London Skincare Routine Now Officially Longer Than The Average Commute
The city chases a glow it has no sunlight to justify, one expensive serum at a time
A new study from a beauty institute I have chosen to believe in has found that the average London skincare routine now takes longer than the average London commute, meaning the city’s residents spend more time fighting their own faces each morning than they do fighting the Northern line.
The twelve-step war against weather
The modern routine, falling squarely under the banner of hair and skin fashion, has expanded from a quick splash of water into a military operation involving cleansers, toners, essences, serums, acids, oils, and a final cream applied with the reverence of a religious rite. Each step promises a glow. The city, meanwhile, sits under a permanent grey lid that has not produced meaningful sunlight since roughly the Blitz.
This is the central comedy of London skincare. We are chasing a luminous, sun-kissed radiance in a climate scientifically incapable of producing it, applying twelve products designed to make us look as though we live somewhere with weather, when in fact we live here, under the cloud, performing summer on a face that has not seen the sun in months.
The beauty trends that defy the sky
The glow is the holy grail of contemporary beauty trends, and London pursues it with the desperate intensity of a people who know, deep down, that they are deficient in the one ingredient that actually produces it, which is daylight. No serum can replicate a fortnight in the Mediterranean, but the industry has built an empire on persuading us to try, one hopeful purchase at a time.
The astonishing growth of the skincare market, particularly among consumers who once considered soap sufficient, has been documented in the beauty business coverage at Vogue Business, which has charted how a category once aimed at solving problems now thrives on inventing them, selling steps nobody knew they needed for a radiance the sky refuses to provide.
The Institute of Photographic Lighting confesses
In a moment of rare honesty, a researcher from the entirely plausible Institute of Photographic Lighting admitted to me that much of the glow Londoners admire and pursue does not exist in nature at all but is a product of careful lighting, flattering screens, and the quiet miracle of editing. The faces we are trying to achieve, she explained, are frequently faces that have never existed in three dimensions, glowing under conditions our actual lives will never contain.
This is the cruellest twist in London beauty. We are spending fortunes and hours chasing a standard that was lit by professionals, photographed at noon in a country with a sun, and then adjusted until it left the realm of the achievable. The serum was never going to win. The serum was competing with a lighting rig.
The hair situation, briefly and honestly
The hair half of the equation fares no better, locked in its own losing battle with the famous London damp, which renders elaborate styling pointless the moment one steps outdoors and the city’s moisture gets to work. Londoners blow-dry with the doomed optimism of people who have not yet looked out of the window, achieving perfection indoors and surrendering it entirely on the walk to the bus.
The cultural reporting on our complicated relationship with appearance, including the thoughtful pieces at The Guardian’s fashion and beauty coverage, has long observed that British beauty routines are essentially acts of hope conducted in defiance of the British climate, a triumph of aspiration over meteorology repeated every single morning.
A gentle case for surrender
I am not immune. I own the serums. I have the acids. I perform the ritual most mornings with the same misplaced faith as everyone else, and I, too, step outside and watch the cloud undo my efforts within minutes. But I have started to wonder whether the most radical fashion trends in beauty might be the smallest one, the decision to do less, accept the grey, and let the face be a face.
The glow we are chasing belongs to another country and a better climate, and no twelve-step routine will import the sun to NW1. There is a strange freedom in admitting this, in cleansing, moisturising, and getting on with the day rather than waging a forty-minute war against geography.
The verdict from under the cloud
So I salute the London skincare routine for its ambition and pity it for its setting, a magnificent effort staged in the worst possible venue. We will keep buying the serums, keep chasing the glow, and keep stepping out into the drizzle that erases it, because hope, in this city, is the one beauty product that never runs out.
Do the routine if it brings you joy, skip it if it brings you peace, and forgive your face for living in London. For more from the damp frontier of hair and skin fashion, you can read the rest of my reporting on the city’s beauty obsessions.
The men who finally joined the war
The newest front in this losing battle is the rapid arrival of men into the routine, a demographic that once considered a bar of soap the height of grooming and now stands bewildered before shelves of serums it cannot name. The dramatic expansion of male skincare, documented in the beauty business reporting at The Business of Fashion, has doubled the city’s collective time spent fighting its own face each morning, with no corresponding increase in the amount of sunlight available to justify any of it. The cloud, mercifully, judges everyone equally, and undoes the labours of all genders with the same fine, patient drizzle.
