Is ‘Collagen Banking’ A Marketing Myth?

‘Collagen banking’ appears to be spring’s biggest beauty buzzword, with everyone covering the trending take on anti-ageing – one which speaks to a preventative approach.

Though it feels it, we in the industry know the concept isn’t new. I first wrote about it when investigating the aesthetic trends that would be big for 2020 (though the pandemic rained on the parade of beauty treatments that year) but have heard cosmetic doctors extoll the benefits of collagen regenerating practices my whole career. It wasn’t until a recent Vogue Business article, aligning collagen banking with pseudoscience (instead of positioning it as “the ULTIMATE key to maintaining ageless looks”, a la the Daily Mail), that I questioned the validity of the concept.

“It’s old science that has been twisted out into pseudoscience,” beauty culture critic Jessica DeFino is quoted as saying in the Vogue Business piece. She acknowledges the fate of collagen – which naturally declines with age – but doesn’t feel there’s any new science to back up the idea of ‘banking’ it. The conclusion? While we may be confident that certain products, ingestibles and treatments stimulate collagen production, there’s no concrete evidence showing our bodies can hoard it for later in life.

Do the experts you work with know differently? Or is that beside the point? I think we can all agree that courting more collagen is possible, and desirable for reasons even beyond chasing bouncy skin. But perhaps what’s important here is that we practice caution with how, exactly, we promote it.