Vogue - Can Biologique Recherche's P50 Convince Me to Quit Retinol?

I might be one of the last New York fashion editors of my generation not to use Botox. I believe this to be true because I go to fashion shows, dozens of them a year, and across the runways I see a lot of foreheads. But if I’m proudly creased above the brows, harder to abide are my aging neck and the sagging skin at my jawline (even typing the word jowls makes me shudder).

Which is why I visited the skin care specialist Aida Bicaj in her new Tribeca spa. An easy walk from the Vogue offices at One World Trade Center, the N. Moore Street location is efficiently elegant, with a wall of the cultishly popular Biologique Recherche products behind the front desk. Bicaj, who is Albanian and immigrated to the US in 1992, when war broke out in Bosnia, worked for the French luxury skincare brand for 10 years before going into business for herself in 2006; her Upper East Side spa opened in 2010.

Studying my skin under the loupe, Bicaj told me it looked good, but that I was going about getting to good all wrong. Cetaphil cleanser and Retinoid cream, the only two products I use reliably (I’m low-maintenance, if I haven’t already made that clear), were not just drying, but actually thinning my skin. And that’s not a desirable situation in middle age, when the skin is already prone to thinness.

She began with a Soin Lissant treatment, which combines lymphatic massage and a gentle powder of alpha hydroxy acids and natural moisturizing factors in a base of milk protein to drain, smooth, and tone the skin on my face, neck, and decolletage, and asked questions about my diet. Sugar, dairy, and processed foods, she reminded me, all contribute to clogged pores and spotty skin, the problems that got me hooked on the Retinoid, in the first place. Yogurt would be tough to give up, I told her, and she advised me to try the sheep milk kind, which is higher in calcium and lower in artificial hormones than cow’s milk.

Her attentive pampering was completely unlike the extractive facials I remember from my 20s and 30s. “As the skin gets older,” she told me, “it needs deep cleaning less. But it does get drier, and the retinol aggravated the skin mantle. We need to calm and soothe your skin.” After the smoothing treatment, she gave me her signature remodeling facial, during which she used Biologique Recherche’s proprietary bio-electrotherapy machine, to tighten and firm my skin. With repetition, she said, the treatment can actually strengthen facial muscle memory. She has some clients who see her weekly. I would be starting my Biologique Recherche journey at home.

Bicaj advised a multistep process that included Biologique Recherche’s Lait U milk cleanser, the potent Lotion P50 toner, a once-a-day Masque Vivant, the Collagene Originel and Elastine serums, and Creme Collagene. It wasn’t just the ritual that was new for me. Biologique Recherche products are famously—how to say it?—fragrant. Among other things, the P50 toner includes vinegar and horseradish root, and the even more unusual Creme Collagene lists odiferous fucus vesiculosus extract as an ingredient, which Google informed me is a type of brown algae. Bicaj says, “People tell me everyday, ‘I hate the smell of this,’ and I say, ‘do you want a good smell but no results, or do you want not such a good smell but amazing results?’”

The smells did take some getting used to, but two months later, I actually look forward to the bracing scent and skin tingle of the P50. Even as the weather has turned cold, my skin feels plump, with none of the flaky dryness I’d grown accustomed to with the Retinoid. At this point I should say that Bicaj herself is just shy of 60 and has the glowy, blemish-free skin of a woman two decades younger, so even if it’s more a high-maintenance regimen than I’m used to, I’ve happily decided to try whatever Bicaj recommends me. Sheep yogurt included.

Aida Bicaj is located at 64 N. Moore St. in Tribeca.

https://www.vogue.com/article/can-biologique-recherches-p50-convince-me-to-quit-retinol