Retno Iswari Tranggono: The science of beauty

Dian Kuswandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sat, 10/31/2009 1:13 PM

Retno Iswari Tranggono (JP/Dian Kuswandini)

She was born beautiful, but when Retno Iswari Tranggono entered adolescence, she tried to hide her face wherever she went.

Retno felt bad enough whenever a young man stared at her; she felt even worse looking at her reflection in the mirror.

"I was struggling for years because of my pimples," says the founder of the famous Indonesian skin care and cosmetic brand Ristra. "Everyone was commenting on my blemishes; it felt terrible."

Her terrible years of acne-induced shame continued when she enrolled in the University of Indonesia's School of Medicine in 1958. At the time, there was a tradition among seniors there to give the freshmen mocking nicknames. It's easy to guess what nickname they bestowed on Retno: Janda Bopeng, or the Pock-marked Widow.

"It hurt to be called that; I realized it was my pimples that caused my pit-like scars," the 70-year-old recalls, but smiles as she continues, "however, that experience challenged me to learn more about acne. I told myself that I have to understand this skin disease."

She was already on the right track in studying at UI med school, where she learned about hygiene for the first time. The hygiene-related theories she learned got her thinking, as she compared them to face cleansing as practiced in Indonesia at that time. As a former colony of the Netherlands, Indonesians followed the Dutch practice of not using soap to clean the face.

"We were taught that soap would dry out our skin, so we shouldn't use it for our face," Retno says. "As a result, we Indonesians washed our faces with water only. But it didn't match with the fact that Indonesia has a different climate to the Netherlands."

In the Netherlands, Retno says, the people don't use soap because the cold weather dries out the skin easily. Indonesia's tropical climate, she adds, tends to make people's faces get oily easily.

"I thought if we were told to clean our body with soap then why not with our face?" she argues. "Isn't it when our face is clean that acne can be prevented?"

She proved her own theory right when she took matters - and soap - into her own hands.

"I came across this bar of green soap in a store," she says. "At first I bought it only because it looked pretty, but then I just used it to clean my face," she adds with a laugh.

Retno describes how she was amazed as the pimples on her face started to disappear after she regularly followed her new face-cleansing regime. "After some time, I finally pimple-free," she smiles.

She later passed on her "new paradigm" and successful experiment to others when she became an instructor and beautician at a skin care school called Viva Health and Beauty Institute. At the institute, owned by Bo Tan Tjoa, who is the founder of Viva, one of Indonesia's oldest cosmetic brands, Retno had the chance to learn more about the skin and cosmetics.

"At that time, I was at my fifth year of study. There, I met many people with skin problems," says Retno, who was at that time has just married Suharto Tranggono, with whom she now has three children and six grandchildren.

"The more I learned, the more I found out that *imported* skin care products and cosmetics in Indonesia weren't suitable for our people. They were what were causing their skin problems."

Retno's career blossomed at Viva: She attracted many patients - thanks to the acne lotion she developed that worked wonders on their skin.

With a swag of experience from Viva, Retno enrolled in UI's specialist dermatology program. After completing the course, she bravely proposed to the head of the department that they set up a unit specializing in cosmetics and beauty problems. That unit is known today as the Cosmeto-Dermatology sub-department. At that time, she claims, no one had ever thought to combine dermatology with cosmetology.

"I secured support *from the department head*. After that, I had the chance to carry out public campaigns on skin health," adds Retno, who helped initiate the establishment of the National Drug and Food Monitoring Agency (BPOM).

In the meantime, Retno was continuing to develop her own anti-acne products. After leaving Viva, she opened her own clinic. As a beauty consultant, she often appeared on state-owned television station TVRI and in Sinar Harapan daily, and soon became famous. She became a new icon for women, who praised her whenever she went. The "Pock-marked Widow" became the "Acne Doctor".

"People *across the country* kept asking me how to get my products without having to visit my clinic *in Jakarta*," she says. "So I decided to distribute them through pharmacies."

And that was how the brand Ristra - a shortened form of Retno Iswari and Suharto Tranggono - began.

In 1983, Retno and her psychiatrist husband set up Ristra Indolab in the garage of their house in North Jakarta. Retno developed more skin-care products and cosmetics that were specially formulated for people living in tropical climates.

"My formulas are all genuine; I combined them from many literatures," says Retno, who coined the term "cosmedic" when she developed her medical-based cosmetics.

The venture, she says, was purely idealistic: She was thinking more about finding safe products for Indonesians that suited their skins, than about turning a profit.

"But that idealism turned sour when our business partners cheated us," recalls Retno, who has received many local and international awards for her work. "They sold our products in many places but never sent us the proceeds. We lost millions of rupiah."

On the upside, "it was like a free promotion for my products; our products became popular everywhere," Retno adds with a smile. "In around 1986 and 1987, Ristra was booming with its products flooding the market. And we had no competitors then."

It wasn't difficult then to predict the success of Ristra. It now has seven main product lines, including Trustee, Dermocare, Platinum and Maternity, encompassing more than 80 products.

Further developing what she calls with "the science of beauty", in 2006 Retno founded the Ristra Institute of Skin Health and Beauty Science to spread the principles of medical cosmetics among skin and beauty experts.

"Other places or clinics might only have dermatologists. But here, in my institute, we have derma-cosmetologists," she says with evident pride in her smile.

Saying her desire to develop the "the science of beauty" will continue, Retno says she has only one mission to accomplish: "My dream is that Indonesians have clean, healthy and beautiful skins for years. That's my mission."

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