By Belisa Silva

Mass hair manufacturers in 2012 began looking to the skin-care world for inspiration on a bevy of new products. Incorporating antiaging ingredients once reserved for facial creams, brands like L’Oréal Paris, Pantene and Nexxus have begun to roll out hair-care collections designed to turn back the clock, right down to the roots.For its part, L’Oréal Paris’ Advanced Hair Care collection, which will be launched in January, features ingredients like hyaluronic and arginine, and is built around the idea of adding treatment items into consumers’ daily hair-care regimens.

“Right now, U.S. women believe that only skin care warrants an ongoing regimen,” said L’Oréal Paris USA president Karen Fondu. “They see hair as a quick fix when, really, it deserves and needs the same multistep approach as skin care to be at its best.”

Meanwhile, Pantene’s Expert range, launched in November, is designed to tackle the side effects from hair aging with skin-care-inspired technology, discovered in partnership with Olay antiaging experts.“I was not expecting how my hair was changing as I got older. [It] was starting to get dry, brittle and thinner,” said Courteney Cox, the face of the collection, which was formulated with ingredients like caffeine niacinamide and panthenol, commonly found in youth-promising facial products.

In January, Nexxus will add to the growing trend with Youth Renewal, a range of five hair-care offerings, including a noticeably skin-care-like serum, designed to address eight visible signs of hair aging.“It’s a well known fact that the American population is aging,” said David Rubin, marketing director for hair at Unilever. “What we’ve done is dove in deeply on this woman and what are the signs of aging hair and to combat them so that women who are getting older can still have beautiful hair.”