When you’re creating one of your fans’ most requested products, and it’s for one of skin’s thorniest problems, you really don’t want to rush things. ‘We’ve been working on it for four b****** long years,’ says Caroline Hirons, in her typically no-nonsense fashion. ‘Hyperpigmentation is one of my most-asked questions. And it would seem that a lot of my followers have tried numerous products for it, to no avail.’
Now the Skin Rocks founder is hoping to turn that around, having finally created a long-awaited pigmentation product that lives up to her exacting standards. That means clobbering the multiple types of pigmentation in a one-and-done serum, and proving it in the lab, in consumer tests, and, the key decider, her own face.
‘We don’t test on animals. I am the rabbit,’ she says, chatting to GH about Skin Rocks The Hyperpigmentation Serum. ‘I have post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation from blemishes that scarred. This serum has really improved them or I wouldn’t be releasing it.’
She adds: ‘I can happily state that outside of a treatment room, where you can be far more invasive, this is by far the best pigmentation formula I have ever used.’
The new serum sets out to fade all types of hyperpigmentation and in doing so, fade out confusion too. ‘There are so many different types of pigmentation, it's hard to get to the root of the cause. It's not always obvious,’ she says. ‘People say they have pigmentation or dark marks, but lots of them don't know what they've got. So we covered all of them.’
She adds: ‘When people get to menopause, the questions on pigmentation really kick in. When you get to a certain age, you have past sun damage coming up. By time it's my age, it's all out. In the 80s I used tin foil [to sunbathe], and Hawaiian Tropic SPF2. The sun damage is all on my neck.’
While Caroline, 55, can’t invent a time machine, she’s set out to do the next best thing and whack pigmentation from as many angles as possible.
‘Ingredient-wise, we’re attacking hyperpigmentation via eight mechanisms, not one or two,’ she says. Rather than ‘just’ a vitamin C (‘What is the point in doing something that's been done?'), the serum also adds in pigmentation-inhibiting enzymes, skin brightening peptides and barrier strengthening actives, to name a few.
The tech is backed by clinical trials showing a reduction in dark spots and brighter skin tone, along with what Caroline calls the ‘bus stop’ before and after photos, taken 12 weeks apart. ‘We didn't take those pictures. It's all third party. Nothing has been changed. There's no filters. That is the same machine, the same woman in three months.’
The serum has flown through the mirror tests as well. In line with Caroline’s personal experience, 90% of testers reported brighter skin and 85% saw a reduction in dark spots and/or pigmentation in four weeks.
Being inclusive was another key thing on the wish-list. ‘When we do clinicals, we test on every single age and every single skin tone,’ she says. ‘I want to be able to legally say ‘this works, this is just fact.’ That's why clinicals are very expensive. But they're worth every penny.'
