Improving skin density

What say you on the issue below?

Give your skin a much-needed lift.

UPON enquiring about the parijata flower, I was regaled with a tragic legend by Chanel Beauté scientific communication director Marie-Hélène Lair. The flower is an essential ingredient in one of the products in Chanel’s new Ultra Correction (UC) Lift collection, the UC Lift Night Cream.

The strongly scented white flower native to India was apparently named after the Princess Parijataka. Her beauty was unparalleled, but despite her father’s fervent attempts to marry her off, she refused. She then fell in love with the Sun who eventually rejected her. She killed herself and where her ashes were scattered, the Parijata tree grew. Unable to stand the sight of her lover, the Sun, she only blooms at night and sheds them like tears just before dawn.

The parijata flower has long been used in Ayurvedic medicine for energy and stimulation. The extract from the flower follows the body’s biorhythm and is touted to restore skin density by stimulating collagen synthesis, helping our skin to rege­nerate as we sleep.

Restorative: Chanel’s Ultra Correction Lift range improves the skin’s elastin fibres and boosts its production of collagen.

But the star of the collection is an extract from the Manila elemi, a tree native to the Philippines. The resin from the tree is also used in traditional healing, this time by the Chinese. It promotes healing, and has a regene­rating effect on wounds caused by injuries or burns.

Chanel has employed its patented polyfractioning process to isolate a particular ingredient of that tree, which it calls elemi PFA. According to Lair, a glass-maker was specially commissioned to custom-make elembic vessels for the distillation and extraction process. She explained that normally, 12 distillations are done but for the elemi extract, only 10 are done.

“We get the local population to grow and culture the tree, and harvest it to boost the local economy. To maintain the freshness of the botanical extracts, we do the initial extraction locally,” said Lair at the Chanel headquarters in Paris recently.

The elemi extract is claimed to act in three ways. In fibroblasts (main cells in skin’s connective tissues), it stimulates the natural production of tensins (anchoring proteins like hooks that hold the fibroblast to the skin’s matrix).

In the extracellular matrix (that which gives the skin its plump appearance ), it improves the quality of collagen and elastin fibres. It also boosts the production of collagen, ensuring that the dermis and epidermis are anchored together, and perfectly connected again.

This is achieved by stimulating the skin’s production of a specific enzyme. This enzyme has the ability to strengthen fibres in the extracellular matrix that reconnects to form a dense network to which the tensins are attached.

Chanel draws an analogy between architecture and our body and cells using the concept called tensegrity to further explain how UC Lift works.

Chanel Beauté scientific communication director Marie-Hélène Lair claims that UC Lift products restore skin firmness and elasticity.

“In architecture, you need solidity and stability and that comes from the balance between two forces of compression, and tension or elasticity – this is called tensegrity. It’s the same with our cells, bones and muscle. It is like when you put up a tent (in our bodies, it is the cell), the hooks hold it together and anchor it to the ground – those hooks are the elastin,” explained Lair.

The concept was first applied to biology in 2000 and Chanel, working with the Harvard Medical School, has now applied it to beauty care. There have been numerous scientific publications that have examined this.

With age, said Lair, the skin loses its elasticity, firmness and it flattens and wrinkles. Thanks to the UC Lift products, some of that firmness and elasticity is claimed to be restored.

So, when should one start using the product?

Lair laughed and said there is a huge difference between a person’s actual age and the skin’s age – at least 10 years, she estimated. She recommended that since it is about restorative action, it is best to start before the visible signs of ageing set in – from 35 onwards.

“There is a polymer in the extract that gives an immediate effect of effectiveness but frankly, that’s just a ‘feeling’. It needs to be reapplied day after day, and our tests show it takes four weeks for the effects to be visible.”

Lair said even men could use it, too as the only difference between their skin and women’s is that theirs is thicker and the quantity of sebum is higher. The cream and serum is almost invisible, and doesn’t look shiny or feel sticky. Also, after using it, make-up will still hold up.

Lair also stressed that only a slight amount is needed for application. She highly recommended that one uses self-massage techniques on sensitive areas of the face after application to enhance the skin’s absorption of the product.

The products in the range are the UC Lift Firming Day Cream SPF 15, which offers a very soft non-shiny finish and shaping/lifting effect; UC Lift Day Fluid SPF 15 that gives an oil-free texture that is more fluid, UC Lift Night Cream and the UC Lift Concentrate that gives a skin-tightening and lifting effect.

> Available at the Chanel Fragrance & Beauty Boutique, 1 Utama Shopping Centre, Petaling Jaya and Chanel counters.