Big beauty brands are going all in on longevity. Here’s what I learned

New York (CNN) — A Lancome employee recently swabbed under my eyes and took a hyper-zoomed photo of my forehead, already shiny and flaking. Then she inserted my protein samples into the company’s Cell BioPrint machine, which gave its verdict in horrifying, flashy red letters: I was suffering from accelerated aging.

Though I was born 27 years ago, I supposedly had the skin of someone who was 28. Not bad, I thought, until I saw I was already at an elevated risk for sagging skin and pores.

That’s how I was introduced to Lancome’s first foray into longevity products. Instead of making you look younger and correcting existing issues, longevity products seek to preserve and maintain the health of your body’s largest organ, the skin.

Instead of correcting issues like dark spots and wrinkles, longevity focuses on “how we age and what (causes) the root cause of aging,” Vania Lacascade, Lancome’s global brand president, told CNN. She called it a “proactive approach.”

Longevity has become the biggest buzzword of 2026 for skincare influencers, who urge their followers to preserve their youth while they can:

• “You have to listen to me,” a Seoul-based influencer stressed to her almost 450,000 followers. “Around 25 is when your skin starts to age.”
• “You have to have products that protect your barrier, and feed your barrier, at all costs,” said another influencer with more than 500,000 followers.
• “Longevity skincare is about to be everything,” Skin by Kristin, a popular esthetician online with nearly 700,000 followers, said in a sponsored video in May.

Simply put, it’s not enough to have a 10-step nighttime skincare routine anymore.

But longevity medicine is an emerging field, and it isn’t an official medical specialty in the United States. It can be ripe with disinformation not backed by science, and critics argue it is an anti-aging rebrand. Beauty brands like Lancome say that longevity products are about embracing aging gracefully and that it’s not a negative thing to do so.

But “anti-aging” has always been a part of medicine, and it’s not going anywhere even with a shiny new term, dermatologist Dr. Macrene Alexiades told me when asked about the line. She had consulted Lancome in the past and has her own skincare line.

“Aging is just the term we use to describe the changes that happen to cells, tissues and organisms with the passage of time,” Alexiades said.

Lancome launched its biggest skincare line in two decades around longevity. Its Absolute Longevity MD line uses a supplement called Mitopure to help speed up the body’s renewal of mitochondria for healthy skin at the cellular level.

And it isn’t just being marketed to middle aged and older consumers, but young buyers, too.

At an event last month in New York’s Financial District, Lancome presented everything I expected in an influencer event: photo opportunities, free facials and a wall display explaining the science behind longevity products. New technologies such as an upcoming LED mask were displayed like artifacts in the museum, as if we were the pioneers in humanity’s attempt to stop the inevitable .

“What if you could choose your age?” the marketing for the event said.

I got my results from the Cell BioPrint just a few minutes in. The diagnostic machine was an imposing white block that hid whatever it did with the droplet of my proteins and mystery fluid inside. The company said it partnered with South Korean startup NanoEnTek to develop the technology.

The good news: My skin barrier is well intact, and my wrinkle prevention is at 99%. But there were problem areas: pores and texture (I knew that!) and elasticity loss (do I already have jowls?). Lancome also recommended products based on my skin assessment.

Wellness is everywhere

It’s impossible to escape the word “longevity,” with wellness influencers pushing everything from gray-market peptides to salmon-sperm-infused skincare. Beauty conglomerates like L’Oreal and Shiseido are shifting their strategies to meet the moment online, where preventative Botox in your 20s has become the norm.

But the fountain of youth has always been sought at the bottom of a container of skincare cream. Ancient oils and perfumed creams have morphed over the centuries into modern anti-aging products, and now, according to brands like Lancome – it’s longevity.

L’Oreal, Lancome’s parent company, described longevity as “undoubtedly the strongest of all trends” in its April earnings call.

This new age of beauty, proponents said, is about keeping your skin fresh in the long term rather than freaking about the appearance of aging in the present.

“Never said 32 is old nor aging is a bad thing!” the caption in the Seoul-based influencer’s video claimed.

Alexiades, the dermatologist, told CNN that much of the tonal shift around skincare boils down to a rebrand. Medicine has always been about preventing or reversing the degradation of cells and tissues, she said.

“Longevity is just the new quote ‘anti-aging’ term that people are throwing around right now,” Alexiades told CNN.

In my case, Alexiades said that some people are simply more genetically predisposed to sagging skin as they grow older. There could be a future where longevity medicine is tailored to combat that down the road, “but we’re not there yet,” she said.

And calculating your biological age in itself is an emerging field, and experts warn that consumers should be cautious when buying such tests from companies.

A rapidly growing industry

Longevity skincare creates the perfect meeting point between accessibility and luxury.

The quest to live forever is often associated with the wealthy, whether it’s paying out-of-pocket for full-body scans at private clinics or red light therapy appointments. Skincare is typically cheaper than those measures, and one that consumers are already willing to invest in.

Mintel, a consumer research agency, found that 65% of all US consumers are saying that they’re focused on their wellness more than they were a year ago, and longevity is the term that’s fueling that industry.

Products that help skin renew itself make up nearly 12% of all professional-grade skincare spending at places like US med spas and cosmetic treatment clinics in 2026, up from around 7% in 2023, according to healthcare data company Guidepoint Qsight. More than a third of US skincare practices now offer exosome skincare, a cellular-level treatment that promises to reduce the appearance of wrinkles.

Li said Lancome is able to keep consumers spending through every stage of their life, with products for early age, mid-age and mature age. My recommended products were for early age consumers to prevent signs of aging like sagging skin.

The average price for skincare purchase at a US med-aesthetics practice is about $98, according to Guidepoint QSight. But the check goes up to roughly $198 for regenerative skincare, which falls under longevity. For comparison, the two products recommended to me by Lancome were $155 and $175.

Can your skin really live forever?

Controlling your health and vitality can cause panic, especially with an endless flood of warning signs by wellness influencers on social media. In just one scroll on TikTok, I learned that I should’ve started preventative Botox at least four years ago.

Though it may just be semantics, the word “longevity” does bring up conversations on what it means to age well. Longevity skincare can challenge anti-aging language, which can be agist and unhealthy.

At the same time, my introduction to longevity skincare made me hyper-fixate on just how fast I was getting older, no matter what a calendar said. I took the train home from the Lancome event in silence, ruminating on the knowledge that years of a prescription-grade retinol didn’t do much to aid in the long-term depletion of my skin.

Though I’m not convinced my biological age is exactly 28, the test did succeed in making me reflect about my skin’s longterm health – the point of Lancome’s pivot. I’m not ready to inject myself with peptides regularly, but if a quick gua sha routine will pay off in 20 years, why not?

That anxiety – and the solution for it – seems to be the basis of Lancome’s pitch.

“It’s about taking the agency, the knowledge, to take care of your skin the right way,” Lacascade told me.

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