111Skin's Eva Alexandridis: Longevity Is Not New, Just Newly Wanted

111Skin was building science-led longevity skin care in Dubai in 2007 — years before IV drips and peptides became the beauty industry's buzzwords. At last week's WWD x SKP Global Fashion & Beauty Summit, hosted in partnership with SKP, cofounder and chief creative officer Eva Alexandridis and Olivia de Rothschild, artistic director of Parfums Caron and founder of Oli's Lab, sat down with Miles Socha, international editor at WWD, to talk longevity and instinct-driven entrepreneurship.

Alexandridis placed 111Skin at the origin of the trend, not behind it.

"The very first product we created was looking at how to recover the skin post- and pre-surgery, and this whole process is looking at longevity. You are looking to enhance the results long term. What's recent is that now people are looking at the long-term quality of the skin, longer life, and not at instant results," Alexandridis said.

What does the Estée Lauder investment change?

Not the working dynamic, according to Alexandridis. She said her husband, a surgeon practicing mostly in London for the past 20 years, remains focused on medicine while his clinical expertise feeds 111Skin. The recent investment from Estée Lauder has not altered that husband-and-wife arrangement.

"They [Estée Lauder] have been extremely generous with the knowledge that they provide. We had access to a lot of experts, but we choose how to use the advice available to us, and I think the balance that I have to strike is really knowing how to take all the expertise available but adapt it to 111Skin so it serves the trajectory we want to pursue," Alexandridis said.

She added that maintaining distinct areas of expertise, learning from advisers and drawing inspiration from her management team have kept her pace steady.

Why did de Rothschild build Oli's Lab?

De Rothschild, 24, started her career at age 9, working for Azzedine Alaïa. Her eureka moment for Oli's Lab, a beauty retail platform, came while picking a friend's brain for beauty recommendations. She realized skin care routines sound jargon-heavy and hard to navigate.

"I think the market is very oversaturated. I think it's very unreadable for consumers. I think people use very different vocabularies, which can create too large a distance. My hope for Oli's Lab is to connect with consumers again," de Rothschild said.

Her philosophy traces back further. "When I was small, I was exposed to traditional Chinese massage. It radically changed my view on self care. It's always about taking care of yourself before the problem starts attacking you," she said.

How do you modernize a 1934 perfume house?

Parfums Caron, founded in 1934 as a convention-breaking perfume marketed specifically for men, was acquired by the Rothschild family's Cattleya Finance in 2018. De Rothschild now leads its recasting, and she frames the task as a sociological inquiry rather than a burden.

"I'm fortunate enough to come from a family with immense history. I never had this feeling of weight from it. It's more of a sociological inquiry — thinking of Caron, a perfume that initially used vanilla, a traditionally feminine scent, and thinking of its approach to masculinity back then," de Rothschild said.

"I think men have an easier time living, which makes me think about temporality and larger questions such as societal value and asking myself, 'What's my take on it?' By answering those questions, I think that's how you can actively contribute to the world at large," she said.

For brands racing into longevity now, Alexandridis's message is pointed: the category rewards those who were solving long-term skin quality before it sold, not those chasing instant results after.