A day with Savéria Coste

06.00 The future belongs to those who get up early. No question of hanging around in bed. Ten minutes of meditation - I learned the method on YouTube - and here I am ready to go. Everything is calm, my teenagers (Garance, 16) and Gaétan (14), are still asleep. I rush to work... in my bathroom. I try all the creams, serums and BB creams. My husband makes me a gyokuro green tea (delicious antioxidant). He is the financial director of my company, he adores me but, sometimes, he cracks up in front of my chaos. It's not my fault if I was born into a family of pharmacists, crazy about aromatherapy and plants! After a stint at Decleor and Oenobiol, I wanted to create my own products. I had the idea of ​​Pschitt Magique, a micro peeling in the form of foam. It was innovative, it was a hit. My company was launched.

08.45 Already at the office. I live five minutes away, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. At Garancia, there are about fifteen of us plus thirty salespeople. In meetings, I launch the creative ideas in marketing. Our trademark is the technicality of our treatments. We can go through 82 reformulations to obtain THE ideal formula in terms of texture and effectiveness. For the names, we aim for poetry like Immortal Express Shot, Bal Masqué des Sorciers, or Larmes de Fantôme.

13.00 If I don't have lunch at Zébra Square, next to the office with one of my "trainers" - biochemists, men and women, who put my ideas into music - I go home to see my children. We talk about movies, outings, we laugh, except when we mention math and physics tests. Later, Garance would like to "become a pharma" like me and Gaétan hesitates between engineer, designer, and architect. In the afternoon, I meet suppliers of packaging, raw materials (vegetable gum, emollients) and I end with a "conf call" with a researcher based in the United States, Switzerland or Italy. At the moment, we are developing "shield" creams that fight against the penetration of polluting molecules. Not easy.

19.15 "Mom, the play starts at 20.30!!!!!" My daughter reminds me by text message because I am sometimes - quite often - late. My latest favorite is "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" magnificently directed by Christian HECQ and Valérie Lesort and, at the cinema, "The Lobster" a crazy story about hunting down singles, and "The Martian", a blockbuster but... signed Ridley Scott.

23.00 “Me, President, the fourth solution”. It’s not my secret desire, but the title of the thriller by my friend Patrick Block that I can’t wait to read, just like “The Universe at Your Fingertips” by Christophe Galfard. In my job, everything inspires me. My reading, but also exhibitions, travels. In South Africa, in the Kruger National Park, I discovered a plant called “resurrection plant”. Dried out, almost dead, it turns green again as soon as it is soaked in water. I’m going to try to extract the molecules from it. What do you mean, I never stop?

Little secrets…

"I admit, I love holidays. We go as a family to a magical place, twenty minutes from Bonifacio, Pianottoli-Caldarello. There I cook the best fish soup in the world with the fruit of my fishing and the crabs caught by my son..."

By Julia Dion - ELLE January 15, 2016 No. 3656