The following is an excerpt from the Glow Journal Podcast. You can listen to the full interview now on iTunes and Spotify.
Born in Athens, Greece, 111SKIN founder Dr Yannis Alexandrides grew up surrounded by beauty. “It’s one of the first things I remember,” he tells me, “and I consider [it to be] one of the most beautiful memories. I grew up very close to the Acropolis. The beauty of the architecture and the art of Greece are some of the first things that I considered to be beautiful.”
Although he grew to train at the Albert Einstein Medical Centre, Dr Yannis’ earliest ambitions were inspired by the sea. “I had a lot of different stages of my life,” he explains. “For a very long time. I wanted to be an oceanographer. I was really inspired by the documentaries of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who was one of the first pioneers to discover the treasures of the seas and the oceans. That was one of my first ideas. As I was growing up, I was gradually gravitating more and more to medicine. I liked the aspect of taking care of people and making people well and happy.”
Having decided to work in the medical profession, Dr Yannis completed his studies and took residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital. “There were a lot of lessons,” he tells me of his time spent at one of the busiest trauma hospitals in the United States. “This was a coming-of-age for me because you learn things on different levels. The first level, of course, is really to appreciate life and to respect life. The second [lesson] is to learn to make quick decisions and to be a leader. You are the leader of a team that is trying to save a life and you have to be in charge. You have to be responsible and you have to make clear decisions on the nick of time.”
“I think, back then, my priority was to really become as good as I could be in this subspecialty of plastic surgery. This was a journey for me going- through all these different stages of training. Every day you would learn something new, you would meet new people, and you would be challenged by the techniques that you needed to learn to become really excellent at your job. That was not a time where I was considering I’d have a brand of skincare!”
It was in the year 2000 that Yannis moved to London. “I was feeling, and still feel, like a citizen of the world,” he tells me. “However in London, I found my calling. It was place that agreed with me on a lot of levels. On a cultural level, it was the cosmopolitan nature of the city, but it was also a city where you could establish a practice. You could fulfil your dreams of being able to provide top care for a lot of people.
“When I opened my clinic in London, I created a clinic that would not be the classic ‘plastic surgery clinic’ where a patient would just walk in with the anticipation to only receive either a facelift or liposuction. It is a clinic that is very holistic. We try to find the least invasive solution for our patients- that can be a non-invasive treatment, or it can be the application of the right skincare to prevent and treat conditions.”
It was that quest for the least invasive solution, and an understanding that prevention is of more benefit than intervention, that saw the inception of 111SKIN. “For me, as a surgeon, healthy skin is the best material that I can dream of. With unhealthy skin, it’s difficult to get good results.
“There was a gap between medical brands that you needed to get through a doctor’s office and brands that were just on sale in department stores or beauty shops. You either had to go with a very complicated (and sometimes very harsh) option, or you had to go with one that was not scientific at all.
“I think 111SKIN fills this gap. It’s a scientific approach to luxury skincare- with proven results.”
In formulating the original Healing Serum, available only to clinic patients, Dr Yannis collaborated with scientists from the Soviet Space Programme. “It was good fortune,” he tells me of their first meeting. “I was looking for products that could accelerate healing for my patients, especially patients receiving facial plastic surgery. I worked with different ingredients for a long time without any big success success- until I met these two scientists. They had tremendous experience looking after astronauts’ well-being, which included skincare and diet. Space is a laboratory for ageing, because our body is exposed to very harsh conditions. It [our body] receives a very large amount of cosmic and ultraviolet radiation. Also, the lack of gravity has very detrimental effects in the whole body including the skin. They had groundbreaking ingredients, at that time, that we used in the original Healing Serum- and the original Healing Serum is still what I give to my patients in my clinic. It’s a product that is not for sale, but it is the product that inspired 111SKIN.”
What is unique to the Healing Serum, and the entire 111SKIN portfolio, is a custom molecule- NAC Y2. “This is really the cornerstone of the Healing Serum and 111SKIN,” Dr Yannis tells me of this patented formula. “It’s a complex of three different ingredients. NAC stands for n-acetyl cysteine, which is an amino acid. It’s a crucial amino acid. Our body needs it to create glutathione. Glutathione is the master antioxidant of our body, and having that in our skin keeps us young because it reverses damage to the skin. It will prevent the damage of free radicals. Giving the skin NAC will help create more glutathione. It’s the fuel for glutathione.”
Originally, 111SKIN was exclusively available to clients of Dr Yannis’ clinic- 111 Harley St. “I was using it just for healing after surgery,” he tells me. “What drew my attention was a lot of my patients would require more after the original six weeks that they were supposed to use it- they would come back and ask for more. As I was giving it to them for free, it came to a point…. I asked the patients about it, and they all said that the skin looked and felt so much better. That gave me the idea to create line of eight products that I was selling, then, in my clinic only.”
111SKIN’s first release beyond the clinic walls was the now iconic Y Theorum Repair Serum, a riff on the clinic’s original healing solution. “We call it the Y Theorem because this is my theory. This is my discovery. What NACY2 does is help the skin heal after surgery, but this healing process is the same process that the skin needs to heal from everyday damage. If we enhance that process then we keep the skin young, we reverse wrinkles and reverse ageing of the skin.
“The original line is called the Reparative line for that exact reason- it is repairing. It’s the one that I was originally selling in my clinic and it’s the one that, eventually, Harrods discovered. Following the success of the Reparative line, Harrods came back and asked me to create something even more exclusive.”
From there, a second line was created- the Intensive line. “Intensive has the addition of some more ingredients on top of the existing ingredients, such as Black Diamond particles which improve the absorption of the ingredients into the skin. Following the Intense line, we created what we call Treatment. A lot of our products are inspired by the treatments I perform in my clinic such as mesotherapy, which is the injection of small amounts of hyaluronic acid and vitamins straight into the skin, so that gives an immediate renewal and moisturisation to the skin. We have created a product called Meso Infusion Mask where these two ingredients are within the mask- they melt into the skin, literally, so it’s like having a treatment.”
“Then we have the Clarity which is a line dedicated to skin that has acne or acne related problems. Again, during my experience, I realised that approximately one out of three people have a problem of this type and it is usually attributed to hormonal imbalances. Most of these treatments that we use, as doctors, can be very harsh and irritating, and a lot of people feel frustrated and give up the treatments for this reason. With this in mind, I created the Clarity line- it’s easy to use and has results in reducing and removing blemishes and acne from the skin.
“The last line is the Regenerative. The regenerative line is more about recharging the skin. It’s inspired by a treatment we have brought to London called whole body Cryotherapy. This is a treatment that is very popular with top athletes and people who are into wellness, because the very cold temperature that the body is exposed to creates a positive response that is good for recovering after intense exercise, for getting muscle and pain relief, and also for anti-inflammatory purposes and for improvement of the skin. This line captures the same benefits that cryotherapy has on the skin.”
There are a number of products from the now extensive 111SKIN portfolio that have developed something of a cult following, however there is no one product that has amassed the Instagram virality of the Rose Gold Mask. Spotted on the Victoria’s Secret Angels pre runway and on Priyanka Chopra pre royal wedding, the mask has as many celebrity followers as it does likes on Instagram. “The gold particles are nanoparticles in colloidal suspension- so it’s pure gold, basically,” Dr Yannis explains of the mask’s effect on the skin. “Since the ancient times, people knew that gold had a lot of positive beauty effects. Collagen destruction is minimised with the application of gold so the skin, everyday, stops destroying collagen. It also has a positive effect on the microcirculation of the skin, so more oxygenated blood comes to the skin and there’s more collagen production due to that. It has an anti-inflammatory and antibacterial effect on the skin. So yes, it has a plethora of effects on the skin, all positive, but it also has this hue that it leaves on the skin that immediately makes the skin look better. A lot of the time, people don’t use any makeup after putting this mask on.”
For those who seek luxury beyond skincare infused with pure gold, the brand’s latest release contains diamond particles. “This new launch for us is very important because, again, I’m looking for inspiration through the clinic to create new products. I still see a lot of people who have irritated skin due to the over use of peels- peels that are too aggressive or peels that are irritating because they’re photosensitive, for example. I wanted to create a product that would be safe to use in the home environment without the possibility of irritation. With that in mind, I created this new Accelerated Celestial Black Diamond Peel, which is a combination of rose quartz and alpha hydroxy acids. It’s a formula that also contains not just the agents that will do the peel, but also ingredients like betaine which actually heal the skin and will protect it so it does not feel dehydrated. I personally used this peel continuously for one week to make sure that there would not be any irritation.”
With over 20 years of industry experience behind him, Dr Yannis takes a moment to reflect upon the changes within the beauty sphere over the last two decades. “Plastic surgery became mainstream,” he cites as one of the biggest changes. “It was not so long ago that my parents urged me not to be a plastic surgeon. We crossed this path a couple of decades ago- plastic surgery has become a mainstream. Good hands can give amazing results. The next step was the incorporation of non-surgical treatments and minimising the invasiveness. Instead of having big operations, we’ve reduced the invasiveness of the operations or we have treatments that are not invasive at all. That’s something that technology helped us a lot with, through the application of lasers, of high-frequency waves, ultrasonic waves and so on. The last would be the the revolution of social media and visual media- the phenomenon of Instagram and how people would like to look good not just because of everyday life, but also because they want to look good in pictures.”
And as for the future of skincare? “People are becoming more aware of the negative effects of pollution- not just ultraviolet radiation, but also the pollution that we encounter in urban environments and the pollution we get from high intensity lights from the screens of our laptops and iPhones. With this in mind, we have worked with a team and we have created products that actually fight off pollution’s detrimental effects on the skin. We’re launching a new booster which is an anti-pollution booster which is loaded with antioxidants and specific ingredients that actually protect the skin from these harmful effects and also remove particles from pollution.
“I think that this turn towards a more scientific approach to skincare will continue, and will only intensify.“
