Explained
Vitamin D is the odd one out among the skincare vitamins. It's far less common than A, C or E, it's more often a supporting ingredient than a headline one,...
Vitamin E is in more of your products than you realise, and it's doing two jobs at once – one for your skin, and one for the formula it's in....
Linoleic acid is the reason two facial oils can feel completely different on the same face. If you've ever found oils "too heavy" or wondered why one broke you out...
Resveratrol is best known from headlines about red wine, which has done it no favours as a skincare ingredient – the topical story is quite separate from the nutritional one,...
Ferulic acid is a supporting player, and understanding that is the key to shopping for it well. It's rarely worth buying on its own – but its presence in a...
Bakuchiol arrived in skincare marketed as "natural retinol", which is both useful shorthand and slightly misleading. Here's what it actually is, and when it's the better choice. What it is...
Peptides are among the harder ingredients to shop for, because the word covers dozens of different molecules that do different things – and the marketing rarely tells you which one...
Squalane rarely gets top billing, which is a shame – it's one of the most useful and least troublesome ingredients you can add to a routine, and it makes almost...
Hyaluronic acid is the most widely used hydrating ingredient in skincare, and the most commonly misused – usually by people applying it to bone-dry skin and wondering why it made...
Vitamin C is the most bought and most wasted active in skincare – wasted because a great many bottles oxidise on a shelf before they're finished. Understanding which form you're...
Niacinamide is the least dramatic active on the shelf and probably the most useful. It doesn't sting, it doesn't require a tolerance-building programme, and it gets along with everything –...
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