When Good Friends dispense Questionable Advice
It's a jungle out there
I get a message like this approximately once a week from people who know me IRL. This one happens to reference a few things that I’ve been meaning to write about for a while.
There is no shade to the original message sender here, but this is how people get talked into buying products that they may not need and can propagate somewhat unhelpful stuff if they don’t do their own research.
Expensive facial
We have no details of what this expensive facial involved.
My advice, though: in 2025, you should not be paying for a facial in which your face is slathered in fluids and the occasional spot is squeezed.
A 2025 facial should come with heavy machinery. I’m talking microneedling, LED, IPL, BBL, microdermabrasion1.
Retinol
If you’re over 35, you’ve already aged out of retinol and should have graduated to a retinoid2 if that’s the effect you’re after. Retinol won’t do you any harm - and it’s an excellent idea to incorporate into your routine in your 20s - but it’s unlikely to give you any meaningful improvement post-35.
Don’t forget about azelaic acid, which doesn’t promote collagen but improves skin texture and is much better tolerated by most skin types.
Vitamin C (aka ascorbic acid)
I wrote about this at some length here
TLDR: Vitamin C products tend to be disproportionately expensive and there’s no clinical evidence that they do more for you when applied topically than eating an orange. Eat your vitamin C, don’t apply it.
Caution
If you decide to ignore my sage advice3 and use Vitamin C products, be aware that you should not combine Vitamin C products with retinol/retinoids.
You can use one in the morning and one at night, but don’t use both in the same part of your routine - they don’t play nicely together.
Niacinamide
Wrote about this too :)
TLDR: works, cheap, get involved (if it suits your skin)
Peptides
Only copper peptides are proven to promote collagen.
NIOD’s are awesome, there is a cheaper version by The Ordinary if you prefer to start there4.
Lipids (often aka Ceramides in the context of skincare)
These are just fatty acids that moisturise the skin. Some examples are:
Jojoba oil
Lanolin
Beeswax
Squalane/squalene
Shea butter
In other words: moisturising is important. This may help:
Protecting your skin barrier is very important, but remember that throwing a load of product at your face can do more to stress and harm your skin barrier than the elements.
Collagen production
Things that boost collagen production:
Eating Vitamin E/C-rich foods
Red light therapy5
Microneedling
Morpheus86
Vitamin A skincare (retinoids, retinol7)
Copper peptides
Profhilo8
K-beauty
Yep, wrote about that too…
(and its more sophisticated older sister, J-beauty)
There are some incredible skincare products coming out of Korea and Japan, but the idea that “they’re a lot more advanced than Western products” is sheer madness.
They also can seem cheap, but bear in mind that these are often straightforward pharmacy brands, equivalent to CeraVe, Superdrug or Boots No7. They just look fancier because they’re unfamiliar and because Asian brands are often beautifully packaged. And sometimes the package size is small…
Beauty of Joseon is fine, no criticisms, but it’s not exceptional. Also, many Korean pharmacy brands are formulated for 20-something skin.
In summary - explore these, see if they work for you and use if they do. They’re not a silver bullet9.
I give advice on where to buy Asian skincare towards the bottom of this post. There are a lot of fakes on Amazon.
The most important thing
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to great skin.
There isn’t even one single definition of what great skin is.
What matters is that you understand your skin type10 and the products that make your skin feel fabulous and (crucially) unirritated.
Remember that what works for someone else may not work for you - this is the beauty and frustration of Being Human.
A consistent routine (even of relatively low cost products) will likely do more for you over the long term than occasional use of a super-spendy Wonder Product.
Until the next time!
Be careful
There will be a ‘WTF is’ on these soon.
🤷🏼♀️
The Ordinary product used to be a NIOD product, but when NIOD reformulated and enhanced theirs, the OG moved down to The Ordinary range.
There isn’t a huge amount of clinical evidence on this yet, but some exists and anecdotal reports are good
This works incredibly well for some and has no effects for others. Roll the dice if you care to…
Retinol is less potent
As ever, I cannot stress enough how great Profhilo is
Asian cleansing oils cannot be beaten so far, IMO
