Alchemilla a chance encounter.
All his colleagues know that Lionel de Benetti doesn't sleep much. Which is lucky when you are in charge of the research laboratories and factory at Pontoise, where Clarins products are developed. All his colleagues also know that after arriving at his office at 5am, Lionel de Benetti disappears between precisely 6am and 7.30am. To go running! Every day, always in the countryside and in the vicinity of the factory. It was by total chance – or rather thanks to an undone shoelace – that during one of his daily jogs he discovered alchemilla. « If I hadn't bent down to tie my shoelace, I would never have noticed it. A small plant that seemed to sparkle in the first light of day because of the drops of dew strangely clinging to its leaves... ». It was brought back to the laboratory, identified, then screened over and over again before finally revealing its until now unknown secret: its capacity to reduce the excessive transfer of melanosomes towards keratinocytes. « We might not have found the philosopher's stone or the secret to wisdom, but this was still a major discovery... ».