better science, better delivery systems, smarter actives and technologies that give us genuinely better ways of supporting the skin.

A peptide isn't interesting because it sounds scientific. An exosome isn't interesting because the word currently looks good on a box. They are interesting when the technology gives us a useful biological function in the formulation.

What I am increasingly sceptical of is something else: when the shock value of where an ingredient came from becomes more important than what that ingredient actually does.

WHEN THE ORIGIN STORY BECOMES THE ACTIVE INGREDIENT

Bone-derived extracts. Placental narratives. Ingredients borrowed from organ-preservation research. Biological materials with stories so visceral that the provenance itself becomes the headline.

Not: What does this do?

But: Can you believe where this came from?

At some point you start reading about a launch and wonder whether you are buying a serum or touring the pathology department.

That doesn't make the science bad. It doesn't make the ingredient useless. It doesn't even mean the product isn't excellent.

It simply means we should not confuse the extraordinariness of the story with the magnitude of the result.

Biotechnology can be innovation. A bizarre origin story is not, by itself, innovation.

THE INGREDIENT HAS BECOME ENTERTAINMENT

We don't just expect an ingredient to work anymore. We expect it to perform.

It needs a backstory. A provenance. A mechanism. Preferably a mechanism that can be animated.

There should be molecules flying around. Perhaps a cell. Definitely something glowing. Then an arrow. The molecule enters. Something activates. The cell becomes extremely happy. Wrinkle disappears.

SCIENCE.

A boring but beautifully engineered formula is difficult to turn into twenty Instagram posts. Bone marrow? That's Tuesday sorted.

THEN THERE'S THE OTHER END OF THE CIRCUS

At the other end of the industry, skincare has apparently decided it also needs to become makeup.

Glow drops. Bronzing drops. Pearlescent serums. Pigments. Instant glass skin.

Nothing inherently wrong with that. I like looking good immediately too.

But sometimes the “glow” is not your mitochondria experiencing renewed cellular vitality. It's pigment.

Makeup is wonderful. But adding light-reflecting particles to skincare and photographing the immediate result under studio lighting is not necessarily evidence that someone's skin biology has undergone a spiritual awakening.

Sometimes your skin isn't healthier. It's shiny. Also fine. Just different.

WE HAVE CREATED A MONSTER

Which feels particularly appropriate in October.

We demanded constant innovation. So brands produced constant innovation. Then constant innovation became normal, so every launch had to sound more extraordinary than the last.

Not necessarily better science. A bigger story. A more surprising provenance. Another proprietary name. Another mechanism. Another reason to stop scrolling.

Each launch has to be more interesting than the previous launch because “we made another very good cream” no longer gets anybody's attention.

And now we're surprised that skincare occasionally resembles a laboratory run by Tim Burton.

We built the monster. We cannot now complain that it has bone marrow in it.

NOVEL IS NOT THE SAME AS INNOVATIVE

Novelty means something is new, unusual or unexpected. Innovation should mean we've made something meaningfully better.

Those are completely different standards.

Biotechnology can absolutely deliver innovation. So can a new delivery system, a better peptide, a smarter fermentation process or a genuinely useful signalling technology.

But an unusual origin isn't proof. Neither is rarity. Neither is price. Neither is the number of patents mentioned in the press release.

The question remains painfully boring: Does this make the finished product meaningfully better?

Better at what? For whom? Compared with what? By how much?

I SAY THIS AS SOMEONE WHO LOVES NEW TECHNOLOGY

I am exactly the sort of person who receives information about a new raw material or biotechnology platform and immediately wants to know everything about it: mechanism, studies, concentration, compatibility, supplier, origin, data.

NAYA uses biotechnology. We work with peptides, exosome technology and ingredients connected to cellular signalling and longevity. We actively promote that approach because I believe it can give us better tools for supporting the skin.

So it would be ridiculous for me to pretend innovation is something other brands do while I serenely moisturise with olive oil.

I'm in it.

But increasingly I ask myself a much less exciting question before adding something: Does the skin need this?

Not: can we market it? Will people talk about it? Can we put it on the front of the box? Will this make a good Reel?

Does it actually improve the formula enough to justify being there?

PERHAPS THIS IS WHY I'M GETTING FED UP

I have spent seven years doing this. Seven years of formulation discussions. Stability. Preservation. Packaging compatibility. Raw-material shortages. Reformulations. Testing. Pumps that refused to pump. Products that were almost right. Products that were absolutely wrong. And products that finally became exactly what they were supposed to be.

Then you open Instagram.

And occasionally it feels as though what skincare really needed all along was sparkles.

You do begin to question your life choices.

But perhaps that irritation is useful. Because I don't think the answer is for NAYA to become louder. Or stranger.

I don't want to find the next ingredient simply because its origin will make people gasp. I don't want novelty for novelty's sake. And I don't want to invent a technology story simply because it gives marketing something to put on the front of the box.

I want the science. I just don't need the theatre.

PERHAPS BORING IS THE NEW RADICAL

Give me a good formula.

Give me ingredients that have a reason to be there.

Give me concentrations chosen because they make sense rather than because the number looks impressive on Instagram.

Give me biotechnology when biotechnology genuinely improves something.

Give me new science when new science is useful.

And give me glycerin when glycerin is what the bloody formula needs.

Skincare has become so desperate to look innovative that being sensible now looks radical.

Maybe the next revolution isn't a more shocking origin story.

Maybe it's using extraordinary science where it genuinely earns its place — and resisting the urge to turn every bottle into a Marvel origin story.

Although admittedly that is considerably harder to put on a billboard.

Happy Halloween.

And please don't put anything on your face simply because it sounds like it came from a horror film.

— Sarah Zimmer
Founder, NAYA
UNFILTERED