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I’ve been skincare obsessed since I was 8 and made a rose water toner by soaking rose petals from my grandfather’s prize blooms in a jam jar of my mum’s Perrier water (it was the 80’s). The massive bollocking I got from both of them frankly made that rosewater smell all the sweeter.
Now I work in the industry I can indulge my obsession pretty much all I want, and in my indulgences I’ve learnt some lessons / made some massive mistakes I thought i’d like to share as my very first skincare post...
1) Follow the instructions
Yeah, yeah. ‘no shit Sherlock’ I hear you say… BUT, stay with me here. Sometimes (all the time) I’m guilty of thinking that if I put more on, more frequently I’ll get quicker / better results. Nope. I’m still living with my latest misadventure in this lesson. I’ve been dabbling in retinols over the last few weeks, using SkinCeuticals 1%. The instructions say to use once or twice a week to get skin used to the potent product… After a fortnight, I wasn’t seeing much result so upped the application to every evening. big mistake. Four days later, sitting happily at my desk, I happen to look down on my black blouse to see it covered in flakes, My first thought was that I had awful dandruff, but no, once I’d looked in the mirror I realised my face was falling off, my cheeks, forehead, chin and nose were peeling really badly, I actually looked as though i was trailing snot but it was actually a little potato type peeling of skin. Delicious.
To compound the trauma, it was terrible timing as I had a journalist to meet in half an hour to find out about a new facial we were launching at work. There was no way I could meet a journalist with my flapjack face. Luckily, one of my favourite therapists at work was free and on hand to sort me out. She did a very gentle exfoliation to remove the flakes and massaged in a heap of hydrating creams to calm and moisturise my traumatised skin, all just in time to meet the journo. Close call and
It’s turns out product instructions are there for a reason.
2) Less is sometimes more
My skin can be temperamental, over sensitive and prone to allergic reactions. I’ve become better at managing this over the last few years by reading every ingredient and trying to pin down the suspects to test and avoid. What I have learnt is that I can be way too OTT in dealing with reactions and what I should be doing is taking an anti-histamine and leaving my skin well alone NOT trying to overcompensate in some crazy way. Last time I reacted to an essential oil in a product I went crazy with soothing face masks, calming serums, iced compresses, balms and sprays. Unsurprisingly it made it worse and made my poor skin even more sensitive. I should have just stopped piling on the product and left well alone.
3) Price does not equate to performance for your skin
Marketing (yes, I know, I am one of these ‘marketing people’), has a lot to answer for here and pricing does affect the perception of a product. It’s easy to believe that there’s always a correlation with price and performamnce. This also links into understanding what your skin needs, your skin just may not suit the latest ‘miracle’ cream so have some trust in yourself and your skin.
A few years ago I worked on a photoshoot that involved some pots of a skincare product that it supposed to be the mutts nuts of face creams, a ‘miracle’ product costing over £100 for 30ml, containing ‘magical’ ingredients, promising the world. At the end of the shoot, as I was the only female and to my great delight, I was given a pot of this miracle cream, I went home and spent an entire evening getting excited about moisturising, imagining waking up with all the hard living smoothed away. I followed the application instructions to the letter, tap, tap, pat, pat… and sat back to watch the years roll away.
At first I ignored the burn, assuming it was how it was supposed to be but after a few minutes and a quick glance in the mirror I realised I should probably wash it off. I was scarlet and swollen. This quite violent reaction to the cream made me read the ingredients and what do you know, the third ingredient was Petrolatum. So, the third ingredient in something that costs over £3 per ml is Vaseline, that stuff that costs around a penny per ml and is a by-product of the oil industry. I felt pretty swindled, and by my research online, I wasn’t the only one.
So, my lesson was don’t be swayed by the marketing and hype, be swayed by performance on YOUR SKIN, whether it costs £1 or £100.
4) One size does not fit all…
I work in marketing, I’ve worked on and with some of the biggest skincare and cosmetics brands in the UK - I am guilty of hyping stuff up and i’m also guilty of pushing stuff onto people ‘you have to try this, it’s life-changing’ etc, because it worked for me. You see it in magazines all the time, bloggers can also be guilty of this, falling onto the latest product launch with an enthusiasm I try to save for the Sunday morning dim sum menu at Phoenix Palace in Marylebone.
Hype does not make a product great or most importantly, right for your skin.*
*This is a lesson I still haven’t learnt myself, only today 24 Korean sheet masks turned up on my desk which i’d drunkenly bought after reading a blogger (who is ten years younger than me with completely different skin concerns) raving about them… Last week I forked out a bloody fortune for a serum every beauty journo has been raving about. Did I get the dewy, glowing, plumped up skin I was expecting? Did I fuck, I got a massive spot on my nose, some blocked pores and some mild peeling. Fan bloody tastic.
Which all leads me onto my next point….
5) Don’t be afraid to get professional help
I would say this because I work with heaps of really talented beauty professionals but seriously, seek help if you need it. I think in this country we are scared that we are either going to get bullied into buying loads of stuff we don’t need that won’t work OR that we are somehow bothering the therapists and taking advantage of their knowledge. Back in my early twenties I had terrible skin, huge cystic spots along with dry, tight and flaking patches (I was trying to dry up the acne). My skin was shit. I was having a random bikini wax on day when the therapist commented on my skin and then started to kindly talk to me about it. She listened to what I was doing and It turns out i was really fucking myself up. I was alternatively stripping skin and then using an rich emollient that I turned out to be allergic to.
I was sent on my way that day with a neat bikini line, an education about skin health, a fist full of dermalogica samples and a spring in my step. My skin started to improve in 48 hours and I haven’t looked back since. She even helped me pull together a core skincare regime based on my very, very low salary at the time.
Find someone you like or carries the product house you’re keen on (do research this, some houses are better than others and others are great for certain skin types) and go and chat to them, honestly most therapists love helping people get better skin. There are some amazing resources out there nowadays (my trauma was waaaaaaay before beauty blogs) but nothing can replicate having an expert really looking at and touching your skin. So many skin conditions, dryness vs. dehydration, the very different types of acne, roseacea can all be misdiagnosed, there really is no substitute to getting under a light and letting an expert have a good look at what’s going on.