Beauty history: the cosmetics of the Princess of Monaco, Grace Kelly

Grace Kelly was one of the most beautiful women in the world: her thin features, perfect smile, golden hair and porcelain skin, as well as her sure acting talent, made the great director Alfred Hitchcock fall in love with Grace Kelly, who wanted in his most famous films, from The perfect crime to The rear windowuntil Catch the thiefall filmed between 1954 and 1955.

The following year the young American star, who had recently won an Oscar for The country girlmarried Prince Rainier of Monaco and retired to private life, putting an end to her brilliant career as an actress to begin that of a princess: role which he played irreproachably until his death, which occurred prematurely in 1982, at just 52 years of age, in a dramatic car accident on the same corniche of the French Riviera where he had filmed the well-known scenes of Catch the thiefin the car driven by the irresistible Cary Grant.

The beauty of Graceso elegant and seductive at the same time, so much so that Hitchcock defined it as “Hot Ice”, had a secret: Lancaster products. The history of the princess is in fact intertwined with that of the cosmetics created in Monaco since 1946 by the chemist Eugène Frezzati and the entrepreneur George Wurz.

From the first products developed in a completely artisanal way in the garage of a villa in Monte Carlo to today’s large industry, taken over in 1996 by the multinational Coty, the brand has never stopped being innovative and cutting-edge: FrezzedIndeed, he understood that the skin has self-repair capabilities, which need to be stimulated with appropriate active ingredients. The concept had been transmitted to him by the pioneering studies of a Russian ophthalmologist, Vladimir Petrovic Filatov, who in previous years had first discovered the possibility of self-regeneration of damaged tissues of the eye and had extended this principle to all the other organs of the body .

So it was that Frezzati thought of formulating a youth cream with human placenta extracts, to help the skin renew itself. He was born in 1947 Crème Embryonnairewhich certainly could not be marketed today. But the success was notable and allowed Frezzati and his partner to move forward with their research.

The two partners then developed a series of cosmetics, from day to night creams, from those for the hands to those for the body.

Living in Monte Carlo, in a sunny area for many months of the year and seeing many female faces afflicted by wrinkles, dark spots and loss of elasticity, Frezzati became convinced that exposure to UV rays played a decisive role in skin aging. After many attempts, went on to produce the brand’s first complete range of anti-aging sun cosmetics in the 1970s.

And that’s not all. This brilliant scholar he was the first to include retinol in a facial cream in 1976that is, the precursor of vitamin A which is still considered the most effective anti-wrinkle active ingredient we have. Furthermore, in the following years, other useful principles were introduced into the formula, from oxygen to complex tanning accelerators.

A brand, therefore, that has an aristocratic DNAwe would say almost princely, because it was born in a fairytale place, by the sea and because since 1965 it was officially Princess Grace’s trusted cosmetic range. But in reality it has always been a brand of excellent productsof great scientific depth. This characteristic is not denied even today: on the contrary, the most recent anti-aging skincare line, Golden Lift, summarizes all the researchers’ expertise who work in the Munich laboratories.

To counteract photoaging, 80% of which is caused by exposure to sunlight, they have in fact focused their attention on the possibility of stimulate the creation of new collagen and the regeneration of elastic fibres, so as to deeply firm the skinstrengthen it and relax it: they have therefore included both in the formula a d-peptide complexwhich increases the production of elastin by 158%, both of the encapsulated retinol in lipid particles (cationic liposomes) with a magnet effect, which reach deep down, stimulating the production of new collagen, together with retinal vectorizedfor 50% more collagen production.

There are four products in the range: the Modeling Creamthe Modeling Cream with SPF 15The Firming SerumAnd the Eye Lifting Cream. The two face creams contain a high concentration of encapsulated retinol and D-Peptide Complex, which firms, sculpts volumes, fills wrinkles, nourishes the epidermis and minimizes dark spots, the serum also has a bacillus ferment lifting, while the eye contour contains caffeine, gingko biloba, horse chestnut and pigmented fillers, which reduce bags and dark circles. They are all worth trying an anti-aging, lifting and firming effect, already visible in two weeks.