Fashion
One Man’s Quest to Make Luxury Sunblock
Dermatologist Antony Nakhla created a beauty brand for his clients who include some of Southern California’s most pampered people. But he wondered: Could he also get them to use sunscreen?
Before he introduced his skin care line, Dr. Antony Nakhla, a Newport Beach, Calif. based dermatologist, would frequently vet the products his patients were using. More often than not, he was unimpressed.
“I was taken aback by how much these things cost and what was actually in them,” he said, sitting in a small outdoor area at the Whitby Hotel on a recent trip to New York. “If you buy a Lamborghini and you look under the hood, I can tell you why it costs this much,” he added. “With luxury products and skin care, when you look at the ingredient list, there’s really nothing in there of real value.”
Dr. Nakhla wanted to develop something worth the money. So in 2016, thinking of starting his own brand, he began researching ingredients. He created what he calls a “Peptide-rich Plasma” — a patent-pending mix of laboratory-produced extracts that he said are identical, on a molecular level, to what’s already in human skin. Peptides can help hide the skin’s signs of aging, which often become more pronounced as aging skin begins to lose collagen.
When he was satisfied with the formulas, with the high concentration of active ingredients and patented technology that is typically why certain brands cost more than drugstore ones, Dr. Nakhla invested several hundred thousand dollars of his own money to start his company, hoping that the business could go from “expensive science project to enterprise,” he said.
He named the company Eighth Day to express his view that, “you look best when you look like yourself, and that beauty transcends time,” he said.
