It’s official. I have been fully vaccinated.

I woke up this morning at the usual 5-ish and knew it was likely to be a seminal day in my life — but certainly in the last year. Today, Friday March 26th 2021 was my appointment for the second Pfizer vaccine shot — three weeks after I’d gotten the first.

I fed Orpheus, made coffee and downed my 87,000 morning nutritional supplements. We did a quick yoga session, I showered and headed out — deeper into Brooklyn to the army hospital set up at Medgar Evers College in Crown Heights.

That community college was the site of my first shot. As the first time, there was a relatively short line; there were maybe 10 people in front of me. Fifteen minutes and a quick jab in the arm later and it was all over. I was headed home and headed into a new pandemic phase — mentally and physically. I was fully vaccinated, yet not fully free.

A friend asked if I felt emotional afterwards. Mayyyyybe. Sorta. I dunno. I honestly don’t know what emotion I was feeling, or what I’m even feeling now. Is profound relief an emotion? I guess it kinda is.

Emotion aside, what I feel is that my relationship to the world around me has somehow shifted. Again. That was one of the most surreal, more intense aspects of the pandemic, right? That our individual relationships to the world had changed. That includes our relationships with one another. And, it was perhaps the most painful part of the experience for many — and may be for me the lasting scar. What do my relationships even mean now?

Feeling like doing something super normal, I ventured out to Target this afternoon to pick up random cleaning supplies. As I walked in, I reached for a shopping basket, and that’s when I knew things were eerily different. Something had shifted. For the last year, I was always hesitant to touch the basket handle. Is there virus on this thing? Is this the moment of infection? Is this when my fate is sealed? Ugh.

The weird, pandemicky fear was suddenly gone. That rational, yet irrational thought had completely dissipated. I don’t need to care if someone with the virus touched the handle any more. I’m fully vaccinated. If I get sick, it won’t be as severe; I won’t die.

That’s what I’m feeling. I have an answer to the question that has plagued me all year. This thing isn’t how I’m going to die. My life can get back on its original track, my destiny is not wound up in a virus. At least not this one.

So yeah, I’m feeling profound relief.

The skincare stuff starts here.

Nothing could perhaps feel more normal, yet inane than awards season. The Oscars, the Grammys, and WWD’s 100 Greatest Skincare Products of All Time. What? The 100 greatest products? No one asked me!

Who decided what the top skincare products in history are? Does that include Cleopatra’s proprietary milk bath? What about Leonardo’s snail mucin toner? I’ll bet you didn’t know that the Koreans, in all their K-Beauty glory, weren’t the first to use snail mucin in a skincare product. Leonardo da Vinci was!

So of course I’m intrigued by a greatest hits list from a beauty authority like WWD. If you don’t know WWD well, it’s a beauty industry trade journal. They break news on brands and products, forecast and report on trends, publish insights and interviews with the CEO’s of big beauty companies and niche brands.

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Back in the day, WWD was it. No one had the inside scoop like they did. Friday was beauty day, the day of the week when WWD covered all things going on in the world of beauty and skincare. During my years at Kiehl’s, I couldn’t wait for Friday’s mail delivery.

So, while I could easily come up with my own list of the top 100 skincare products of all time (and just may!), that list from WWD holds serious legitimacy. How exactly do they arrive at one hundred products, who selected them and what does it say about the state of the beauty industry today?

A few insights from WWD:

If skin care is the engine that fuels the beauty industry — who knows it better than the people in the driver’s seat? So when Beauty Inc decided to create the definitive list of the top treatment products of all time, we knew the only way to compile it would be to ask the founders, marketers, retailers, influencers, analysts, artists and C-suite types who comprise the industry to weigh in.
In early January, we sent ballots to more than 300 industry insiders, then tabulated their answers. The response was overwhelming: Promised confidentiality, many of beauty’s biggest names participated in the process.
The resulting list of 100 products is a fascinating microcosm of skin care today. There are newcomers and classics alike. Moisturizers, by far, garnered the most number of votes, but clinical, ingredient-driven products — vitamin C, retinol, peels and acids, whether alpha hydroxy or hyaluronic — are also heavily represented. Based on the votes received, we have identified the top 10 skin care products; the remaining 90 are listed alphabetically.
Other key insights: Clean is a definite truth today — over 25 percent of the top 100 meet the definition of clean as established by a major retailer. Geographically, French pharmacy products were number one, with K-beauty not far behind. Over one-third of the brands on the list have female founders, and many are relative newcomers to the scene — including the largest vote getter, Augustinus Bader’s The Cream and The Rich Cream. Here, the greatest 100 skin care products as voted on by the beauty industry.

Yes, atop the list of The 100 Greatest Skincare Products of All Time are Augustinus Bader’s two cult creams — The Cream and The Rich Cream.

Interestingly, I had been planning a blog article about the Augustinus Bader brand and its two iconic products for a few weeks now and had been evaluating the anti-aging moisturizers over the past couple of months. WWD’s designation of the pair as the single greatest skincare product of all time couldn’t have been more timely, or more telling. (I do find it curious that they seemingly counted the votes for each as a vote for a single product.)

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I know you’re curious…

If Augustinus Bader’s The Cream and The Rich Cream literally find themselves ahead of the best face creams, antioxidant serums and acid treatments in history, what are the second, third, fourth and so on?

Well, let me at least share the top ten of WWD’s 100 Greatest Skincare Products of All Time:

You’re may also be curious about whether I agree with WWD’s 100 greatest skincare product list. I wouldn’t use the same criteria as I suspect were used by many of the voters. I personally don’t care about the sales or the marketing behind a skincare product. I know beauty marketers. And I believe they admire branding and product marketing like Hollywood admires movies about itself. Just wait for those Oscars!

To me, product efficacy and its benefits to skin health are primary. I worked inside a big beauty conglomerate for nearly eight years and not once did I participate in a conversation about skin health and whether or not an existing product, or one under development, would benefit the skin health of a single person. Isn’t that the whole point of skin care to begin with?

Hype is the last criterion I would use to determine the “best in class” status of a skincare product. The designation of La Mer’s The Moisturizing Cream as the second greatest product of all time is stunning — and says it all. Is it the greatest story ever told? Yes! The second greatest skincare product of all time? One word: LMAO

So, I’m engaged in my own thought process about what I think is the greatest skincare product of all time and will share that in a subsequent article.

Before I dive deeply into the benefits of Augustinus Bader’s The Cream and The Rich Cream, permit me to explore who exactly Augustinus Bader is.

To start, unlike Dr. Jart, Augustinus Bader does in fact exist. Professor Augustinus Bader is a pioneer in the field of stem cell research. Dr. Bader is a biomedical scientist, a physician, and an expert in the field of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine.

According to the Bader brand,

“In a career that has spanned the globe, the German-born Professor has spent over 30 years researching and developing technologies that activate and harness the human body's capacity to heal, with a focus on the reawakening of cells that become dormant due to aging or trauma.

In 2008 he developed a groundbreaking Wound Gel that heals severe skin traumas without the need for surgery or skin grafts. It is this revolutionary technique that inspired Augustinus Bader skincare.”

Intriguingly, in addition to the creator of one of the greatest skincare products ever, Professor Bader is today the Director of Cell Techniques and Applied Stem Cell Biology at The University of Leipzig, in Leipzig, Germany.

In designating Bader’s The Cream and The Rich Cream as the single greatest skincare product of all time, WWD says,

“With a well-connected cofounder on the one hand, and a brilliant scientist on the other, Augustinus Bader’s The Cream and The Rich Cream have shot to the skin care stratosphere in record time. Said one elector, ‘It’s the combination of right product launched at the right time in the right way. It does what it says it’s going to do.’ Consumers seem to agree. Despite the difficulties of the pandemic, sales tripled in 2020, from $24 million in 2019 before to $70 million in 2020.”

I told you sales and marketing were major factors in the voting!

Let’s have a look at Augustinus Bader’s two skincare icons — at the very least among the best anti-aging face creams available today…

Augustinus Bader | The Rich Cream

I’ve had both of Augustinus Bader’s The Cream and The Rich Cream on hand for weeks now. One feels exceptional, the other feels like, well, a damn good nourishing moisturizer. And oddly, it’s not what you may be thinking. Bader’s The Rich Cream is actually the inferior face cream of the two.

While The Rich Cream is quite a well-formulated, nutrient-powered anti-aging moisturizer, it actually lacks one of the essential ingredients that I think makes Augustinus Bader’s original product, The Cream, stand out in the gamut of moisturizers — skin-compatible phospholipids. Skin loves lipids. Lipids like fatty acids, ceramides and cholesterol make up the most significant component of the skin’s layers — and are essential to skin health.

Phospholipids are plant lipids derived from plant cells — and because they’re highly bio-compatible, skin welcomes them in. And along with them, the beneficial actives of a skincare formula.

These phospholipids are found in the INCI of the lighter-weight The Cream as Hydrogenated Phosphatidylcholine; yet, they’re curiously omitted in The Rich Cream formula. I don’t know why.

Aside from that not insignificant exclusion, the formulas are quite similar — and may be why the experts at WWD concluded that the votes for the two distinct products should count as one in their final tally.

The Rich Cream is, in fact, richer — with higher concentrations of common non-fragrant plant oils in the top ten, including Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Squalane, Argania Spinosa (Argan) Kernel Oil, and Persea Gratissima (Avocado) Oil.

There’s also a smattering of additional moisturizing vitamins in The Rich Cream formula in the form of Tocopherol (Vitamin E) and Panthenol (Vitamin B5). Great stuff for skin, not exactly unique or breakthrough.

So what makes The Rich Cream exceptional as a moisturizer? From the marketing, it would seem that Professsor Bader’s proprietary, patented TFC8, or Trigger Factor Complex. Not surprisingly, you won’t actually find anything referred to as “TFC8” in The Rich Cream INCI. The brand wouldn’t disclose that any sooner than Colonel Sanders would the recipe for his Kentucky Fried Chicken. (The greatest chicken of all time, no?)

So I had to do some googling. And I found a site called Dupe Talk that had the insights I was desperately searching for:

“We found several patents granted to the Bader brand and in these extremely complex documents (despite our legal backgrounds!), we’ve found what appears to be a definition for Trigger Factor Complex.
“From the patent itself: "Trigger Factor Complex consists of water, ethanol, glycerol, vitamin E acetate, hydrogenated lecithin, cholesterol, L-arginine, L-phenylalanine, L-lysine, L-alanine-glutamine, L-tryptophane, L-tyrosine, L-valine, L-Prolin, L-taurine, ceramide NG, ceramide NP, oleic acid, palmitic acid, sodium ascorbate, phenoxyethanol, mustard seed oil, EDTA, oligopeptide."

Most of that is really great for skin, and superbly pro-skin health. Skin thrives on vitamins, amino acids, peptides and ceramides — the natural occurring lipids that comprise approximately 50% of skin’s lipid content. However, it doesn’t thrive on ethanol (aka alcohol) phenoxyethanol (preservative) or EDTA — a stabilizer used to “prevent ingredients in a skincare formula from binding with trace elements (particularly minerals) that can be present in water.” (Google)

But why split hairs? No one said The Rich Cream was a perfect formula. They just said it was the greatest.

What Is Augustinus Bader’s TFC8 Technology?

Clearly, it’s not merely its plethora of plant oils that makes Augustinus Bader’s The Cream and The Rich Cream the greatest skincare products of all time. It’s got to be the professor’s patented complex. According to the Bader brand:

Comprised of natural amino acids, high-grade vitamins and synthesized molecules naturally found in the body, TFC8® nourishes and protects the skin while taking a personalized approach to supporting the skin’s innate potential for renewal.
Our proven results are powered by Professor Bader's TFC8®, or Trigger Factor Complex – an exclusive patented technology comprised of over 40 ingredients and inspired by over 30 years of research, innovation and clinical study.
TFC8® technology guides key nutrients and powerful natural ingredients to the skin, creating and supporting an optimal environment for cellular renewal.
TFC8® turns potent base formulations into smarter, adaptive skincare capable of addressing individualized concerns – such as the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, redness, hyperpigmentation, cellulite, stretch marks, and damage caused by external stressors.
TFC8® nourishes and protects, training the skin for the long-term. Resulting skin looks and feels healthier, firmer, stronger, and more even over time.

While I much prefer The Cream over The Rich Cream, due to the inclusion of the phospholipids in the former, Bader’s The Rich Cream is an extra-ordinary moisturizer. It feels great on the skin and is clearly nourishing based on the INCI alone. But it feels great, too.

Does The Rich Cream do all the things the brand claims it does? The professor and his marketing team claim that it “reduces signs of aging including the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles, and hyperpigmentation; promotes elasticity, supports skin barrier function, and prevents transepidermal water loss – for skin that’s supple, plump, and smooth.” That’s a lot.

I have no doubt that it lives up to the hydration hype and even supports barrier function. Many well-formulated moisturizers do those things quite well. The Rich Cream is like a bottle of skin nourishment. Whether it’s worth $265 for just under two ounces is not for me to decide.

I have my doubts. If you’re looking for a great anti-aging cream, check out my selection of the best sunscreens for face here.

SHOP THE BLOG: Try it for yourself! Purchase the Augustinus Bader The Rich Cream for $265 here.

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**Augustinus Bader The Rich Cream**
**Augustinus Bader The Cream**

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Augustinus Bader | The Cream

As I declared in my review of Augustinus Bader’s The Rich Cream, I believe the original, The Cream, to be the better of the two. Though combined, they were declared WWD’s 100 Greatest Skincare Product of All Time, the brand’s The Cream is actually “the greatest skincare product of all time” if they’re compared side-by-side.

The formulas are strikingly similar — with variations in the levels of non-fragrant plant oils that give The Rich Cream its slightly richer texture. Both formulas are pro-skin health cocktails of antioxidant vitamins, nourishing amino acids and plant oils, plumping peptides and ceramides, naturally occurring lipids.

And, of course, both anti-aging creams contain Professor Bader’s patented TFC8, or Trigger Factor Complex – a proprietary blend of water, ethanol, glycerol, vitamin E acetate, hydrogenated lecithin, cholesterol, L-arginine, L-phenylalanine, L-lysine, L-alanine-glutamine, L-tryptophane, L-tyrosine, L-valine, L-Prolin, L-taurine, ceramide NG, ceramide NP, oleic acid, palmitic acid, sodium ascorbate, phenoxyethanol, mustard seed oil, EDTA, and oligopeptide.

As I said in my review of The Rich Cream, most of what Professor Bader’s Trigger Factor Complex is composed of is quite pro-skin health; though some of it, notably the ethanol, phenoxyethanol and EDTA, are not exactly great for skin. All three of these are included for the purpose the solubilizing, preserving and stabilizing the ingredients in the two formulas.

What sets the two apart, and what elevates Augustinus Bader’s The Cream over The Rich Cream formula, is the inclusion of supremely beneficial phospholipids. For a reason unbeknownst to me, these extraordinarily skin-compatible plant cell lipids are excluded from the richer formula.

The phospholipids in The Cream are listed on the INCI as Hydrogenated Phosphatidylcholine at ingredient number five — a significant concentration in the formula. Phosphatidylcholines are a major component of biological membranes and, as lecithin, are fatty substances naturally occurring in animal and plant tissues. Most often extracted from soy beans, these plant cell extracts are what give The Cream its uniquely luxurious and uncommon texture. It melts into skin like warm butter. The Rich Cream does not.

What is Hydrogenated Phosphatidylcholine?

According to the site Science Direct, Hydrogenated Phosphatidylcholine is…

Phosphatidylcholine (PC) and phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) are the most abundant phospholipids in all mammalian cell membranes. In the 1950s, Eugene Kennedy and co-workers performed groundbreaking research that established the general outline of many of the pathways of phospholipid biosynthesis.
In recent years, the importance of phospholipid metabolism in regulating lipid, lipoprotein and whole-body energy metabolism has been demonstrated in numerous dietary studies and knockout animal models. The purpose of this review is to highlight the unappreciated impact of phospholipid metabolism on health and disease.
Abnormally high, and abnormally low, cellular PC/PE molar ratios in various tissues can influence energy metabolism and have been linked to disease progression.
In mitochondria, changes in the PC/PE molar ratio affect energy production. We highlight data showing that changes in the PC and/or PE content of various tissues are implicated in metabolic disorders such as atherosclerosis, insulin resistance and obesity.

This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Membrane Lipid Therapy: Drugs Targeting Biomembranes edited by Pablo V. Escribá.

I’m completely infatuated with Augustinus Bader’s The Cream. While I wouldn’t personally classify it as “the greatest skincare product of all time,” it is a damn good product and just may be the best anti-aging moisturizer I’ve ever experienced. Aside from sunscreen, that is.

SHOP THE BLOG: Try it for yourself! Purchase the Augustinus Bader The Cream for $265 here.

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If you’ve been as intrigued by Augustinus Bader as I’ve been, I hope you can see that while luxury anti-aging is often little more than marketing spin — as with WWD’s second greatest skincare prospect of all time, Creme de la Mer’s The Moisturizing Cream — on rare occasion, it’s legit.

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