Thomas Elliott Rabe

Development of a semi‐permanent mascara technology

Many women would like their mascara beauty benefits to be available all day, every day. One way to address this desire is through a semi‐permanent mascara technology that provides full mascara benefits of long, dark beautiful lashes for multiple days. To date, products promising multi‐day benefits have acted more as either ‘lash dyes’, providing a lash darkening benefit but failing to provide fullness and length, or waterproof mascaras that do not maintain the initial beauty look over multiple days. Here, a formulation approach is described for a mascara product that is designed to be abrasion resistant, flexible and insoluble in soap and water so that the initial beauty look is maintained for multiple days. The new semi‐permanent formula technology uses rosinate polymers that have a superior combination of flexibility, abrasion resistance and water and surfactant resistance. Based on principles used by the paint industry for creating durable films, the levels of the polymers and other non‐volatile ingredients are balanced such that the product forms a continuous polymer film on the eyelash. Cryo‐SEM is used to demonstrate that the new semi‐permanent formula technology forms a film different from those formed by current mascara products. A stretch test and rub test are used to demonstrate that the new semi‐permanent formula technology has superior flexibility and abrasion resistance to current mascara products. Finally, a multi‐day consumer study with daily imaging of the eyes is used to demonstrate the superior wear performance of the new semi‐permanent formula technology in actual usage.