So fresh and so clean: the rise of men's skincare

Precision skincare is in and unruly beards are out as modern man returns from the wilderness, says  Samuel Fishwick
Shutterstock / George Rudy

You may bristle at the suggestion, but a new micro-age of man is upon us.

An overdue and intensive clean-up operation is underway on the overgrown masculine mien: he’s done his hair toss (tossed away the scraggly beard, anyway), checked his nails and invested in a roller, the right oil and exfoliator. The resultant look is both fresh and so clean.

The retaming of the male visage is well under way in 2020. Witness the upper lip of Justin Bieber, emerging blinking into the sunlight this month, shorn of a wispy moustache so synonymous recently with his later-life scumbro aesthetic (scumbro: a slapdash style largely defined by men who pay a lot of money to look bad). “Baby-faced Bieb,” he announced to a relieved fanbase who have strongly opposed said ‘tache.

Or look to Brit Award-winner Tyler, The Creator who alluded to his self-care skincare routine in a recent GQ Magazine interview. “Not moisturising or having weed breath? Big no-nos,” the 28-year-old rapper and youth-culture multi-hyphenate laid out.

Tyler, the Creator attends the 2019 LACMA 2019 Art + Film Gala in November
Getty Images

The same magazine has also noted the rise of “the male skinfluencer”, a relatively new but growing style of online content creator focusing “less on beauty and more on pure skincare itself”. Sheet masks and Korean skincare regimes are lapped up by millions of men. The Jaxon Lane Bro Mask is one of the better sellers in the grooming section of men’s style bible Mr Porter: sheet masks packed with collagen, vitamin B3 and plant extracts to target blemishes, redness and sun damage.

Then there’s Dr Augustinus Bader, a medical school grad and stem-cell pioneer beloved by Victoria Beckham. His cellular renewal moisturisers have been hailed as the secret to rich-person skin.

Google searches for men’s skincare routines have risen by 400 per cent over the last five years and skincare companies are recording record profits in the billions, growing year-on-year by 16 per cent.

“There’s definitely a clean-up process in action,” says Spencer Wallace, co-founder of Beast, a men’s grooming store. Beards aren’t out, he says, but need to be neat — polished but not overdone. But freshness of skin is imperative. “Keep it smooth by using an exfoliator, keep it hydrated with a good moisturiser and look after your eyes,” he says. “If you want to really invest in one product over the others, we say to our customers, ‘Make it your eye cream’.” Beast’s heavyweights include the Allies Of Skin Bright Future Sleeping Facial, which both exfoliates and hydrates the skin while you sleep, and The Grey 3 in 1, which hydrates the skin as well as looking after your eyes.

Jaxon Lane Bro Sheet Masks, £25, Shop it here
Mr Porter

Then there’s Soft, a New York-based skincare line which is making inroads in a men’s market where once there were no roads at all. Its moisture mask applies like a soothing, orange-scented water bomb and leaves happy, stubbly customers... well, soft. “Not so long ago, if you weren’t ‘masculine enough’ or you showed any sort of emotion, you were ‘soft’,” says

James O’Dwyer, one of the brand’s co-founders. “But being soft is great and we’re hoping to redefine what the word means to men and subvert it.”

The Grey 3 in 1 Daily Face Cream, £75 Shop it here
The Grey

It is, perhaps, a telling development in the broader zeitgeist. While the trend, hitherto, has been to retreat and hide behind a bushy Arctic-explorer crop, the direction of travel is bright, open and front-facing.

We are comfortable with unruly hair, we’ve owned it. Now we’re owning its cultivation and a softer, kinder, sunnier mug.

The focus has shifted up from the jawline; we are looking at the complete picture. Bye bye, beardy. Hello, sweet cheeks, we’ve missed you.

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