Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 4, 1990                   TAG: 9003013800
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KAREN MacNEIL THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                 LENGTH: Medium

HOLD THE CRACKERS! THIS CAVIAR IS FOR YOUR SKIN

Eye lids.

"Caviar stimulates skin, particularly skin around the eye, which is most likely to show stress and age," said Reine Cohen, a beauty consultant for Elaine Gayle Cosmetics. "It makes you radiant. It slows down the hand of time."

Cohen was in the lobby of Bloomingdale's here recently giving away free samples of the company's Caviar Extract Rejuvenating Eye and Throat Cream.

The cream is part of the company's Juvenesse line, which "speaks to your skin," Cohen announced. "Customers fall in love with it."

Anyone who instinctively prefers to put caviar in his mouth rather than around it can relax. The beauty preparation does not involve squashing little black fish eggs onto the skin.

In fact, Caviar Extract Rejuvenating Cream looks as pink and innocent as any baby lotion.

It doesn't smell like caviar, either. But at $35 a half ounce, it exceeds even the most expensive caviar in price.

The inventor of Caviar Extract Rejuvenating Cream is Elaine Gayle, a former fashion coordinator on the North Side of Chicago, who gives her age as "grandmotherish."

Gayle first sold her line of cosmetics through beauty salons. Then, two and a half years ago, she says, Bloomingdale's in Chicago took on her line.

The Elaine Gayle line is now sold at Bloomingdale's in New York, where it has been available since November.

Gayle refused to divulge the nationality of her caviar, explaining only that the cream is made in the United States from a distillation of caviar roe mixed with plant extracts. She also refused to give out sales figures.

She was inspired to create the cream, she says, by the idea of mothers giving their children cod liver oil.

"Caviar is the same premise," she said. "Caviar has a close resemblance to our skin. It has the resiliency that our skin does."

Dr. Ellen Gendler, assistant professor of dermatology at New York University, does not see much use for caviar as a skin cosmetic.

"It's such complete and total nonsense it makes me angry," she said. "Caviar has no regenerative skin properties whatsoever. It's a hoax."

But Gayle is undeterred. "Cosmetic products are meant to make the skin look pretty," she responded. "We're not making any medical claims."