A visit to the Aulnay Campus of L’Oréal, where the fundamentals of skin and hair for cosmetics are investigated

AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS (FRANCE), June 17 (Portaltic/EP) –

“Technology will power all new services, the new ways to experience beauty that traditional products enhance“, stated Guive Balooch, the managing director of Augmented beauty &Open innovation, within the framework of Vivatech 2023.

The L’Oréal group has exhibited in what for them is the main technological showcase in Europe the new beauty solutions with which they seek to offer “a beauty for all, a beauty for each”in line with the vision of the company that drives its innovation.

Balooch claims that everything they do at L’Oréal “start with what consumers need”, and for this reason they have developed projects such as HAPTA by Lancôme, to facilitate the application of makeup for people with limited mobility, and 3D Shu:Brow by Shu Uemura, to design and draw eyebrows in a simple way and with a professional finish.

AULNAY CAMPUS: THE FUNDAMENTALS OF SKIN AND HAIR

All the innovation that they have deployed at the Paris fair is possible thanks to the work of the company’s research teams, which work in laboratories such as the one that the L’Oréal group has located in Aulnay-Sous-Bois, just outside of Pariswhich in Portaltic we have had the opportunity to visit.

The group has more than 800 scientists engaged in advanced research around the world, although technological talent amounts to 5,900 professionals. In it Aulnay campus, the main projects focus on investigate the fundamentals of skin and hair to be able to use that knowledge in the development of solutions that have a positive impact on the consumer and nature.

The real stopped testing on animals in 1989 and has since developed alternative methods to test the efficacy and safety of its products. One of them is skin reconstructiona technique based on three dimensional printing Instead of using plastic or metal, it uses biological materials.

The applications are multiple, since it allows to reproduce skin regeneration and aging, as well as the effect that certain external elements or the skin’s own microbes have on your well-being. It is also important for robotics.

With skin reconstruction you can analyze the impact of sunlight and develop photoprotective formulas that block UVB, UVA rays and even blue light from screens, whose effects on the skin are also being investigated.

This investigation is accompanied by a machine -camera with different mirrors and filters- capable of reproduce sunlight in its exact spectra, and to do so, in addition, by regions of the world, as confirmed by the company.

For his part, The hair is an element that has the particularity of being “alive and dead”, that is, the follicle, which houses the root, produces the hair, while the hair fiber, the part that is seen and cut, combed, molded and dyed, is made of keratin, proteins and melanin, and protects its nucleus with a barrier of cells -the cuticle-.

Research on this element seeks know more about the growth of the hair fiber, about the impact of pollution -whose damage is identified inside and outside the hair-, and the damage that sunlight doesamong other issues.

SAFFRON, A LUXURY SPICE IN THE KITCHEN AND IN SKIN CARE

In this Campus, L’Oreal researchers also work on the extraction of bioactive components from plantsfor use in cosmetics, as occurs with the saffron, they dedicate to a luxury line.

this spice has a high price for the table and increases its value in the laboratory, where the researchers filter it in water to obtain the natural extract, which they evaporate into a powder to be able to work with it.

It is not a simple process; years can pass from the time a bioactive is extracted until it is incorporated into a commercial formula. The value of saffron prevents it from being a component linked to fashions, as may have happened with argan oil. That is why in the laboratory they explain that the best way to maintain the integrity of a sample is to keep the process as similar as possible to cooking.

This laboratory is a sample of the change that the French firm has undergone since its creation in 1909 by the chemist Eugène Schueller, two years after the launch of its first hair dyes, which from being a beauty company is now called sin complex a technology firm for beauty.