The recent publication of a book entitled "Skin: an envelope of life" reported by the Observatoire des Cosmétiques or the one in Science Daily on the work of CERIES are moving in this direction.

Leaving In-Cosmetics, one can only be struck by the gap that separates the description of the skin that these works describe and the content of the communication of active ingredients or manufacturers, and more generally the communication strategy of brands. On this side, everything is only molecules, enzymes, proteins and other biological targets, all more promising than the other.

In the other way of seeing things, it is the description of what we see, or what we feel, and the search for the link between what happens inside and what I see outside. It is curious that this second approach is not more popular. Cosmetic regulation is perfectly in line with this approach since it describes cosmetics as something that changes the appearance, without necessarily caring how it does it.

In a previous life, when I was trying to promote this approach, the same difficulties were already emerging: this descriptive approach to skin is less attractive, less communicative, less spectacular in a way. And yet, it …