As longevity — think IV drips and peptides — becomes the driving force in beauty and wellness, 111Skin’s cofounder and chief creative officer Eva Alexandridis and Olivia de Rothschild, artistic director of Parfums Caron and founder of Oli’s Lab offer distinctively refreshing takes.
During a panel at last week’s WWD x SKP Global Fashion & Beauty Summit, hosted in partnership with SKP, Alexandridis and de Rothschild sat down with Miles Socha, international editor at WWD, to talk true longevity and how instinct drives their entrepreneurial pursuits.
Related Articles
Highly technical, science-led beauty products may be a trending topic this year, but 111Skin, founded in Dubai in 2007, was one of the definitive pioneers in the space.
“The very first product we created was looking at how to recover the skin post- and pre-surgery, and this whole process is looking at longevity. You are looking to enhance the results long term. What’s recent is that now people are looking at the long-term quality of the skin, longer life, and not at instant results,” Alexandridis said.
“When I was small, I was exposed to traditional Chinese massage. It radically changed my view on self care. It’s always about taking care of yourself before the problem starts attacking you,” de Rothschild said.
De Rothschild, whose entrepreneurial background goes back to childhood — she began working for Azzedine Alaïa at the tender age of 9 — had her eureka moment for building Oli’s Lab, a beauty retail platform, when picking a friend’s brain for beauty recommendations. She realized that skin care routines can sound jargon-heavy and hard to navigate.
“I think the market is very oversaturated. I think it’s very unreadable for consumers. I think people use very different vocabularies, which can create too large a distance. My hope for Oli’s Lab is to connect with consumers again,” de Rothschild said.
The conversation quickly pivoted to leadership and collaboration, with Alexandridis noting that maintaining distinct areas of expertise, learning from advisers, and drawing inspiration from her management team have helped her keep a steady pace.
“I always say that my husband works for me, but he’s a surgeon, so he focuses on his practice, mostly in London, for the past 20 years. His knowledge and expertise bring a lot of knowledge to 111Skin,” said Alexandridis, who added that the recent investment from Estée Lauder hasn’t changed their husband-and-wife working dynamic.
“They [Estée Lauder] have been extremely generous with the knowledge that they provide. We had access to a lot of experts, but we choose how to use the advice available to us, and I think the balance that I have to strike is really knowing how to take all the expertise available but adapt it to 111Skin so it serves the trajectory we want to pursue,” Alexandridis said.
For de Rothschild, the 24-year-old entrepreneur who is also in charge of recasting the legacy Parfums Caron brand for the present — the label was founded in 1934 as a convention-breaking perfume marketed specifically for men and acquired by the Rothschild family’s Cattleya Finance in 2018 — building a legacy brand is not much different from a sociological inquiry.
“I’m fortunate enough to come from a family with immense history. I never had this feeling of weight from it. It’s more of a sociological inquiry — thinking of Caron, a perfume that initially used vanilla, a traditionally feminine scent, and thinking of its approach to masculinity back then. I think men have an easier time living, which makes me think about temporality and larger questions such as societal value and asking myself, ‘What’s my take on it?’ By answering those questions, I think that’s how you can actively contribute to the world at large,” de Rothschild said.
