Everything we have published

Barrier repair became the category that sells everything, which is how a perfectly functional stratum corneum ended up being treated as an emergency four nights a week.

Powder asks you to be precise with a brush you probably bought for something else. Cream asks you to have fingers, and that is most of the story.

Longevity is a function of molecular weight, concentration and your own sebum. Price correlates with none of the three, and nobody selling it has a reason to say so.

A short, sensible ingredient list at an unsensible price. It does what it claims, and the pump is the reason we cannot recommend it without a caveat.

Leaving your hair alone is the one instruction everybody follows and almost nobody follows correctly, because the shape is set in the first twenty minutes.

The evidence for sleep restriction changing how skin looks and heals is better than the evidence behind most of the shelf. It is also the hardest thing to sell.

Every other claim in the category is a probability. This one has a randomised trial behind it, and the argument now is only about how you get people to wear it.

Forty shades is a shelf-space decision. Whether any of them matches you is a question about the two or three pigments behind all forty, and that has barely moved.

Sold as a way to start your hair again from scratch. It is a competent, slightly harsh cleanser with an excellent scent and a claim it cannot support.

The method exists to remove things water cannot. If your evening face is bare skin and a moisturiser, you have been washing twice for no reason.

The pyramid on the box lists ingredients that may not be in the bottle. What you smell is a handful of blended effects, and learning those is what makes buying easier.

Five minutes of the right questions prevents most of the haircuts people cry about. Here is what a good stylist asks, and what you should volunteer if they do not.