Beautiful Thinking.
By the time I stepped up for the final panel at INNOCOS’ Beauty & Longevity Conference in Geneva, the room had that golden-hour energy. Curious, a little hungry, but very much still up for one more good conversation. Perfect conditions for a topic that’s both sprawling and razor-sharp – how wellness, spa, and longevity clinics are transforming, and what beauty can learn from them.
I had the joy (and frankly, the easy job) of guiding a conversation among three leaders who live and breathe this space every day:
What follows are the ideas that stayed with me – not as a transcript, but as a facilitator’s field notes on where the future is already taking shape.
We began by asking the deceptively simple question: What is longevity?
George reframed it immediately. Longevity isn’t the absence of disease or a trophy for reaching a certain age. It’s vision – how we picture the future we want – and impact – how we live, create, and leave things better than we found them. Health, in that frame, is less a lab value and more a capacity for adaptation. Physical, cognitive, emotional. Functionality over fear, outcomes over optics.
That distinction matters. We’re collectively drowning in dashboards, yet two people with the same diagnosis can walk entirely different health paths. Diagnostics are useful, but identity shouldn’t be defined by a report. Consistency – the daily rituals we actually uphold – beats the fetish for ever more measurement.
Guénolé added a beautiful counterweight; blend ancestral wisdom with modern tech, and remember that the fundamentals don’t age – nutrition, movement outdoors, clean air and water, quality sleep, meaningful relationships. He cited research showing that the best predictor at 50 for your health at 80 is not your supplement stack, but your relationships. There’s your north star.
Luigi, an engineer by training and a builder by instinct, distilled longevity to two intertwined currencies: time and quality. His morning routine – movement, cold, breath – comes first not because of biohacking bravado but because it sends a message: my health is a priority today, not tomorrow.
If you want to feel the industry shift in your bones, listen to how Luigi describes hospitality. In his network of over 30 longevity clinics and a fast-growing portfolio of longevity spas, wellness isn’t a scented add-on; it’s the core proposition. Guests don’t just seek relaxation, they seek change. Programs they can take home, rituals that travel, outcomes that endure.
But that raises a tightrope we’ll all have to walk – science without sterility, care without clinical coldness. Make a spa too medical and you lose soul (and likely invite regulatory complexity). Keep it too pampering and you sell short the guest’s appetite for meaningful transformation. The future winners, we agreed, will choreograph a blended journey; beautiful, sensory, and restorative, yet anchored in protocols with a backbone.
George’s description of the Chenot method is instructive. Their unit of value isn’t a menu of treatments; it’s a process. Think of it as a purposeful oscillation between hormetic stressors (caloric restriction, heat, targeted intensity) to switch on the body’s internal pharmacy, then parasympathetic recovery (drawing on traditional modalities) to integrate and reset. Remove “rust,” recharge the “battery,” and send people back with homework – habits that compound.
The fast-mimicking nutrition protocol (very low calories, low protein, five to six days) is one such lever – used periodically, not perpetually – to touch key longevity pathways like mTOR and AMPK and to encourage autophagy. The practical insight: intensity is a pit-stop; progress is the road home.
That rhythm echoes in how The Longevity Suite operates, championing membership, re-assessment, and continuity. Quick fixes are marketable, but it’s long-term change that is valuable. They’re designed for the latter.
Guénolé’s concierge model pushes the idea of contextual living even further – bring medicine outside. Programmes in the Alps or at sea, one-week immersions where people learn by doing – how to sleep, breathe, move, and recover in the environments they actually inhabit. He’s unapologetic about what belongs in clinic (e.g., hyperbaric therapy, with proper pressure and safety) versus what’s better daily at home (light exposure, heat/cold, breath, mobility).
We laughed about our collective device addiction – the child reporting a “sleep score” as if it were a school grade. The CGM says 6.3 while a finger-stick reads 3.6 at the same moment. The takeaway wasn’t anti-tech; it was pro-meaning. Look for trends, seek coaches who can synthesise, and beware of turning your day into a compliance test.
In a perfect world, yes, our data would pipe into a coherent, clinician-guided model – what people loosely call a “digital twin” – but the human twin (you) still has to do the reps. The only universal protocol we all endorsed? Exercise. Sleep, too. Friends, absolutely. Most everything else is personal, and that’s not a cop-out – it’s the point.
As a branding guy who’s watched health drift into beauty and beauty stride into health, I see three immediate opportunities for brands and retailers:
If “transformational luxury” is where hospitality is heading, transformational retail is where beauty can meet it – places where people don’t just buy wellness; they practice it.
We closed, as the light slipped behind Lake Geneva, with a simple consensus. Longevity is not about outliving others, it’s about outloving your life – moving better, thinking clearer, connecting deeper, and for longer. The clinics on our stage aren’t selling immortality, they’re teaching rhythm – stress, recover, repeat. Track what helps, forget what doesn’t, and keep the rituals that make you a better friend at 50 so you’re a healthier human at 80.
To everyone who stayed for the last session – thank you. To George, Luigi, and Guénolé – more of this, please. And to the beauty leaders in the room, the bridge is built. Now let’s walk people across it, beautifully.
