MIT Just Helped Develop a Product to Diminish Under Eye Bags
By Macaela Mackenzie. Photos: Hannah Choi/Allure; Courtesy of Olivo Labs.
Nothing saps your glow quite like puffy, tired under-eye bags. You can conceal and highlight with all the finesse of Kylie Jenner at her most glam and pump your a.m. routine full of peptides, but totally defeat and depuff those suckers you shall not. Until now, that is.
We’ve been trying to solve the puffiness problem for years — one late night or a.m. caffeine shortage can suddenly leave you looking sullen and several years older, thanks to puffy, sagging skin. But the brains at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may have just cracked it with new technology they're calling "liquid Spanx," reports WWD.
The new technology is what we’d call a real beauty game-changer. Using compression technology in the form of silicone-based polymers, the product all but eradicates puffiness in the skin by creating a second skin-like film.
Here’s how it works: First you dab a layer on your bags. Let it sit for a minute. Then apply layer two, which is where the magic happens. According to the researchers, this second layer of polymer adheres to the first, creating a hardened film that tightens the skin — you can literally watch your pesky bags depuff. And it gets better. Formulated with blurring and mattifying effects that help to conceal dark circles, the product would be easy to pull off solo and will also work with a layer of powder makeup on top. To remove the film, which comes off as a single sheet, all you need is an oil-based makeup remover.
The depuffing technology was first introduced in 2016, and while this latest iteration has been formulated specifically to target under-eye issues, the science could also have major implications for other skin plights like cellulite.
The science behind it is legit. The game changing technology is the brain child of Olivo Labs led by Robert Langer, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT (and the most cited engineer in history, NBD), who has received the United States National Medal of Science, the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation and the award considered the equivalent of the Nobel prize for engineering. Yeah, nerd out on that for a second. He’s also a cofounder of Living Proof and was part of the brains behind its arsenal of super science for your hair.
Naturally, with a list of credentials like Langer’s and majorly impressive results, the depuffing tech is already the subject of a beauty bidding war. “The big question for a company like ours is do we develop it on our own, or among the people that are potentially wooing us," Olivo's CEO, Amy Schulman told WWD. "Do we find there’s one partner that we really think has the ability to develop this the way we want around the world?” According to Schulman, the product is “ready to go,” so it’s just a matter of working out all the sticky business details before we see it on the market. Now if only there was a magic cream for that.
This story originally appeared on Allure.
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