DO YOU know your peptides from your probiotics? Sulphates from serums? What even is a niacinamide and should you care? Even if you are a skincare zen master with superb and sublime layering skills or an absolute beginner, the new book Great Skin: Secrets the Beauty Industry Doesn’t Tell You is a brilliant beauty resource, written by Ingeborg van Lotringen, a health, beauty and skincare journalist with over 20 years’ experience (such sa being the beauty director of Cosmopolitan for 14 years) and who is renowned for her inquiring, intelligent, informed and direct approach to all things skin related.
In the last few years, interest in, and the number of, skincare products on the market has skyrocketed with the debut of the OG skincare brand The Ordinary as well as its copycat admirers such as The Inkey List, Garden of Wisdom among others – all focussing on selling high quality effective, single ingredients at brilliant prices – with the emphasis being on what is inside the pot rather than the jar itself.
And consequently skincare sales have boomed too – with Mintel forecasting that online purchases will have grown in 2020 by 24 per cent to £1.9 billion. While UK high street stalwart, John Lewis, have recorded that its sales of body and hair products and skincare have increased by a staggering 234 per cent this year too with consumers shifting their spending from make up over to skincare. Call it the lockdown effect, it is clear that the growth and interest in this area is huge.
The cover of Great Skin – Secrets the Beauty Industry Doesn’t Tell You
by Ingeborg van Lotringen
But with this beauteous bounty of products comes, well, confusion. Which products work with what? What is the best one for me? What are these ingredients? How much to use, when and in what order? How to build a skincare regime that works for you? What is an INCI list and how can I understand it? So many, many questions.
Luckily for us, Great Skin provides answers for all these and is a wonderful guidebook through this now densely populated terrain – decoding marketing speak – while debunking a few myths and providing reliable, straightforward information. Clearly and very well written, the book is organised in three parts divided into 50 short information-packed chapters.
The first part is all about before creating the right routine – with the emphasis being on getting to know your skin first – one of van Lotringen key points is the uniqueness of your skin and how important it is to understand it before you start building a routine; the second part deals with problem-solving actives, and the final section discusses specific skin issues and concerns.
Helpfully, each chapter concludes with a pithy “bottom line” clearly summarising the chapter as well as a short list of recommended products to try.
As Inge says, it’s not that complicated. And her book certainly succeeds in demystifying skincare.
by Caroline Simpson
Competition
Gibson Square, publishers of Great Skin: Secrets the Beauty Industry Doesn’t Tell You have offered a copy for one of our readers to win. If you would like to enter this competition, please email:
with the subject line: Competition: Great Skin: Secrets The Beauty Industry Doesn’t Tell You
The competition is for UK addresses only and that, while entry is free, applicable terms and conditions apply.
Competition ends on December 31, 2020
Great Skin: Secrets the Beauty Industry Doesn’t Tell You (Gibson Square) by Ingeborg van Lotringen (paperback) retails at £9.67 (256 pp)