This post was supposed to be about seasonal skincare changes, but in order to provide a bit of context I started writing about my usual skincare routine and then I went off on a tangent about how I feel about my face in my forties and then about eighty-seven years later I looked up and realised I’d suddenly written a thesis.
I am therefore breaking it down into something more manageable: I’m going to do a bit of an intro to my face and then describe my skincare routine and then next week we’ll have a good solid base to refer back to when I start to talk about the seasonal skincare changes. Here goes.
I’m forty-three (until next month), I have what would probably be described as “normal to dry” skin and, apart from a few blips in my thirties I have never really had any pressing skin concerns.
You could say that I’ve been preoccupied with “having good skin” for most of my adult life; I’ve been writing about skincare for almost fifteen years and before that I was a model for over a decade and “having good skin” was partly what I did for a living. I’ve tried tens of thousands of products, both newly-launched and well-established and I like to think that I get quite good intel when it comes to what’s what in the beauty industry. What is total bollocks, for example, and what actually does make a visible difference…
I don’t currently have any “tweakments”* and haven’t had any in the past. I’ve had a couple of facials that have incorporated machinery into them – radio waves and ultra sound and so on – but I’m not sure that’s for me, either. Mainly because I like all of my skincare maintenance to be very, very low effort. Done at home, either lying down in my bed, in the bath or, as a last resort, at my desk when I’m on Zoom meetings with the camera turned off.
(*the whole tweakments thing is a huge other post in the making. I don’t want to get sidelined by it here. I use this term to include things like filler and Botox and more dramatic stuff like facelifts and eye lifts – basically anything that involves needles or knives!)
I was quite a heavy smoker for about ten years, from when I was eighteen-ish until twenty-eight, and I was an utterly shameful sun worshipper, as we mostly were in the olden times. Though I must say that I never used to burn, I was always very careful with my worship sessions, considering these were the days before SPF50 was the default holiday sunscreen option.
Anyway, I’m sure that I have all the effects of that life of debauchery ready to catch up with me and so I try my best just to keep my skin barrier healthy and on an even keel whilst also applying the highest possible level of active ingredients I can without making my entire face fall off. I cannot be arsed with anything that requires “downtime”: peels that demand face-bandaging afterwards, rollers covered in needles that draw blood as they prickle the skin – even too-strong retinoids that make my face itchy and dry are a complete no-no in my book. I repeat: I cannot be arsed.
My basic routine includes some choice actives (Vitamin C, Retinal/Tretinoin, Hyaluronic Acid, the odd peptide) to keep my face on its toes (weird visual) but the general gist of the whole skincare routine is that it is short, quick and to the point. Three-ish steps, just like Clinique told us, back in the nineties.
Is it low cost? Debatable. There are a few bits of gadgetry thrown in that are a hefty initial investment, but I don’t do anything that requires regular financial commitment. Or, indeed, requires leaving the house. It’s enough of an imposition to go and get hair and nails done, quite frankly!
Most pricey products usually have a very good, very affordable alternative out there – not an identical copy, but you can put together a good routine for very little expense. (Another post that’s in drafts!) I’ve tried to give a nice range within the product examples that I’ve listed, but this post is more about the routine itself and the types of products I use rather than the specific brands. We have plenty of time to get into the forensics of it all – I’m just getting started!
Ad-info: no paid or sponsored mentions in this post. I regularly work with beauty brands and some of them, including Beauty Pie, Medik-8 and Current Body, are mentioned below. Any affiliate links are marked with * next to the link.
