FASHION : Strategy for Safer Summer Glow
You know things are really changing when George Hamilton, Mr. Tan himself, admits to being cautious about sunbathing. Not that he’s swearing off, but having perfected his golden, rotisserie glow, he’s teaching himself to play it safer.
This new attitude accompanies his first sun product collection, George Hamilton’s Sun Care System, which he will introduce Tuesday at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills, from 1 till 2:30 p.m. The 49-year-old ray catcher now admits that not even he is immune to the aging effects of his favorite pastime. But he does say, “I’m aging gracefully, I think.”
To enhance that process he now uses Tan Master, a body oil with a skimpy SPF (sun protection factor) of 2, from his signature collection. For paler faces, his line includes lotions with SPFs from 4 to 15, priced from $11.50 to $14.50 and made by Pantron I, a Los Angeles-based company that also produces his mail-order skin-care line.
Hamilton’s system is different from all the rest, he says, more because of the tanning technique he espouses than the products themselves. His way is to start gradually, wearing a lotion with a high SPF number (although he feels safe with only an SPF 4), then “weaning” off it as soon as the skin shows the first signs of toasting.
At that point, he parts company with more conservative sunbathers. “I try to stay off SPF products,” he says. “I let my own skin’s natural block build up and protect me.” The block he refers to, melanin, is the skin’s own protective pigment that develops when the skin is exposed to sun. Hamilton says he’d rather rely on it than a lotion with a high SPF factor.
“Most dermatologists would have problems with that,” counters Dr. Nicholas Lowe, clinical professor of dermatology at UCLA School of Medicine. “A suntan doesn’t protect skin nearly that well. It won’t stop the skin from aging or showing precancerous signs later on. The safest thing is to use an SPF 15 product and tan slowly.” Tan skin contains a natural SPF level of 4, and even the darkest skin contains not more than an SPF 5, Lowe explains.
While Hamilton admits to signs of aging, he doesn’t believe that the sun caused it. In fact, he says, “my skin is smooth, though you’d think it would look like parchment by now.”
His well-publicized adventures in body care have helped keep him looking younger, he believes. Most notably: the rejuvenation injections he had several years ago at Switzerland’s famed La Prairie health clinic, his habits of drinking six glasses of water each day, following a liquid diet several days each month and refraining from smoking and drinking alcohol, except occasionally. He says that he doesn’t need facials and that he doesn’t believe in cosmetic surgery. “I’m not trying to replace nature, but to fortify it,” he maintains.
Lately, Lowe and others, including Hamilton, are looking for a new element when evaluating sun-care products. “Broad-spectrum protection” is the catch phrase of the moment. And indeed, Hamilton’s line does claim to offer such protection.
In the simplest terms, it means that a sun-care product not only provides a shield against the well-known dangers of the sun’s burning, ultraviolet-B (UVB) rays; it also protects against ultraviolet-A (UVA) rays, which doctors have confirmed to be at least as damaging, if not more so.
Lowe says: “There is a lot of evidence that UVA can do a great deal of damage. It penetrates the skin more deeply than UVB. That can increase skin aging.” Lowe also is concerned about the safety of indoor tanning, because tanning beds use high-intensity UVA rays.
Despite Hamilton’s opinion of high SPF factors, one safeguard against UVA may be to use screens with levels well above 15, because some doctors believe that sun products with higher numbers do screen about 80% of UVA rays.
One advocate of that theory, Dr. Madhu Pathak, an associate professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School, explains that the FDA has not yet developed a numbering system for UVA protection. And the medical community isn’t guaranteeing that the UVA protection in any sunscreen is adequate. In the end, he holds that the safest suntan is no suntan at all.
So far, Photoplex by Herbert Laboratories in Irvine, Calif., is the sun-care product with the highest amount of UVA protection, according to Lowe. Using an unofficial and complicated measuring technique, he gives Photoplex a 4.8 factor, as opposed to the 3.0 to 3.4 found in most products he has evaluated. To date, there is no approved system of communicating this information to the consumer.
In recent months, other mass-market manufacturers, notably Coppertone and Hawaiian Tropic Tan, have started to specify “broad-spectrum coverage” on labels when appropriate. And companies such as Estee Lauder, Clinique, Lancome and Chanel, with prestige-priced sun products, are trying to educate consumers on the subject of UVA via department store cosmetics consultants.
Hamilton, who learned all he knows about UVA from conversations with chemists and physicists, says more than just the consumers are still educating themselves about it. “I think UVA is not yet well understood, except that testing shows it is deeply damaging to skin,” he explains.
But he adds: “We’ve got our heads in the sand if we think people are going to give up the sun. People think a tan looks healthy, so we’ve got to offer them a saner way to be out in the sun.”
Commercial protection may always fall somewhat short of that. As Harvard’s Pathak says: “The best sunscreen is total darkness. The next best thing is to dramatically reduce sun exposure.”
