How does it work?
Ingredients delivered into the skin using drones?! It sounds like a joke, which is exactly why skincare biochemist and formulator Nausheen Quereshi wishes the industry would come up with a less contentious term. “It makes customers distrust skincare claims!” she despairs. “But ‘drone’ delivery is a fancy marketing term for technology that has been used in medicine for well over a decade, and in skincare science for quite a few years.”
Facialist Pietro Simone explains it as follows: “It pushes an active ingredient’s level of penetration to a whole new level. Ingredients are placed in a microscopic capsule made of an inner matrix and an outer shell with a ‘marker’ or ‘drone’ peptide bound to it. It functions as a sort of intercellular SatNav and will target specific types of cells.” Encapsulated like this, actives such as peptides and retinoids can slide through the stratum corneum and past digestive enzymes and other ‘roadblocks’ that normally prevent ingredients from getting very far, Simone believes.
Nausheen is less convinced: “Skincare is always surface level and not medicine, so take claims about dermal penetration with a pinch of salt,” she says. “Drone technology helps improve ingredient delivery, but not to miraculous levels.”
What are the results?
Basically, whatever your product’s claims are (plumper skin, faded pigmentation….), it will be more efficient if drone delivery is incorporated. Simone says “I’ve tried thousands of products and technologies and the results I see with drone delivery are more structurally visible, deeper and longer-lasting.”.
What does it cost?
Fierce by Pietro Simone Dewy Reboot Serum, is £85. Medik8 Liquid Peptides, £45, and Sarah Chapman Icon Day Smartsome A2 X503, £92, are just two other products with drone tech.
The Micro Spray-on
Patented by beauty tech company Reduit, ultrasonic diffusion and magnetic misting technology are two technologies combined in a handheld device that together are said to make skincare penetrate 300% more efficiently.
How does it work?
Held in small, sealed pods are skincare serums made up of micronised (ultra-tiny) actives that are free from fixatives and other ‘filler’ ingredients that can prevent topical products from getting beyond the stratum corneum because their molecules are so large.
Placed in a Reduit device, the filler-free emulsions are diffused with the help of ultrasound waves as a super-fine mist of micro-droplets (50x smaller than those in your average mist). They then get ‘pushed’ into skin via ‘magnetic waveforms’ – er, what?!
“Basically, a magnetic coil in the device and the water (which has its own magnetic field) in the emulsion repel each other,” says Paul Perros of Reduit. “It creates a pressurised force field that drives the product beyond skin’s protective barrier.”
What are the results?
As with drone technology, the claim is that results are whatever your emulsion promises to do, only better and faster than a regular bottle of serum would manage. Reduit offers anti-blemish, brightening, moisturising, protective and anti-ageing serums, and five hair serums as well.
What does it cost?
Reduit devices are from £87.35, while the emulsions cost from £28.90 for 40 applications.