Today You Are Younger Than Tomorrow

We often remind ourselves that today, we are younger than we will be tomorrow.

It is really the only advice about ageing we need.

It doesn’t make us want to hold on to time. Quite the opposite. It makes us want to use it. Book the table. Wear a very good shirt on an entirely ordinary Tuesday. Stay for one more glass. And perhaps remember to apply the cream to the neck as well.

Life is happening now. So is beauty.

Life happens in between

The beauty industry has always loved a before and after. We are more interested in everything that happens in between.

That is, after all, where we live.

Growing into yourself

The face changes. So do the hair, the body, our taste and, one hopes, our judgement. We learn what suits us, which people we want close and that no truly good evening has ever begun with the words, “I’ll just have a quick salad at home.”

We do not become less as we grow older.

We become more ourselves.

And it shows.

A face has experienced sunlight and winter wind, too little sleep and dinners that went on for too long. It has laughed at the wrong moments, worried unnecessarily and fallen in love. Occasionally with the wrong person.

Should all of that really be erased?

A completely smooth face can, of course, be beautiful. But smooth is not the only thing a person can be.

There is character. Presence. Humour. The expression of someone who knows something but feels no particular need to tell you everything.

That is often where beauty begins to become interesting.

Skincare with results

We love skincare. We love the feeling of a cool mist on warm skin, a serum that sinks in properly and a rich cream in the evening. We enjoy waking up, looking in the mirror and realising that something has actually happened.

We want results.

More hydration. More radiance. A more even skin tone. A stronger skin barrier. And preferably eyes that reveal slightly less than we do over breakfast.

But skincare does not need to be about finding our way back to a face we once had. It can simply be about taking very good care of the one we have now.

Listen to your skin

Skin changes throughout life. At twenty, it may want balance and calm. Later, it may need more moisture, nourishment and active ingredients. Some days it wants the entire laboratory. On others, it wants everyone to leave it alone.

It needn’t be more dramatic than that.

Listen to your skin. Treat what you would like to change. Protect it from the sun. Give it good ingredients and a little patience.

But do not turn every line into a crisis.

Beauty at every age

We do not want younger people to fear the face they will have one day. Nor do we want older people to feel that beauty is a room from which they are slowly being shown out.

Beauty has no upper age limit.

It simply changes character.

It can be dewy skin and tousled hair. But it can just as easily be silver hair with an excellent cut, a dark jacket, a familiar perfume on a coat and the way someone enters a room without asking permission.

Some things are beautiful because they are new.

Others become beautiful because they have lived.

For us, beauty is not about looking untouched by life. It is about looking as though life suits you.

Live now

So take care of your skin. Use the products that genuinely make a difference. Get a good haircut. Wear perfume even when nobody else will smell it. Go out. Come home late occasionally.

And stop looking quite so closely in the mirror.

Nobody else is standing there with a magnifying glass.

Tomorrow, you will be a day older.

Today, you are absolutely wonderful.