Ann Mattingly-Lowe is the founder, CEO, and product formulator of Generations Skincare. Misha is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker and co-founder of Datura Studios. Together, they share a deep commitment to mental health awareness and suicide prevention. That led them to create a new skincare line for men, with a focus on men’s mental health. This is their story, and how they brought HeadsUpGuys into the mix.
A Connection With Purpose
How Two Strangers Became Partners
Ann didn’t know Misha. Misha had just been quietly ordering her skincare products online. When Ann sat down to write Misha a ‘thank-you’ note, neither of them knew that it would turn into a friendship, and eventually, a shared mission.
Who They Are
Ann is on her second act. She came out of retirement in her mid-fifties to launch Generations Skincare, her skincare company. Her connection to mental health goes back decades, including her work in mental health advocacy and public policy during her 27-year career in the pharmaceutical industry, long before it became part of the mission behind a product line.
Misha is a London-born filmmaker and Radio Academy Award nominee who co-founded an independent production company in West Hollywood. He’s a storyteller – skincare wasn’t his world; he was simply a customer who’d found Ann’s products online. Purpose has been an integral part of Generations Skincare from the beginning through its Inner Glow Initiative. The collaboration with Misha created an opportunity to extend that commitment more specifically into the area of men’s mental health and suicide prevention.
Why It Matters to Each of Them
The People Behind the Purpose
ANN MATTINGLY-LOWE I FOUNDER & FORMULATOR
MISHA CROSBY I FILMMAKER & CREATIVE PARTNER
For Ann, it goes back to her father, a World War II veteran who lived with serious mental illness. Depression and anxiety run through her own family, herself included. “I know what it feels like when it’s hard to get out of bed,” she said, “or you’re just sad, or you don’t have the energy to do what you want.”
“He just didn’t give a damn what anybody thought ofhim. He wasn’t worried about stigma.”
Ann, on her father
That mattered to her because stigma, she believes, is the number one reason people don’t get help.
For Misha, it’s personal loss. He’s lost people close to him to suicide, people he says will be with him “every day for the rest of my life.” When Ann’s note arrived, he wasn’t looking for an outlet, but the timing gave him one.
“That experience met an opportunity – with Ann – to express it in what we hope is a really positive way.”
Misha
How They Came Together
There was no single spark, no fully formed idea for a men’s skincare line, at least not yet. Ann had noticed Misha was a regular customer, and at the end of a note thanking him, she added a postscript: ‘Let me know if you ever want to collaborate.’ She wasn’t entirely sure herself what she meant by it, just a feeling there might be something worth doing together. Misha called her, and the calls turned into something else; he started asking detailed technical questions about her formulas. ‘He’s extremely intelligent – don’t let his good looks, accent and charm fool you, he’s one of the smartest people I know,’ Ann said. It wasn’t a passive collaboration – Misha has supported her work from the ground up since those early calls. ‘Ann’s a powerhouse, creating things and putting them into the marketplace is rarely an easy thing to do. It’s wonderful what she’s done with Generations off her own back.’
For a while, neither knew where the conversation was going. What began as a completely organic connection – a genuine customer relationship with no partnership attached – gradually grew into something much bigger. ‘Believe it or not, when we first talked, we didn’t even know we were going to have a men’s skincare line,’ Ann said. Instead, the idea evolved gradually, ‘moving the conversation forward,’ says Ann, ‘until you’re 100 miles from the starting line.’
“Until you’re 100 miles from the starting line.”
Ann
It wasn’t friction-free. Misha is thorough, Ann says with clear affection, and there were long stretches of back-and-forth before decisions got made. There was also a real question hanging over the idea: was there even an audience for a men’s skincare line? Stigma doesn’t just surround men’s mental health – it surrounds men using skincare at all. ‘There’s stigma in society, there’s even stigma around men using skincare, let alone this,’ Misha said. But those hurdles, the stigma, and the gap they saw in the marketplace became ‘the very reason to move ahead, not a reason to stop.’
What They Built, and Why the How Matters More
Both wanted a mental health partner outside the usual big-name options. ‘It was really important to both of us that we didn’t get lost in corporate bureaucracy,’ Misha said. They wanted to matter to the partner they chose, not be one account among thousands.
What they built together is a men’s skincare line, but ask either of them to describe it as ‘a skincare company that gives to charity,’ and they’ll correct you. ‘Mental health is part of our brand’s identity, it’s woven throughout,’ Ann said. Misha put it more plainly: ‘It’s integrated into the very fiber of the products.’
That distinction is the point. On every product, a mental health quote sits alongside the HeadsUpGuys logo. The products aren’t a fundraising vehicle bolted onto a business; they’re a delivery mechanism for a message men encounter simply by using something they already reach for daily.
A mental health quote, the HeadsUpGuys logo, and a direct invitation to
‘Help Him Out’ are integrated into the product itself – putting the message into a daily routine.
“It is the courage to continue that counts.”
Winston Churchill
Every bottle carries a mental health quote and the HeadsUpGuys logo.
Ann points to psychodermatology, a specialty field that looks at the connection between the brain and the skin. ‘Stress, anxiety, and mental health challenges can show up in our skin, triggering or worsening conditions like acne, eczema, and psoriasis. On the flip side, when we’re struggling with depression, self-care is often one of the first things to go. Even washing your face and taking care of yourself can feel overwhelming. But self-care isn’t a luxury – it matters.’ Misha adds, ‘There’s so much benefit to daily rituals when it comes to mental health. It takes discipline though – unfortunately when things are the most difficult it tends to be when patterns get broken. That’s often the time we need those rituals the most.’
The Gent Skin Core Four
Creating Moments Where Men Feel Seen
Scratch Beneath The Surface
He continued into what they believe it takes to normalize conversations about men’s mental health and how their campaign fits into that. ‘One of the major themes of our campaign is to scratch beneath the surface of the masks people wear in their everyday lives, in the hope that we can help make that pain relatable.’
“Not just to those who suffer, but to those who aren’t aware that someone close to them is fighting an invisible battle.”
Misha
In one of the meetings we had with HeadsUpGuys we came up with a campaign slogan that you’ll see woven throughout. That idea sits inside the campaign’s tagline: Help Him Out. ‘We want to create moments where men feel seen,’ says Ann, ‘where reaching out to a friend becomes something we actually do, not just something we talk about.’
While deep in building the campaign, Misha learned that someone he knew had died by suicide. ‘It was just weirdly synchronistic that this piece of news came through while I was working on this. If anything, it made more sense that I was doing it.’
| “The bottom line is there are just too many suicides happening, especially among men. If we could save even one life, that would be amazing.”
Ann, on what they hope people will take away “That’s the whole ball game.” Misha |
About Gent Skin
Gent Skin is the men’s skincare line developed by Generations Skincare. It was created as an extension of the brand’s science-based formulation philosophy, with mental health intentionally built into the broader mission from the beginning. Ann formulates the products in a Colorado lab, with guidance on active ingredient selection and research and development from board-certified dermatologist and medical consultant, Dr. Theresa Mattingly, Ann’s niece.
Learn more at generationsskincare.net/products/gentskin
@Gent_Skin