Can you please share with the AILLEA audience a little background about yourself, both personally and professionally?
I grew up in Maryland, the eldest daughter of immigrant parents. My dad was an engineer with Nasa actually and was involved for many years with the James Webb space telescope that’s been in the news a lot recently. So I’ve always been avid about science but fell in love with beauty, culture & film, so that is what I pursued career-wise. Caire allows me to bring together my interests in beauty, science and modern culture.
What was your inspiration when initially launching the Caire Beauty line?
Lorrie and I have been friends and colleagues for years. Over the years, our lives have meshed and when some friends started asking us for advice as to what to do about under eye bags, we compared notes on concealers! And one day Lorrie said, why are we always concealing, what about fixing the bag itself? From there on, we did a ton of deep research, meeting with doctors, scientists, and skin experts. The upshot is that even though we ourselves had been in beauty for years, we had NO IDEA that hormones directly trigger skin cell creation and that at 30, it all starts to “change”. What an eyeopener – pun intended!
Can you explain how hormone decline due to age can change one’s skin? And how does Caire Beauty help?
In a nutshell, estrogen & progesterone (and testosterone too) don’t just drive sex and babies, they’re a part of dozens of different biological activities throughout our bodies from the heart to bones to hair to brains & knees. In skin, hormones play an integral part in how daily skin cell generation occurs. Would you believe we produce and use 50 million skin cells a day? Starting at 30, or even slightly before as the most recent research shows, for both men & women, we lose 1% of our hormone production annually (and it’s cumulative), which in turn means, we lose daily skin cell production capacity. For women in their late 30s/early 40s, that rate of hormone decline DOUBLES compared to a man of the same age.
Then at menopause, which happens on average at 51, women get hit with a second massive hormone contraction. Right after menopause – in about a 3 or 4 year period – we women lose another 30% of our collagen, keratin, hyaluronic acid and everything else production. Certainly HRT (hormone replacement therapy) can restore your estrogen & progesterone levels and restore skin cell growth but most women (and men for that matter!) don’t want be beholden to HRT. The Caire philosophy is to naturally ‘replace & reactivate’ key skin cells in a completely clean, pure, vegan formulation. Our skin, our faces are so intrinsic to who we are as women – as humans – and while there might be a debate as to whether that is good or bad, our aim at Caire is to acknowledge that emotional truth and work to help women feel as good as possible about themselves, by helping them feel as good as possible about how they look & feel.
What are some of the hero ingredients found in the Caire Beauty collection?
We have very important ingredients but I would be remiss in not pointing out that ingredients alone are simply not sufficient, if you really want skincare that ‘works’. You can have the best ingredients in the world but if the product is not formulated to allow skin to “use” the ingredients, then the benefits are minimal. Our entire approach is to get the good stuff below the dermal barrier where it can replace, restore and be active.
Sorry that was a lot! Our Defiance Science serum, mask and future moisturizer features a made-for-Caire only biofermented peptide, GF1 (stands for Growth Factor). GF1 signals the skin to turn on Collagen and Hyaluronic Acid production – helping to replace the production loss caused by hormone changes. Collagen and HA are key skin proteins and cells that form the structure of skin. We also use a full spectrum of Hyaluronic Acid molecules including the world’s tiniest at 3-10 kDA. Last but not least, Theorem Serum Boost has a botanical complex specifically designed for the ocular area which is a concentrated jasmine and tree hawthorn compound that is clinically proven to reduce puffiness and dark circles underneath the eye and above the eye, help to lift the eyelid up.
Why is Caire Beauty made for women 35 – 65+ in age?
Because of estrogen, female skin ages very, VERY differently than men. 45 – 60 is when the most dramatic changes occur but because no skincare was being created to address these major-league important, skin changes, we decided to do it ourselves. Our mission at Caire is two-fold: Sharing how hormones impact skin is something that is simply not discussed yet it happens to every woman. So we want to educate women as well as offer revolutionary, science-smart ways to get ahead of these changes.
What kind of results can one expect when they commit to using the Caire Beauty line?
We just received independent clinical results in December (2021). Women between 35 and 65 only in the Research. 100% showed improvement in four weeks, using the serum 2x per day and the Mask 1x per week on smoothness, brightness, suppleness and firmness. Thrillingly – even to ourselves - 97% said skin texture and tone had reversed five years.
I will also mention that if you use our Gel Mask for 15 minutes in the morning, a huge # of women tell us that forehead lines flatten out and disappear for a full day and that skin all over (including the décolletage) is baby soft.
Do you have any pro tips for how to use Caire Beauty?
Theorem Serum is bioactive but be generous with it and make sure not to miss the eye area. I myself use the Serum around my own eyes 3x daily. Use a moisturizer or a bit of facial oil over it – not a lot - to help push the serum in, where it can get to work rebuilding structure. A week or two later, you’ll find that the benefits, including a smoother texture, tone and firmness, are not temporary but sustained.
What are your favorite non-Caire Beauty products or brands at AILLEA?
I have eczema myself and annoyingly sensitive skin. So at Caire, we’re well aware that as women ‘adult’, skin often develops sensitivities and irritations seemingly out of the blue. Caire is designed to be anti-inflammatory and soothing for a wide range of skin sensitivities. This is why I personally love the Ilia makeup line Aillea carries – especially the Liquid Powder Eye Tint. The formulation is fantastic - clean, creamy but doesn’t schmear all over like and has really good skin actives in it too. And their Only You rosy colored Lip Oil not only looks gorgeous, it has Hyaluronic Acid in it!
Can you please share with the AILLEA audience a little background about yourself, both personally and professionally?
I grew up in New Jersey and have always had an entrepreneurial spirit. In grade school, I made sandwiches for sale and right after college (Howard University) I got a job in my major, insurance, but also started a beaded jewelry company. I also had a side hustle (before anyone named it that) as a makeup artist at a YSL counter at Bloomingdale’s. I jumped into beauty fulltime with Elizabeth Arden after going to Wharton Business School for an MBA and worked with the truly iconic Elizabeth Taylor. It was a dream come true. Since then, I’ve worked in every beauty category from haircare & skincare to men’s grooming to fragrance.
I also created several Celine Dion and all of the House of Halle Berry fragrances. What I really love is creating beauty at fair & accessible prices but of super high, premium clean quality.
Why was it important to you to create a clean skincare brand for women 35+ years and up?
After 2 decades in beauty, I am so aware of where investment goes in product. So much of it is marketing - beautiful jars & bottle and gorgeous advertising & social imagery but most of the time, far, far less is invested into actually creating new solutions.
For me, I wanted to create skincare with purpose. I saw there was a real need for not just better, but next generation superior skincare for women of my own age group – because estrogen deficiency in skin is real and shouldn’t be this hidden topic - it had to be not only high performance but advance formulated. It needed to be clean, vegan. Anti-inflammatory, dermatologically tested with real science backing was also a must. There’s a lot of skincare in the world, but so much of it is the same no matter what it says on the bottle. That was never going to be me.
Where does the name ‘Caire Beauty’ come from?
It’s really simple: care + i = Caire. Individual self-care. The i is for the individual. Because every individual possesses the potential to change her future every day.
How did you select the ingredients for the Caire Beauty line?
We have two PhD science partners, one of whom, Dr. Joseph Librizzi, is both a biochemistry and physiology specialist – basically, he really understands skin structure. We started with researching not just why but how estrogen affects skin. So, if less estrogen means less hyaluronic and collagen in skin’s layers, which then becomes skin sags, wrinkles, dryness, redness, we wanted to figure out how to restore and reactivate skin itself. So hyaluronic acid is already in skin, we’re just giving you more of it, where it is most needed! Our GF-1 Peptide “talks” to skin and talks to it like estrogen does: ‘Hey, make collagen protein.’ We have excellent ingredients at pro-grade levels, but our approach in how we make bring it together is really different.
How does one’s skin change as they mature and age? And how does Caire Beauty help?
Women’s skin goes through profound changes in our “F Years” – our forties and fifties, because of hormone decline. It happens so out of the blue, you just think you need to change your moisturizer and drink more water or something. It’s hard to see it coming. It’s dryness, it’s larger pores, it’s redness and undereye circles. It’s forehead lines and elevenses, sometimes they’re there and sometimes they seem to disappear. But then your individual aging signs start to become more ‘permanent’. It’s not a day-to-day change, it’s over months and years. Caire helps by using skin-complementary, super-dosed ingredients in anti-inflammatory, super clean formulations to gently nudge your skin into getting stronger, smoother and more even-toned.
Can you explain how Caire Beauty’s Hyaluronic Acid is different from other Hyaluronic Acid products on the market?
This is our most important difference. We don’t have one or two or three, we have a full spectrum of HA molecule sizes including the absolute smallest HA in the world. HA is soft & jello-like and takes up the spaces between your skin protein cells collagen & elastin. So getting more HA deep into skin means the proteins sit up straighter & stronger.
Will Caire Beauty be launching any new products in the near future? Can you share any details?
We’ve got a moisturizer coming out soon. It will include our HA Peptide Power Dose but will start a gentle Bio-Lipid blend that is similar to skin’s own bio-oil layer. Like everything, when you grow older, the ability to produce these invisible but important lipids diminishes, but our moisturizer - which is like youth in a bottle - will bring all the key elements your skin craves into one jar.
What are your favorite non-Caire Beauty products or brands at AILLEA?
I have two favorites that are especially good for grown up skin! Osea’s Undaria Algae Body oil is gentle, soothing yet sumptuous. We love algae at Caire, and this is the best algae oil ever.
