Simply fantastic. These two words, as simple as they sound, are what Rationale skincare products — of which there are six lines and a set of sunscreens — make you and your skin feel. They don’t purport a plastic-like Instagram-filter look, like some American products. Or, feel heavy and overtly butyraceous, like the ones found in European brands. What a relief to the time-starved lives we live where the seconds and minutes we spend could be put to better use. The products are quiet too in their design as they sit quite beautifully on your table, an antidote to the gaudy things made for cultural cache.
The idea that a product could be as efficacious as it is beautifully designed with one simple statement is ironic, given that for years that skincare has to scream at you to add it to cart. However, the founder of Rationale, Richard Parker firstly believes that all three go hand in hand (Fun fact: his favourite music piece is Dappled Light by Luke Howard). Good skin is happy skin. It should be clear, dewy, glowing and if you’re planning to use it to turn back time then he has one reply for you. “We’re not saying that looking young is good because aging is always going to happen. You can’t look young forever but you can be beautiful or handsome at any age.”
Welcome to the Rationale flagship store at Raffles City.
With just 30 words, Parker has explained the entire rationale of each skincare product one can use from Rationale: it’s empathetic in a way that synthesises how we want our skincare with what we want it to do. “Rationale is a medical term that means the reason we do something. I wanted everything that people used on their skin to be used for a reason. For example, why do people use essences? They might not know which is why I wanted our clients to understand the reason and to visibly see the effects which is why I called it Rationale: reason with visible evidence.”
“We never follow trends because it’s all about studying the skin. The human skin is the starting point for me and my research library is my guiding light. I don’t know what else is out there but all I know is that we have to keep focusing on human skin. If something goes on and the skin condition presents itself to us, how do we respond? The starting point is to identify what went wrong and what is missing. It’s also recognising what the skin produces naturally and needs and whether it is deficient in. For example, vitamins C, A, E, and zinc: all the basic human nutrients also apply to the skin. We like to think of Rationale as topical skin nutrition.”
Lest you call Parker’s vision and skincare products of Rationale minimalist or “cold” however, that can not be further from the truth. For the former, the #3 The Tinted Serum SPF50+ is weighty in its heft (“Aesthetics come into play because if a packaging feels flimsy, you might not think it’s good. If the packaging feels substantial, you’d recognise it as a quality product inside and out.”) and heavier in results. One drop dispenses a lightweight fluid that provides a natural glow to the skin with buildable coverage. Most importantly, it settles into a non-tacky finish that soothes irritation and smoothens over dry patches. For the latter, you might just be used to the cacophony of the chorus from a marketing department. Each of Rationale’s products is subtly designed to telegraph what it should do for you. It is again, as Parker says, designed to explain the efficacy through elegance.
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“You can have the best products in the world but if you don’t think it’s beautiful, you won’t want to use it. A lot of thought goes into it: good design should be something that is accessible and appealing but has an enormous amount of thought and research put into it. That’s one of the reasons why people hate to use sunscreens: they don’t feel good to use. My mission was to create one that was so beautiful that they’d feel compelled to use it even if they weren’t out in the sun. Our packaging is also a special kind of ceramic designed to protect the product that has UV properties. Our products are optimised to even last for up to two years once you open them.”
Increasingly in recent times, my fellow beauty and grooming editors have recognised that science is the ultimate commodification of skincare luxury. More specifically, we want to know the exact how, what and why of a product we are using. At Rationale, it’s all about two kinds used in its skincare that Parker has kindly simplified (it helps too, that the beating heart of the brand’s office is its laboratory). The first is the brand’s backing in dermatological science, a nose-to-the-book study of dermatological science where the human skin is closely studied. The second is cosmetic science. “What is unique to us at Rationale is that we combine both sciences so it’s about the active ingredients and the delivery system that is customised to where you are in the world and what your skin condition is. We talk a lot about skin geocentricity because your skin will behave differently where you are in the world. Those sorts of considerations are what sets us apart and truly create a new definition of science where efficacy and elegance are equally important.”
What marks Parker as a visionary however would be that he thinks and speaks in movements and not trends. Frankly, I entered the conversation we had expecting to Google some terms he might say, and while he is happy to simplify them for me (“The concept of epigenetics is hopeful and simple. Genetics are what you are born with and epigenetics is like a series of on-or-off switches. For example, you might have inherited the “acne gene” but if you do the right things, that gene will not get activated. It’s about being in control.”), he tells me that one of the things that matter most to him is how the products work: three simple rules when creating a Rationale product.
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“Firstly, a delivery system used in skincare has to factor in the active ingredients which is what you need to achieve skin clarity and integrity. Secondly, we have to look at how we apply that. For example, what is the best vehicle system for Vitamin B-group actives? We have to look at how to penetrate the skin barrier to deliver the active ingredients into the right skin tissue because it’s designed to keep things out. The final thing is to consider how it makes the skin look and feel. Nothing is worse than putting oily products on oily skin in a hot climate and nobody likes that look but everybody wants to be glowy and dewy. The aesthetics are just as important as all the scientific considerations.”
“Say, for example, we look at a new condition and derive that “people are getting breakouts from wearing masks so what has that changed about skin physiology?”. It means that there is a change in the air quality they breathe in which creates an environment where the skin is more alkaline which leads to breakouts. Our #5 The Serum is the perfect example as it breathes the skin back to its normal pH levels and you’ll stop breaking out. It’s a very logical thought process that can be reached quickly. Most cosmetic companies of our size or bigger are driven by marketing departments and we’ve never behaved like them because these methods are always short-term. We have a strong marketing department but our marketing people see it as an educational process.”
“If I can be really honest with you, if you’re mixing your skincare then it’s probably the Rationale product that is doing all the work. Interestingly, when we started the brand, we were the only ones on the playing field but in the last five years, I got worried about how to compete with newer brands. But we’re playing the long game as our Essential Six series were formulated to work with every other formulation. Most of our clients come to us after trying everything out in the market so we need to deliver results. Secretly, they’ll start to see results within a month but I usually tell them a year because they’re always happy when they see it sooner. Under promising and over-delivering is what we love to do.”
Echoing the effiacy and elegance of Rationale itself, their spa cabins are immacutely designed with their Signature Skin Consultation available at its Raffles City Flagship in Singapore.
Just last year, I interviewed a scientific director about what I termed “skin cell communication“, an investigation on what I’d term as what our skin cells need to “talk” to each other to perform at their best. When they’re chatty and companionable, they do everything from improving radiance to reduce the appearance of dark spots. When they’re feeling grumpy and unsociable, they become recluses as they cut communication off. What puts them into a good mood however, would be what you’re “feeding” them with. More specifically, would be the “ingredients” they need to be “fed” with to cultivate conversations. In Rationale’s case with its skincare, it would be a term they coined topical skin nutrition and how Parker has recognised that our skin can sometimes be deficient in nutrients for it to do its job.
“Human skin has nutritional needs like the rest of our body — vitamins, minerals, and lipids — but often with skin disease, one of these nutrients is deficient. By putting them back, but not always, you can very often restore the skin to health just by using the right ingredients. The time needed depends but you’ll know if you’re going in the right direction usually within a month. However, for example, acne is graded from a scale of one to 10 and if they’re at a five, we send them to a dermatologist before helping them maintain clarity. It’s about knowing when they need medical help and when they should be using our products. Skincare can do a lot but it can’t do everything. We have a rule of thumb at Rationale: if a patient doesn’t get results within a month then it means they need medication.”
“Our promise to our clients is that if they give us the first hour for that consultation then they’d get luminous skin for life. The journey might not be what they expect — a visit to the doctor or starting with just one product — but our commitment would be for life. People are seeking out their own visions of beauty now and people now just want to be their best versions of themselves. That is a journey of self-education and knowledge which I think is beautiful.”
A businessman who is experiencing joy while delivering joy (“I’m 62 now and when people ask me when I’m going to retire, I tell them that I love what I do because I’m having too much fun.”), a deep-thinker, a zeitgeist shaper and frankly, a man who has made a skincare gamechanger — the 30 minutes I had with Richard Parker proves the hunch I had right. He is a man who thinks about what makes a man or woman truly beautiful. He is also a soul is greatly inspired by these modern times we live in. And ultimately, it’s all about a set of products that work. And frankly speaking, isn’t that what most brand founders ever hope to say?
Once you’re done with this story about Richard Parker and the genius of Rationale skincare, click here to catch up with our February 2022 issue!
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