You Don't Know Joe
But he's a woman's anti-aging secret weapon
You're involved, perhaps deeply, with Joe A. Lewis, even though the two of you have never met. Look in your medicine cabinet or handbag. If it contains a product with alpha-hydroxy acid, idebenone, or coffeeberry, you're likely relying on Lewis to put your best face forward. The whip-smart Southerner scouted these ingredients for some of skin care's most promising products—MD Formulations, Prevage, and more. That's why in the beauty industry, he's not just a chemist, he's the king of cosmeceuticals.
Lewis is a bit of an overachiever. He has 20 years' experience as a skin-care and pharmaceutical product formulator. While earning a degree in chemistry, he also majored in biology and physics, and minored in math. That he's somewhat of a trade secret, and not a brand name like many dermatologists, has less to do with modesty than with his behind-the-scenes mission: finding new anti-aging ingredients in scientific backwaters (read: academic laboratories, often unrelated to cosmetic chemistry) and bringing them into skin-care's big time. What's different about Lewis is that rather than use his findings to build his own product range, which he's just now begun to do with his spa brand Priori, he's made a business out of backing others'.
Portraits by James Salzano
