Avant-garde
Skincare Since 1902
HELENA RUBINSTEIN is a skincare brand of avant-garde luxury. At the meeting point of cutting-edge science and personalized service, its rich heritage is matched by its commitment to innovation. Under the uncompromising vision of Global Brand President Stevie Wong, and in partnership with the leading scientists of today, the brand’s objective remains as it was in 1902: create the beauty that empowers women to reach new heights.
HELENA RUBINSTEIN is grounded by its history, its name synonymous with iconic products, scientific legitimacy and exceptional formulas. From Valaze, the first treatment cream, to Replasty Age Recovery Night Cream, its ambition is set on creating the beauty and skincare of the future. Through high-tech formulas, sensorial textures and specified packagings, avant-garde is in every detail inspired by science, the power of nature and the constant quest for ultimate efficacy.
HELENA RUBINSTEIN’s range of sensorial refined skincare is arranged into three main pillars, and benefits from scientific expert endorsements. Each range has seen clinically proven outcomes, thanks to their intense concentrations of active ingredients and the pioneering use of native vegetal cells.
Replasty
Powercell
Cellglow
Cellular Skin Science
Skincare efficacy at a cellular level: this is the ambition of avant-garde of HELENA RUBINSTEIN today. With the culmination of over 120 years of research, HELENA RUBINSTEIN is harnessing the power of advanced skincare science for a new generation, in the pioneering spirit of its founder.
Exploring Disruptive Scientific Research Territories
The brand explores new emerging scientific research territories in skin sciences at a cellular level: cellular repair, cellular regeneration, cellular defense and cellular reprogramming.
Skin aging and damage often stem from cellular changes. With age, skin epidermal cells naturally are less regenerative with low differentiation potential leading to alteration on texture and radiance, and fibroblasts produce less collagen and elastin, leading to wrinkles, sagging, and loss of elasticity. Internal factors such as stress and environmental factors such as UV exposure and pollution also contribute to premature aging. By addressing these issues, HELENA RUBINSTEIN designs skincare that can more effectively combat thses root causes.
Partnering with Scientific Experts
Throughout her lifetime, Madame Rubinstein surrounded herself with the greatest scientists of her era, continually pushing the boundaries to advance the science of beauty. She travelled the world in pursuit of knowledge from leading experts, passionately exploring new disciplines. Notably, she was the first to categorize skin types and rigorously tested her formulations to scientifically validate their effectiveness.
Today, this tradition continues, and the brand's scientific prowess is endorsed by prominent researchers and scientists. These collaboration drive pioneering advancements in disruptive research areas such as cellular reprogramming, regenerative medicine, and biotech ingredients. HELENA RUBINSTEIN partners with scientific experts, not only to deliver the next generation of skincare products, but also to make sure that the brand drives fundamental research and develops avant-garde new technologies.
Sourcing Green Tech & Extremophilic Actives
HELENA RUBINSTEIN began exploring the unique properties of native vegetal cells in the early 2000s. This research coincided with the groundbreaking discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) in the medical field. iPSCs demonstrated the possibility of reprogramming somatic cells to a pluripotent state, enabling them to differentiate into nearly any cell type and offering potential therapeutic applications for regenerative medicine and certain disease treatments.
Recognizing the parallel between iPSCs and the regenerative capacity of native vegetal cells, HELENA RUBINSTEIN pioneered their use in skincare. Analogous to stem cells in humans, these undifferentiated plant cells exhibit totipotency – the ability to self-renew and differentiate into all cell types of a plant, enabling the regeneration of an entire organism from a single cell.
The brand’s vision for the future lies in Green Tech actives ingredients which are sourced from natural and renewable sources and transformed using environmentally respectful practices. These ingredients are produced with biotech or green chemistry processes that minimize resource consumption, waste generation and greenhouse gas emissions.
Engineering Groundbreaking Formulations
HELENA RUBINSTEIN pioneers avant-garde formulations. With more than 120 years of transmission and innovation, each new formula is a sensory and technological masterpiece offering optimal affinity with the skin and dedicated to a specific benefit. HELENA RUBINSTEIN skincare is a luxurious sensorial experience, with no compromise in efficacy. Beyond sensoriality, using specific formulation techniques can also increase active ingredient diffusion to target consumers’ skin goals.
Pushing the Boundaries of Proven Cellular and Clinical Efficacy
Madame was a visionary who was always pushing the boundaries of skincare and science. Today, the brand follows in her legacy by challenging the boundaries of clinical tests to build ultra-precise knowledge of cellular biology and keep its avant-garde edge and evaluate it with the latest clinical methods.
In 2012, a new partnership was forged with Dr Jean-Marc Lemaitre – Research Director at INSERM – Europe’s number one biomedical research institute, to explore a new territory in skincare: active cellular reprogramming. During his esteemed career, one of Dr Jean-Marc Lemaitre’s most exciting achievements was demonstrating for the first time: the concept of cellular downregulated ageing. Working with the HELENA RUBINSTEIN team, this knowledge has been used in the development of the Prodigy Cellglow range, containing a unique Edelweiss extract. To prove the effectiveness of this extract, HELENA RUBINSTEIN realized an unseen and very conclusive clinical test.
A Unique Legacy
A visionary in the purest sense of the word, Madame Rubinstein touched the worlds of beauty, modern art and women’s rights with her avant-garde spirit and sense of the exceptional. Her friend, the writer Jean Cocteau, regarded her as the “Empress of Beauty”. Around the globe, thousands of devotees knew her simply as “Madame”.
An Uncommon Destiny
Born in Krakow to a family of working class orthodox jews in 1872, she was expected to marry a rich widow and live out a modest life as a housewife. But Rubinstein would choose her own destiny.
At just 24 she emigrated to Australia, alone, with 12 vials of skin cream, blended by her mother to a secret recipe, tucked into her luggage. In Melbourne, local women were transfixed: what was the secret of her radiant complexion? Rubinstein sensed an opportunity, and with the help of a doctor, created Valaze. It was the first beauty cream, and an overnight sensation
A Trail of Innovation
This was the first of several business decisions, which would make Rubinstein one of the first female entrepreneurs. It also confirmed her intuition that science was the key to unlocking the compelling powers of beauty, and she would go on to work with some of the world’s leading medical experts in the creation of her skincare empire.
Never quelling her thirst for knowledge and scientific discovery, she blazed a trail of innovation which the house continues to this day. The first waterproof mascara; the definition of the three skin types; an understanding of the impact of nutrition on the skin; the first beauty salon.
Art Reflects Life
A supporter of Warhol, first in the order book of a young Yves Saint Laurent and an early collector of African art, she was a visionary in the arts as she was in skincare. Miro, Dufy and de Kooning decorated her advertising campaigns, while her beauty salons were adorned by works by Dali, Modigliani and Juan Gris. She understood beauty instinctively and from the heart.
Beauty is Power
For Rubinstein, beauty was more than appearance. Beauty was power. It was freedom to be yourself. She wanted to give all women the tools to take back control.
This was her true life’s work. Along the way, she defined the beauty industry as we know it.
