Longevity is rapidly becoming the new buzzword in beauty. Move over, anti-aging. Yet in my conversation with Clarins’ Innovations Director Marie-Hélène Lair, the concept gains real depth. For her, longevity in skincare is about keeping the skin healthy for as long as possible. And healthy skin cannot be separated from a healthy lifestyle. In this new world of longevity, skin becomes a gateway to healthier living. Care, natural rhythm, touch, pleasure.
New insights, new language
Longevity is one of those words you suddenly encounter everywhere. I use it increasingly myself, although I am very aware that it still requires a great deal of explanation if we want people to understand what it means. It is not simply a new label for old desires. First, we had anti-aging, then healthy aging, then pro-aging, and now longevity, skin biology and the 12 hallmarks of aging. Are these genuinely new insights, or a new language?
Clarins has long focused on skin health
That is precisely the question I bring into my conversation with the sparkling Marie-Hélène Lair, Innovations Director at Clarins, who originally trained as a pharmacist. Before speaking with her, I receive an extensive document outlining Clarins’ vision of longevity. Immediately, I can see how many beautiful products the brand has long had that meet the demands of this new era: keeping skin as healthy as possible for as long as possible. So, what, exactly, does longevity add?
It is not about defeating ageing
“I understand your point,” she tells me energetically. “When I first start looking into longevity, I feel the same: this is not new, and we must be careful not to become overconfident. For me, longevity is not about defeating ageing. It is about staying as energetic as possible for as long as possible and living in good health.”
The American origin: endlessly optimizing the body
When I ask where this trend comes from, Marie-Hélène does have a theory. “From the world of biohacking. An originally American vision in which the body becomes a project to be endlessly optimized. I find that obsessive. How do you avoid losing yourself along the way? How do you avoid becoming frustrated?”
Healthy living must still be pleasurable
And that brings us to one of the central ideas in our conversation. Healthy living must also remain pleasurable, not become a new form of pressure. Not a lifestyle in which everything must be measured, and more pleasures must be excluded. “You are allowed to grow older,” she says, tenderly. “You will have wrinkles, but hopefully they will be smiling wrinkles.”
Younger Longer Balm, a vision from 2008
Clarins now makes clear that this vision has been part of the brand for years. Marie-Hélène refers to a product from 2008, Younger Longer Balm, which had already been developed from that same principle: keeping the skin beautiful for as long as possible.
The beauty-food lifestyle of Dr Olivier Courtin-Clarins
“We were ahead of our time. We did not call it longevity yet, and the message only resonated with a small group of people who were already approaching health in such a holistic way. That is quite different now. Our former CEO, Dr Olivier Courtin-Clarins, also wrote a book about healthy living, beautiful recipes, and pleasure: Beauty in My Plate, a beauty-food lifestyle. You could almost say we have always been too modest,” she smiles. “It is wonderful that we now have new language to express what we have been advocating for so long.”
From correction to prevention
According to Marie-Hélène, classic anti-aging is primarily about correction, about softening visible signs. Longevity, she says, includes both correction and prevention. And it is precisely that preventive aspect she sees as the real shift. “Not waiting until damage becomes visible, but understanding much earlier which habits, environmental factors and daily routines support the skin in the long term or undermine it. Protection against UV radiation, pollution and oxidative stress is, for us, a fundamental part of it.”
Your skin is the largest touchable organ
So, we are moving from repairing damage to learning healthy, protective rituals. In other words, towards greater awareness. Marie-Hélène says something that immediately makes the whole story much clearer to me: “The skin is only one of our organs, but it is an organ that is directly accessible. You can touch it, protect it, massage it, cleanse it, nourish it. And precisely for that reason, skincare can also be a valuable tool for awareness.”
Your skin as the doorway to a healthy body
That idea stays with me, because it means the skin is no longer merely the place where we try to correct damage. It becomes the doorway through which we may start thinking again about health itself. About sun exposure. About stress. About sleep. About nutrition. About what we do every single day, not only about what we apply from a jar twice a day.
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We became dependent on quick fixes
It sounds almost self-evident, but for decades it has been anything but. We come from an era in which anti-aging often carries the implicit message that you can continue living exactly as you please if you buy the right products to repair the damage afterwards. A reckless life, followed by a corrective cream. That simplification is beginning to crack. Also, because more women feel for themselves that there are limits to endless fixing. Think of the quick fixes of injectables and botox. We are now learning that everything requires moderation.
Marie-Hélène has clear thoughts on that too. “Doctors should not burden young women with additional stress through new ideals of perfection. They should explain the happy and healthy lifestyle: what is on your plate, how you deal with stress, and so on.”
The sensory experience of skincare is longevity too
Clarins does not want to reduce longevity to a strict lifestyle story either. That, too, can become an obsession. Marie-Hélène therefore keeps drawing the conversation in another direction as well: towards pleasure, texture, fragrance, touch, in short, towards the sensory experience of skincare. In her view, a product should not only be biologically intelligent but also invite you to use it.
Love your skincare routine
She even uses a medical term for it: observance, the willingness to continue using something faithfully. A routine only works if you genuinely want to maintain it. And that depends not only on efficacy, but equally on comfort, pleasure, and the absence of irritation. In that sense, neuroscience also belongs to longevity for her, not as a fashionable label, but as an acknowledgment that emotion, the senses, and skin behavior are connected. The skin does not exist separately from the rest of our system.
The incomparable Double Serum
And then Double Serum comes up, the star product in the Clarins collection. The serum focuses on five vital skin functions that together form the basis of healthy skin: regeneration, hydration, protection, nourishment, and energy stimulation. Nine generations strong, she tells me proudly. It is the central pillar around which their broader vision has revolved for a long time.
What we lost, and Clarins restores
And that is exactly why my conversation with her makes such an impression on me. Clarins is bringing back something beauty has partly lost along the way: the understanding that skincare is not only about appearance, but also about rhythm, touch, protection, behavior, and the question of how you want to live in your body.
Longevity is not a magical concept. It is an opportunity to take the skin seriously again. Not as a decorative surface behind which we hide, but as a gateway to our whole being, our energy, our health.
Let us enjoy a beautiful cream, but with the awareness that beauty only becomes truly interesting when it is once again connected to health.
The most beautiful Clarins longevity products:
- Clarins Double Serum is at the heart of the brand’s longevity vision, as it supports the skin’s five vital functions: regeneration, hydration, protection, nourishment and oxygenation.
- The Extra-Firming line helps keep the skin firmer and more resilient by counteracting protein damage in collagen while also supporting the regenerative “youth reservoirs” of young skin cells.
- The My Clarins line helps younger skin make better use of nutrients while also protecting it against pollution and oxidative stress.
- ClarinsMen supports energy production in the skin by stimulating the mitochondria, helping to reduce the chances of fatigue and dullness.
- The Precious line was developed to help slow chronic, low-grade skin inflammation and oxidative stress, allowing the skin to protect and repair itself more effectively.
- The toning lotions and cleansing micellar lotion help keep the skin microbiome in balance, so that the skin’s natural defences remain stronger.
