Key Takeaways:
Haircare, one of beauty’s roaring categories, continues to undergo structural redefinition. Long positioned as a styling and aesthetics-led category, it is now increasingly being reframed through a dermatological and clinical lens. This lens prioritizes scalp biology, inflammation control, and long-term follicle health over short-term cosmetic payoff. As a result, dermatologist-founded and dermatologist-led brands are moving from being the exceptions in haircare to becoming one of the category’s most credible growth engines.
This shift is taking place against a backdrop of broader industry forces, including the premiumization of haircare, the “skinification” of adjacent categories, rising consumer literacy around ingredients and clinical testing, and an increased willingness to invest in preventative beauty. For dermatologists, haircare represents both an extension of clinical logic, such as the scalp being skin, and an underdeveloped market with comparatively low scientific standards.
Why Dermatologists See Haircare as the Next Frontier
For Dr. James Kilgour, founder of KilgourMD, haircare’s appeal lies in its historic lack of innovation. “Haircare and scalp health really has not been fully explored,” he told BeautyMatter, describing the category as one with significant white space. “There are a lot of products that don’t exist on the market today that I think will become category-defining products within months to years.”
KilgourMD was conceived as a prestige, dermatologist-led brand focused specifically on scalp health and hair thinning—areas Kilgour sees daily in clinical practice, particularly among perimenopausal and menopausal women. It also seeks to address patients experiencing hair loss linked to stress, illness, or medication. The brand positions itself not as traditional haircare, but as topical scalp treatment grounded in dermatological science.
That distinction is becoming increasingly important. While skincare consumers now expect clinical substantiation, Kilgour argued that haircare has lagged behind. “I was surprised by the lack of high efficacy, clinically studied active ingredients in a lot of haircare products,” he said, pointing to a gap between consumer expectations in skincare and haircare.
Central to dermatological haircare is a systems-based understanding of the scalp. “The scalp is a fully fledged part of the skin, and it’s really a system,” Kilgour explained. Hair follicles operate within a microenvironment shaped by the scalp barrier, oil production, immune response, inflammation, and blood flow. When that system is compromised, hair growth is affected.
This philosophy mirrors the approach taken by SEEN, the dermatologist-designed haircare brand founded by Dr. Iris Rubin. Rubin positioned haircare as an extension of skincare, not only conceptually, but physically. “Haircare products can not only make their way onto your skin in the shower, but they can also leave a residue on your skin for hours,” she says.
SEEN was created to address what Rubin described as “a huge unmet need for haircare that is good for the skin,” particularly for consumers dealing with acne, eczema, sensitive skin, and scalp irritation. While haircare is not required to undergo skin-safety testing, SEEN voluntarily conducts comedogenicity and sensitive skin testing, an approach more commonly associated with skincare brands.
Clinical Standards, Regulatory Gaps, and Ingredient Scrutiny
As dermatologists enter haircare, they are also confronting regulatory and formulation discrepancies. Kilgour highlighted zinc pyrithione (ZPT), a widely used anti-dandruff ingredient still permitted in the US despite being banned in the EU. “It’s a major missed opportunity,” he said, noting that safer, modern alternatives approved abroad remain inaccessible domestically due to outdated FDA frameworks.
Rubin pointed to formulation challenges from another angle, citing that many ingredients traditionally used to enhance how hair feels, including certain oils, waxes, and polymers, can clog pores or irritate sensitive skin. “Formulating good-for-skin haircare requires optimizing for two variables: healthy hair and healthy skin,” she said, a process that took SEEN more than four years and multiple formulation iterations. The result is a more conservative, safety-first approach that prioritizes barrier health, ingredient tolerability, and long-term use—values increasingly resonant with prestige consumers.
For Jay Small, trichologist and co-founder of Arey, the clinical turn in haircare represents a broader shift from reactive to preventative beauty. “Hair dye is essentially the Botox of haircare,” he said to BeautyMatter. “It is effective for appearance but not for prevention.” Arey was built around the idea that hair aging such as greying, thinning, texture change, can be slowed if addressed early and consistently.
“The scalp is skin,” Small noted, “yet it is often exposed to harsher chemicals, UV rays, and far more physical stress than the skin on our face.” He added that the scalp ages approximately six times faster, making proactive care essential rather than optional. Arey’s patented Mela-9 Complex was developed to reduce inflammation while supporting follicle health, a strategy rooted in dermatological principles rather than salon tradition. This preventative framing aligns haircare more closely with dermatology, longevity, and wellness, categories that continue to attract both consumer spend and investor interest.
A New Competitive Landscape
As haircare becomes the next prestige battleground, dermatologist-led brands are differentiating themselves from both salon brands and biotech start-ups. Kilgour described KilgourMD’s advantage as the intersection of clinical insight and proprietary innovation, allowing the brand to identify unmet needs and develop targeted solutions.
SEEN, meanwhile, leverages its dermatologist sampling network, now over 9,000 professionals, to reinforce credibility and education around the skin–hair connection. Arey grounds its positioning in clinical data, including a 173-person, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study showing reduced grey hair growth and increased hair thickness after six months.
Collectively, these brands point to a future where haircare is less about instant transformation and more about long-term biological outcomes. Scalp health, inflammation control, barrier support, and preventative intervention are becoming the new markers of innovation and credibility.
As Kilgour puts it, clinical haircare represents “one of the biggest areas for innovation and therefore for growth within the broader beauty landscape.” For an industry increasingly shaped by science, regulation, and consumer trust, dermatology’s expansion into haircare is not a trend, but a recalibration of the category itself.
