Like the progressively more-complex choreography on “Dancing With the Stars,” expanded steps are coming to skin care.
It was not so long ago that a three-step routine was the clear complexion standard for skin care. Swayed by Clinique’s successful marketing campaign, which began in 1968, generations of American women embraced a routine of cleansing, toning and moisturizing. Back then, toner was considered a modern luxury, above and beyond the Pond’s cold cream of that time period, and cheered for accomplishing tasks from tightening pores to attacking blemishes.
But stop by any beauty counter today and you are likely to spot significant deviations from these basics. Cleansers come in milks, gels, lotions and creams. Some lines now offer a pre-cleanse step with the consistency of baby oil (to conjure smooth baby bottoms, perhaps).
Moisturizers purport to fight wrinkles, ward off free radicals and accelerate skin cell turnover. The toner category has been spliced into skin softeners, “intensive essences” and “balancing mists.” Blemishes, meanwhile, face the likes of healing gels, blemish balm creams and dark-spot correctors.
And that is not even counting the serums.
The sudden bounty of hyper-specific products, industry executives say, is at least partly influenced by the burgeoning Asian beauty market.
“In general, the Western cultures tend to do less steps, and in the more developed Asian societies along the Pacific, they tend to do more steps,” said John Demsey, group president of the Estée Lauder Companies, which owns Clinique as well as the Estée Lauder, MAC, Bobbi Brown, La Mer, Jo Malone, Tom Ford beauty and Smashbox lines. “In Korea, it’s not unusual for a woman to use 14 to 17 products throughout the day.”
To remain attuned to the region’s customers, the Estée Lauder Companies opened a research and development center in Shanghai last June.
Peter Thomas Roth, chief executive and founder of Peter Thomas Roth Clinical Skincare, was pleasantly surprised at the ritualistic quest for flawless complexions he has found across Asia. “Skin care is booming,” he said of the Chinese market.
Mr. Roth has an exclusive deal with Sephora’s stores in China. “They know what they want and they buy,” he said. “As a general rule, they wear less foundation and makeup and care more about clear skin. They’ll use a cleanser, exfoliator, toner, mask, skin firmer, brightener, serum and moisturizer in one routine. And then they’ll add an SPF on top of all that. They’re not afraid of being very moisturized.”
SPF, according to Dr. Howard Sobel, an Upper East Side dermatologist and dermatologic surgeon, is “the most important step there is.” Like many in his field, Dr. Sobel offers a skin care line of his own, Doctor’s Dermalogic Formula, which changes the original second step, “tone,” to “treat” and adds a fourth: sunblock.
“If somebody is not protecting with an SPF, that’s very foolish,” Dr. Sobel said. “It means there will be sun damage, skin cancer or hyperpigmentation later.”
When you’re wearing that many layers, it becomes all the more complicated to remove them.
“For Frenchwomen, the cleansing process is quite important,” said Sylvie Sola, the Paris-based international training director for Clarins. “They’ll start with an eye makeup remover and then go into a cleanser. And it may be habit, but Frenchwomen love creams.” According to Ms. Sola, Frenchwomen will pat on an eye cream and buy separate day and night creams if their budget allows.
And now there’s a newcomer to the regimen. “Thanks to the Asian countries, Frenchwomen are more interested in serums,” she said. “Our shoppers at Galeries Lafayette in Paris are actually 70 percent tourists, and maybe 90 percent of that is Chinese. They like serums and skin brighteners, so we started adding those to our counters because of the demand.”
The brighteners have not caught on yet in Paris, she said, but the serums have attracted fans. (In case you are wondering, Ms. Sola said serums should be applied as Step 4, after the eye cream and before the day or night cream.)
Mr. Roth said that advances in laboratories are helping to drive the expanded regimens. “We’re able to give so much more than when the three-step first came out,” he said. Rather than dictating a certain set of procedures, he prefers to describe today’s skin care as a kind of choose-your-own-adventure system. “Maybe one customer wants a toner that also exfoliates, or a moisturizer that also has anti-aging properties,” he said. “Maybe another customer wants to separate all those qualities out and prefers everything in a gel.”
Mr. Demsey sees the trend toward multistep skin care as reflecting a broader consumer sophistication about beauty. “The idea of targeted treatment is also a reference to Botox, laser or chemical peels you would have in a doctor’s office,” he said. “The more focused people are in terms of looks and well-being, the more unique products you are going to see.”
And even Clinique, long known as a back-to-basics brand, has expanded its cosmetic prescriptions. At the brand’s two counters on a Tuesday evening at the Macy’s on Herald Square, the three-step system was well illuminated, as were bottles of Repairwear Laser Focus Wrinkle and UV Damage Corrector serum ($67) and the Even Better Dark Spot Corrector ($73), a brand best-seller, according to the company.
In her white lab coat, a cheerful Clinique saleswoman expounded on the benefits of the classic three-step program. Then, she leaned in like a girlfriend. “Honestly, the three-step only brings you back to neutral,” she said, and peered closer to inspect this reporter’s T-zone. “If you want skin corrections, then you need to add in a booster,” she recommended, gesturing at the array of products outside the cornerstone regimen.
At least for the beauty industry, more will always be more. “People always talk about achieving this effortless, natural look with amazing skin,” said Mr. Demsey of Estée Lauder. “The truth is, it takes a lot of steps to look flawless.”
This article, "A Longer Stairway to a Better Complexion?," first appeared in The New York Times.