FASHION Magazine

With all the high-tech and luxury skincare breakthroughs over the last decade, it’s surprising (and refreshing) that Nivea’s modest all-purpose cream—the first batch of which was cooked up in Hamburg more than a century ago—is still going strong, boasting the same simple recipe. “It’s passed the test of time,” says Dr. Volker Kallmayer, product development specialist for Beiersdorf, Nivea’s parent company. “From a scientist’s point of view, my personal nightmare is that one day my boss asks me to improve it,” he laughs, explaining that brand loyalists can sniff out the tiniest change in the formula. “They feel it’s not our product, but their product… they don’t want us to mess with it.”