Lab Series

The men's skincare brand that became Lab Series almost launched under a different name. In 1985, the fragrance house Aramis, part of a much larger American beauty company, planned a fragrance-free skincare line called Basix, then shelved it at the last minute. Two years later, in 1987, the same concept finally reached shelves as Lab Series, sold under the Aramis name with a single, almost radical premise for the era: skincare formulated specifically, and only, for men.

That was a genuinely early bet. Long before men's grooming became a fashionable category, the brand built a lab dedicated to studying men's physiology and skin needs, and gave its products color-coded packaging so a customer could assemble a routine without having to decode anything. It carried the Aramis name until 2005, when it shed the attachment and became Lab Series Skincare for Men in its own right. A 2021 repositioning, with a new logo, sustainable packaging, and an "Invent Yourself" campaign, refreshed it for a generation that no longer needs convincing that men use moisturizer.

Backed by one of the largest beauty research-and-development operations in the world, the formulas are competent and consistent: cleansers, shave products, age-treatment moisturizers, the workhorse multitasker types that suit a customer who wants results without a ten-step ritual.

Here is the honest read. The dermatological premise that "men's skin" requires fundamentally different products is mostly marketing. Skin varies far more by individual, genetics, and habit than by gender; men do tend to have oilier, thicker skin on average, but that is a nudge, not a different species. What Lab Series really sells is permission and simplicity, a confident, masculine-coded shelf presence that makes skincare feel approachable to men who would never browse a "beauty" aisle. The products are good, and the prices are prestige-tier for what are, underneath, well-made basics. You are paying partly for the lab coat and partly for the comfort of not having to think about it.

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