The new exfoliators for silky soft, gleaming skin

Is your skin feeling dull, dry or uneven?

No wonder. You’ve been inside for a year. Glowy skin probably hasn’t been top of the list of priorities. Or, maybe you’ve been grooming meticulously, for the habit of it, for the sense of occasion. At one point in the eight hundred years of lockdown, I fake tanned religiously, dutifully applying on a Thursday night for a week of glow. At another point, I went through a deep phase of eyebrow maintenance, home tinting and obediently smearing brow serums on before bed. Please join me now, in the exfoliation phase of lockdown.

With this phase comes optimism. It’s not as wildly dramatic as say, applying tan to sit at the computer all day and then swap for couch. It’s optimistic because it’s a preparation. Despite the endless rain, there was a brief flash of sun last week, the daffodils are out and there’s the slightest smidge of a grand stretch coming over the horizon. Exfoliating is a beauty routine equivalent of putting an event in the diary, a highly exciting prospect right now. Coming soon is good weather, and with it, there will be rosé, and hopefully friends, and sunglasses and legs out. So, it’s time to get exfoliating.

Whether you prefer a scrub with bits that leaves your arms as soft as a puppy’s belly or something chemical that leaves your skin looking like a dolphin’s, there’s a new launch for you.

For your face, it’s Charlotte Tilbury Super Radiance Resurfacing Facial, €65. It has a blend of acids to resurface the skin; there’s 10% glycolic acid, so you’ll effortlessly wipe your dead skin away, 2% salicylic too, which gets right into the pores and gets to work at unclogging them. There’s also polyhydroxy acids, which exfoliate while protecting the skin from free radicals and holding on to moisture in the skin, keeping your skin barrier in good nick. If you’re concerned about the tightness that comes with exfoliating acids, Charlotte Tilbury has taken care of that with a cocktail of hydrating, nourishing and repairing ingredients; hyaluronic acid, polyglutamic acid, aloe vera, avocado oil, glycerin and more, for skin that’s radiant, glowing and smooth. It’s quite literally a facial in a tube.

If you prefer a scrub with bits, Ole Henriksen has a new Lemonade Scrub. It’s a sugary formula with chemical and physical exfoliators that’ll dissolve your dead skin and help reduce the look of pores, with an added scent of summer.

Now, for your body, there’s a new launch you have to know about. If exfoliation is really your passion, you already know about the new launch from the King of Acids, Dr Dennis Gross. His cult hero Alpha Beta Peel now comes as a body exfoliator, meaning you now have a full-body facial in a wipe. If you have dry, rough skin, if you have an uneven skin tone on your body, if you have ingrown hairs, spots or keratosis pilaris, you can now wipe them off your body with this new all-over body towel.

Prefer something with a little more grit for your body?

Soap is officially cool again, and L’Occitane has just launched a new soap collection, made with at least 78% vegetable oils, in mood-boosting colours and energizing scents like lemon and tangerine and rosemary and clary sage. In the collection are two-in-one Scrubbing Soaps, €12 each, in almond and shea butter. Both have little bumps for massaging the skin, almond shaves for sloughing away your dead skin and hydrating formulas that leave the skin soft and supple.

Photography by Jason Lloyd Evans.