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Most of us familiar with your brand know that it’s inspired by grapes. What about the fruit inspires you?

The grape [vine flower] only blossoms three days per year. It’s usually in May or June, and you know that the harvest will be 110 days after, so this flower is very much respected. There’s a big celebration in the vineyard, of the flower blossoming of the grapevine. And this flower smells exactly like our instant foaming cleanser.

What made you think you could launch a whole beauty line using the grape as a starting point? What made you believe in that vision?

At the time, my husband – then boyfriend – wanted to create his own company. I wanted to work in beauty. And we met with this professor [Joseph Vercauteren] from the university [Pharmacy University of Bordeaux], who was fascinating. He told us, “I’m going to put on the market a medication made with grape seed, polyphenol. It’s so strong as an antioxidant.”

My parents had tons of grape seeds at their disposal. We were the first ones to use a patent and stabilise grape seed extract. Why did we believe in that? All because of this professor who told us, it’s 10,000 times more effective than vitamin E. And vitamin E was the gold standard as far as antioxidation is concerned. Oxidation is what makes you age.

Speaking of ageing, there seems to be a shift in the beauty industry recently, where we’re all about celebrating natural ageing. But obviously we still want youthful-looking skin, right?

Oxidation is all about that. You have to start early because you don’t want to let your skin oxidise. You need to protect it, to put it in a bubble, and then you will age in a more healthy way and more gracefully. I lived in New York, and American people are tough with their skin. They use a lot of retinol even though they’re too young, their skin is too thin to use retinol, too much AHA.

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So now that’s why [skin] barrier repair is a big thing, because they have damaged their skin so much. I think it’s a balance. You shouldn’t be excessive. Retinol will [give] you beautiful skin, but then the side effects are not good. You’ll peel, you’ll have redness with the sun, it’s going to be a disaster.

How do you tailor your brand marketing to reach out to skincare beginners who don’t know about all this?

I think younger generations are a little bit more familiar with sustainability as well, which is key to your brand, right? I feel like they’re more inclined to shop brands that are in line with their values.

It’s my kids who told me, “Mummy, you have to remove plastic from your packaging.” So we did as much as we could. I hired a team of green packaging engineers. And we redid 100 per cent of our packaging to make sure that the material we used was recycled, recyclable, refillable. There is still plastic there because we don’t know how to remove that. Aluminium, it breaks. But we’re working on it. One day, [we] will hopefully be plastic-free.

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You’re now celebrating 10 years here in Hong Kong! What have you learned?

Let’s talk about the new products. Can you take us through the technological advancements behind them?

The technology is a collagen which is, for the first time, produced by a plant. It stimulates three collagens. Our skin is 90 per cent made up of collagen, and out of the 18 collagens we have, 90 per cent is Collagen 1. So the plant, with our mRNA technology, produced a fragment of human Collagen 1, which would be the size of a mini-hyaluronic acid. It’s so small that it does penetrate, and it’s going to stimulate not only Collagen 1, but also Collagen 4 and Collagen 18. And the concentration of the serum is three times more effective than retinol to lift and firm. That’s great, because it doesn’t have the side effects of retinol.

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So there is this new technology, Vegan Collagen 1, but also the Harvard University patent. We did partner with Dr. [David] Sinclair and Harvard University, and we filed a patent on an association of resveratrol, hyaluronic acid and a collagen booster.

When you use the Cashmere daily moisturiser [Resveratrol-Lift Firming Cashmere Cream], 98 per cent of volunteers saw firmer skin in less than three weeks. The concentration of the serum [Resveratrol-Lift Instant Firming Serum] has three times more Vegan Collagen 1, but also two times more resveratrol from [the] grapevine. And we have refills.

We had another collection called Premier Cru that launched at the beginning of the year for the first time with refills. And it was a big success. Now in Europe, 70 per cent of the sales of this line are refills.

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Last but certainly not least, even as more of the beauty industry turns to “clean” products, much of it is still clogged by chemically driven products, too many of which consumers are being told to buy left and right. How do you cut through all the noise to focus on what’s important? What are your own personal skincare essentials?

Our cleansing oil is Caudalie’s best-kept secret, our most underrated product. I like the instant foaming cleanser, the one which smells like the vine flower. And then a bit of Beauty Elixir, anti-dark spot serum.