What studying personal care science taught Dr Naomi about skincare, formulation and long-term skin health.
What prompted you to study to be a cosmetic chemist after decades in aesthetic medicine, and what did that teach you about skincare that you hadn’t appreciated from the procedural side ?
When we started developing Dr Naomi Skin, I was working closely with cosmetic chemists. I became fascinated by what they were doing, but I also became frustrated by how dependent I was on someone else’s technical knowledge to turn an idea into a formulation. I remember thinking, I want to go and study what they do, so I asked them the best path to do that.
Looking back at my medical experience, I could see that I had been focused almost entirely on active ingredients. I realised there was an enormous part of the product development process that I simply didn’t understand.
For me, studying personal care science was partly about efficiency, but it was also about innovation. I had lots of crazy ideas, but I didn’t always know whether they were realistic. I wanted to understand what was technically possible, what wasn’t, and where there might be an opportunity to do something differently. I knew I would see more opportunities if I understood the process better. I wanted to be able to take an idea further myself and have much more meaningful conversations with the chemists and manufacturers I worked with.
It completely changed the way I think about skincare. Medicine taught me to look at the active; formulating taught me to look at the product as a whole.
When assessing a skincare formulation, what matters most beyond simply looking at the hero ingredient or its percentage?
A hero ingredient and its percentage only tell you part of the story. The specific form of the active ingredient matters, as do stability, pH, how it’s delivered within the formulation and how the ingredients work together.
I also look at the form the finished product takes, its viscosity and its scent , how it applies, feels and fits into a routine. A product can look great on paper, but that doesn’t mean people will want to keep using it. Skincare is repetitive by nature, so people have to enjoy the process enough to want to do it again.
Where do you see skincare making the greatest difference within a longer aesthetic treatment plan, particularly in preparing the skin, supporting recovery and maintaining skin quality between procedures?
Skincare is what you do every day; procedures are occasional. There are things procedures can do that skincare can’t, but there are also things skincare can do that procedures can’t. When you’re thinking about someone’s skin over years rather than months, both matter. Skincare has consistency on its side, what you do to your skin every day adds up over time. For me, it’s an essential part of maintaining skin quality and skin health long term.
As aesthetic medicine becomes more focused on regeneration and skin health, how do you see the role of topical skincare developing alongside procedural treatments?
Regenerative procedures have become incredibly popular, and I think that reflects a bigger shift in aesthetic medicine. People are thinking more about skin quality and what their skin will be like in five or ten years, rather than only trying to correct something now. Skincare fits really well with that way of thinking because it’s something people can do every day.
I tend to look at everything we do, from skincare through to procedures, through a lens of effectiveness, downtime, risk, cost and efficiency. Skincare does really well on all of those measures. It can provide daily sun protection and work on pigmentation, hydration, barrier function and signs of ageing in ways that procedures can’t.