​​​​​​​Name Drop

HOW DID AN ANTI-AGING CREAM CONCOCTED BY AN UNKNOWN GERMAN DOCTOR ACHIEVE CULT STATUS?

- Jamie Rosen

The story opens with a German scientist, Augustinus Bader, director and professor of applied stem cell biology and cell technology at the University of Leipzig, who is on a mission to heal children who have suffered serious burns. In 2008 he develops a landmark cure, a hydrogel that repairs traumatic wounds by recruiting the body’s own dormant stem cells, thus eliminating the need for skin grafts. The good doctor holds more than 200 patents but faces one big obstacle: a lack of funds to carry on his research properly. The solution? A luxury skin cream using similar technology but marketed to women willing to pay $265 a bottle for its wound-healing (and wrinkle-smoothing) benefits.

But even that finely constructed tale barely explains how the work of Augustinus Bader and his eponymous miracle cream (a modern-day La Mer story if ever there was one) wound up not just in the hands of every starlet, stylist, and makeup artist in Hollywood but on the shortlist of every skincare junkie’s must-have items.

The birth of 2018’s buzziest beauty product really goes back to Bader’s introduction to biotech investor Charles Rosier. The two are put in touch in 2011 by Robert Friedland, a mining billionaire.