Modern colour technology, together with geo-cosmetic research, has launched beauty into an entirely new orbit. 'Up until now make-up has relied mostly on the colour of the product as it appears on the skin,' says Jason Eason, scientific director of L'Oréal South Africa. In other words, blue eye shadow reflects blue light and we see it as blue. That's pretty straightforward. But scientists are now looking to nature to develop make-up without colour.

Natural genius
Butterfly wings and peacock feathers rely on the interplay of light and the structure of material to produce the colour we perceive. These beautiful creatures appear to have brilliant colour, even though the material they're made of has little or no colour at all. Scientists have borrowed this idea from nature, and in cosmetic-speak, this new science is called 'interference-based make-up technology'.

It becomes even more magical when light passes through a number of layers and bounces back and forth, reflecting off surfaces until it eventually comes into view as...ta dah... iridescence! The technology makes the colour of make-up irrelevant – because it relies on the structure of make-up, rather than on pigment. The challenge is to make these effects appear on an eyelid, a lip or even an eyelash.

There are hybrid cars and then there's hybrid lipstick...
Most of us know the frustration of buying a lipstick, taking it home and finding that the colour looks very different on our lips to what it did in the tube. Pigments that are commonly used in lipstick are either organic or inorganic, each of which has limitations which cause problems, such as colours that are not 'true'. 'And because international regulations have reduced the number of pigments that can be used in cosmetics, the final palette of colors has become more restricted. All this makes innovating and creating new shades...a real challenge,' says Jason.

In order to develop new pigments with new color properties, the teams at L'Oréal in Japan based their work on Japanese expertise in assembling composite materials or hybrids. Together with Toda Kogyo, L'Oréal have developed three new hybrid pigments that consist of an inorganic material with an outer shell of organic pigments which are already used in cosmetics. These three new pigments have special optical properties: they're more luminous, they have great coverage and they're very rich in colour. When used in lipsticks, they make colours purer and more intense, but above all, the degree of exactness between the color of the lipstick in the bullet and the color applied to your lips is higher than that of conventional pigments. Good news if, like me, you've amassed far too many lipsticks that don't look quite right.

Hi tech skin care
We've seen nutritional supplements for skin, hair and nails become mainstream, but what about probiotics? L'Oréal, in collaboration with Nestlé, is exploring an oral, holistic cosmetic approach: keep an eye out for probiotics or living micro-organisms formulated in fresh or specially-packed cosmetics. As a first stage, L'Oréal has developed 'dermobiotics', a pure bacteria extract with a probiotic profile that stimulates the skin's natural defences.

Did you know...
...that wearing make-up scientifically reduces the chance of injury?

A study done by specialists and L'Oréal scientists at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne involved 85 elderly women and measured the impact of wearing make-up on the possibility of falling. Using special walking sensors, chemical measurements and psychological tests, they could reliably prove that the positive impact of wearing make-up helped to reduce the risk of falling – and therefore fractures of the femur – in women over 65. Yet another anti-ageing property of make-up!