His presence at a press conference always guarantees a thrilling moment (and an influx of journalists!), simply because everything gets clearer with him. If some consider the cosmetics sector as a deeply obscure world, it never gets like this with Gérard Redziniak: when it comes to the most complex technologies, he just knows how to put things plainly with images only he knows about. He is always lively, simple, and generous, and he has a gift for making science rhyme with the imagination. With him, our skin cells get transformed into poetic metaphors! They ‘permanently send each other text messages, they have polluting particle detectors, and they make natural antibiotics (defensins) or melanin (even without UV rays), the first “antioxidant sponges”, etc.’ To him, the secret of the best beauty products can be found in the skin. And the more familiar we get with its most intimate mechanisms, the closer we will get to excellence in cosmetics.

His career

Some say they are ‘epidermologists’; he actually calls himself a ‘keratinologist’, as he has so much passion for our 1,800 billion keratinocytes! ‘Without them, we cannot live. We have 2,000 billion cells in our skin, and keratinocytes are the most …