Cosmetics for Hollywood superstar

Men, if you don't want your wives to spend a small fortune on beauty products, make sure they don't read the rest of this article.

That's because after searching the shelves of high-end boutiques and department stores, hunting across the Internet and speaking with the top luxury spas, we found the world's most expensive--and exclusive--age-defying facial products.

How expensive? The average price of the top ten products on our list is $402 per ounce. That is over 7,500% more than the price of anti-aging facial products sold at most drug and grocery stores, like Olay Age-Defying Daily Renewal Cream, which typically sells for around $5 per ounce. (More expensive than caviar, but less than gold or cocaine.)


From clothes to cosmetic surgery, given the whopping amounts of money that people are willing to spend fighting the effects of aging, it should come as no surprise that haute couture skincare isn't cheap. What should be surprising, however, is the fact that the claims many of these products make about reducing wrinkles and eliminating blotches are supported by very few unbiased studies.

In the cosmetic industry, the term "clinically proven" is often more marketing than science. Typically, the phrase means that at least one component of the cosmetic product has been shown, in one study or another, to have had some biological action, such as helping wounds heal faster by stimulating cell division. That the product has been demonstrated by a well-controlled, independent clinical study to have significant effects in skin, however, is not necessarily true.

Yet, as the baby boomer generation's youth fades, the revenue generated by anti-aging treatments is on the rise. According to the marketing information company NPD Group, sales of prestige skincare products in U.S. department stores alone reached $2.1 billion in 2004, up 17% from 2000.

So what makes these products so expensive? For one thing, many of them are made from expensive ingredients such as crushed pearls, caviar and exotic antioxidants extracted from rare plants like the Chilean evergreen tree. Other popular components are anti-oxidants like grape seed extract, alpha lipoic acid, chamomile oils and green tea--protectants that are said to reduce skin damage from free radicals. Among the most important ingredients are customized cell messenger proteins such as peptides and epidermal growth factor that stimulate cell growth.

The use of many of these skincare products can be traced back to a pioneering study that appeared in July 1989 in the New England Journal Of Medicine. This study showed that topical application of an epidermal growth factor accelerates the rate of healing of second-degree burns and partial-thickness skin wounds. Based on his findings, the study's first-author Dr. Gregory Brown, who is also a plastic surgeon, founded, RéVive, a skincare company in Louisville, Ky. The company's most expensive product, the Intensité Volumizing Serum, goes for $600 per ounce and uses a bioengineered molecule called keratinocyte growth factor that he says turns over dying skin cells eight times faster than normal skin can.

Brown justifies the expense by saying that the reason his products cost so much is because they use growth factors obtained from recombinant-DNA technology, which creates exact--albeit synthetic--replicas of the respective molecules in the human bodies. Adding to his expenditure are years of research and "enormous" production costs. "As you know," he says, "for any pharmaceutical molecule from bench to commercial production, on average, is a minimum of $100 million.

"We age by slow cell renewal and also by exposure to toxins, so I think an antioxidant of any kind can help the skin. But it has to be bioengineered or purified in a scientific way so you know exactly what the molecule is," says Dr. Brown. "Many of these products, they'll take drippings from a bamboo sprout or whatever--I just think that's a little voodoo," he adds.

"Toxic skin has many signs, including congested pores, pigmentation irregularities, wrinkles, accumulated surface grime and a sallow, gray and ashy withered skin," explains Dr. Howard Murad, dermatologist, founder and chief executive of Los Angeles-based Murad Inc. Murad's CitySkin Detox Treatment, which sells for $125 per ounce, contains glycolic acid and a host of antioxidants--all of which are said to neutralize the environmental toxins and pollutants that bombard the skin daily and encourage collagen accumulation and a proliferation of new cells.

The beauty of Liv Tyler

Celebrities like Madonna, Liv Tyler and Susan Sarandon swear by Tracie Martyn's products--and her $460 Resculpting Facial. Offered only in Martyn's inconspicuous Fifth Avenue atelier in New York City, this facial involves the use of a special device that delivers electrical currents. The currents cause temporary muscle shortening, and have the effect of lifting and tightening the skin. Compared with many of the products on our list, Martyn's Firming Serum is a relative bargain at $175 per ounce. The plant-based serum has green papaya extract, Chilean evergreen, extracts of red wine and several epidermal growth factors.

According to Dr. Nicholas Perricone, inflammation at the cellular level is the single most powerful cause of the signs of aging. His pricey skincare line, N.V. Perricone M.D., based in Meriden, Conn., uses peptides--compounds consisting of two or more amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) chained together by what is called a peptide bond--and neuropeptides, which are peptides released by brain cells as intercellular messengers.

"While manipulating the neuropeptides, neurotransmitters and hormones that are in the brain to help create younger, more beautiful skin and slow the aging process might seem more at home in a Michael Crichton or Robin Cook novel," Dr. Perricone says. "Believe me when I tell you that it is not only possible, but is in fact the new reality."

Serums or moisturizers are typically the most expensive products within a skincare line, given their high concentration of costly ingredients. To maximize the age-defying effect that many of the products on our list are purported to have, experts recommend that you use a good facial cleanser, exfoliating scrub and mask, such as the Soy Face Cleanser, Honey Face Scrub and Umbrian Clay Mask from Boston-based beauty company Fresh, to help get rid of dead skin cells and keep pores clean. Their products, many of which sell for between $30 and $60, are cheap compared with most of the products on our list.

In the battle against sagging and wrinkling, the right creams and lotions are good but alone they aren't enough. Along with avoiding exposure to the sun, controlling diet and stress are crucial in decelerating the aging process. Foods that create a rapid rise in blood sugar, such as breads, pastries and chips, result in a burst of inflammatory chemicals that spread throughout our bodies. Stress triggers the release of the hormone cortisol, which elevates our blood sugar, and triggers the release of the same collagen-busting inflammatory chemicals that are generated by a diet high in refined carbohydrates. "This inflammation," Dr. Perricone says, "produces enzymes that break down collagen, resulting in wrinkles."

The big question is "Do these products work?" Many of the products on our list have been shown in clinical studies to do everything from minimizing lines and improving skin tone to increasing skin thickness. Instruments like cutometers, designed to measure the vertical deformation of the surface of the skin as it is pulled away by vacuum suction, and corneometers, which measure changes in the hydration of the skin, are among the tools used in these studies. However, if these studies were repeated using, say, olive oil, or even a generic lotion of any kind, it is possible that the results would be the same.

The point is, of course, that no matter how much money one spends, the aging process cannot be stopped. But, as many doctors and skincare companies promise, if your bank account is large enough, it may be delayed for a little while.

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