Ingeborg van Lotringen 8 steps to amazing skin - YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Sign in Welcome!Log into your account Forgot your password? Password recovery Recover your password Search Sign in Welcome! Log into your account Forgot your password? Get help Password recovery Recover your password A password will be e-mailed to you. YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Home Beauty Ingeborg van Lotringen 8 steps to amazing skin By Ingeborg van Lotringen - January 30, 2022 With so many products out there, finding the right skincare regime is more elusive than ever. Beauty expert Ingeborg van Lotringen says it’s time to get back to basics. Mikeblackett.com It’s hard to say just when skincare got so complicated. Way back when, you could trust a ‘beauty’ soap and a fancy moisturiser to do your bidding. Today, the skincare aisle is a pick ’n’ mix of weird and wonderful concoctions, all promising the world. It’s making us binge on lotions and potions, trialling one after the other in pursuit of that elusive perfect skin. I should know: in my 25 years as a beauty journalist I’ve put practically all of them on my face. I learned the hard way that the quick thrill of rubbing in another wonder serum is followed all too often by irritation or spots, then another batch of products to ‘solve the problem’. With rates of acne, rosacea and dermatitis steadily increasing, dermatologists say the prime suspect is hiding in plain sight: product mis- and overuse. So I wrote my book Great Skin to use my experience – and access to the beauty industry’s sharpest minds – to help people fix this dysfunctional relationship with skincare. Yes, there are more amazing products than ever, but to know which will benefit you, you need to reacquaint yourself with your own skin. It’s different to anyone else’s and its requirements change – sometimes daily. So it’s no use throwing another person’s ‘miracle’ regime at it. If in any doubt as to what you need, you should strip back to the basics (much as you would with a food intolerance) and rebuild your regime from there. A no-frills, respectful skincare regime will teach you to listen to your skin and respond to its needs, now and always. That is the key to great skin. And these are the eight skin reset rules I swear by… 1 Ditch the perfume If you adore a scented product, reintroduce it later. But be aware that any fragrance is an irritant and shouldn’t be part of a regime that aims to calm and rebalance your skin. The same goes for alcohol: teeny amounts can have a function, but if it’s high on the ingredient list, don’t go there. Try these indulgent fragrance-free complexion boosters: Cultured Biomecare Biome One Serum, £55, culturedbiomecare.com. Clinique Moisture Surge Hydrating Supercharged Concentrate, £38, clinique.co.uk. 2 Natural isn’ t gentler There are many beautifully gentle plant-based products – and many highly irritating ones. The same goes for potions that are mostly synthetic. Good formulas and well-researched ingredients, not spurious ‘natural’ claims, make for great skin-respecting products. These combine the best of highly effective natural and synthetic ingredients: Paula’s Choice Water-Infusing Electrolyte Moisturizer, £33, paulaschoice.co.uk. Skingredients Skin Protein, £49, skingredients.com. 3 Cleansing is critical Not cleansing twice daily is ageing: it burdens skin with pollutants and stops your skincare from penetrating. Use a sulphate-free, rinse-off cleanser to help determine your skin type. Fifteen minutes after drying off, if skin feels taut, normal or greasy, it is dry, normal or oily respectively (or combination if your cheeks are dry and your nose is shiny). Cleansers for every skin type: Gallinée Cleansing Bar, £13, gallinee.com. CeraVe Hydrating Cleanser, £9.50, boots.com. 4 Stay away from sulphates Sulphates cleanse but strip skin of its protective barrier, so ensure they’re off the ingredients list. Cleansing balms and oils (the most comfortable option for dry skins) don’t contain them. There are also plenty of sulphate-free cleansing foams and gels that will slay oiliness yet keep skin feeling hydrated. Classic bar soap may be sulphate-free but is highly alkaline (so stripping for your face). These leave skin perfectly clean but feeling comfortable: Biossance Squalane + Elderberry Jelly Cleanser, £22, cultbeauty.co.uk. Green People Nordic Roots Cranberry Micellar Foam, £19, greenpeople.co.uk. 5 Treat with serum When you’re resetting your skin, focus on anti-inflammatory and antioxidant ingredients to calm, heal and protect. Niacinamide, panthenol, amino acids, curcumin, oat extracts, vitamin C and bisabolol will reinforce your skin. Serums that build stronger, more resilient skin: Alpha-H Vitamin B Serum, £44.95, uk.alpha-h.com. The Ordinary Amino Acids + B5, £5.90, deciem.com. 6 Go easy on exfoliation Exfoliating acids are important for ridding skin of dead cells and congestion but are easy to overdo. Using an exfoliating toner (applied in the evening after cleansing) with gentle polyhydroxy, malic or lactic acids twice weekly is plenty for dry to normal skin. Oily, spotty skin benefits from using a toner with pore-clearing salicylic acid every evening. Acid toners that don’t over-tax skin: Farmacy Deep Sweep 2% BHA Pore Cleaning Toner, £27, beautybay.com. Medik8 Press & Glow PHA Tonic, £25, medik8.com. 7 Build a barrier A moisturiser needn’t be heavy or oily; it can even just be a hydrating serum as long as it keeps your skin supple all day. The crucial thing? It should support your natural protective lipid barrier. Ceramides, essential fatty acids (look for squalane, jojoba or rosehip oil), pre- and probiotics and water-binding humectants (glycerine, urea, polysaccharides, hyaluronic acid) spell skin health. Moisturisers that form a skin-calming, protective, nourishing bubble: Curél Intensive Moisture Facial Cream, £19.50, boots.com. La Roche-Posay Toleriane Dermallergo Crème, £18.50, boots.com. 8 Sunscreen is non-negotiable You need a broad-spectrum SPF30 or higher every day in your moisturiser or on top of it. Physical filters (zinc oxide and titanium dioxide) rarely irritate skin. Chemical filters (all others) are marginally more likely to irritate very sensitive skins but offer the most invisible and non-oily formulas. UV-screens that double as antioxidant-rich daily moisturisers: Dr Sam’s Flawless Daily Sunscreen SPF50, £29, drsambunting.com: contains physical and chemical filters. Pai British Summer Time SPF30, £29, paiskincare.com: contains 100 per cent mineral filters. Great Skin by Ingeborg van Lotringen is published by Gibson Square, £12.99. TO order a copy for £11.04 until 13 February, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK delivery on orders over £20. 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