ALLIES OF SKIN: LOCAL GROOMING BRAND

It takes a bold man to quit the rat race. But it takes a special kind of bravery to clash head on with the grooming juggernauts in the industry. Nicolas Travis founded Allies of Skin late last year with one product ‒ the 1A All-Day Mask. It was a runaway success. Buoyed, Travis launched a few more products this year. He tells us more about his unique approach to skin care.

Allies of Skin’s products are unisex but I’ve always been told that men’s and women’s skins are different and require dissimilar products.

We approached it from a basic physiological manner. Skin is skin; the same way lungs are lungs and hearts are hearts. You don’t have a different doctor or a different health requisite if you have a male heart. The parameters for healthy skin is the same regardless of gender. All our products were tested extensively on all genders in their 20s to 60s.

So you don’t have any plans to launch a separate men’s range?

No. Very often, these separate ranges don’t differ much save for the marketing and packaging. There’s a lot of noise in the marketplace and we don’t want to contribute to that. We don’t see a need to have a separate range whose only purpose is to look more masculine or feminine.

What are common mistakes made by men in their grooming routines?

The most common is not giving a new product enough time for it to work. In today’s society, it’s tough to not subscribe to instant gratification but it actually takes a product four to 12 weeks to work. The other one is mistaking dehydration for oiliness. When skin is dehydrated, it produces sebum to compensate. That means one needs to hydrate instead of mattifying the skin. Healthy skin feels balanced and comfortable, not squeaky clean and tight.