Routines. Remember those? Of course you don’t, life is now just an incessant grey hell viewed through the truncated lens of a Zoom call. Everything is happening out there, in a world where you want to be, but can’t bear to go. Every day you wake up (or do you?), you go into another room of the house, you consume sustenance, you attempt to work before eventually conceding defeat and retreating back into the first room to sleep again.
I pine for a breakfast meeting that I can be 10-minutes late for, a lunch I can eek-out to 5pm or a birthday drinks I can simply not turn up to. I could do those things, of course – some people are doing them all the time; some berks never stopped – but I still think that just by leaving the house I could potentially kill myself or someone else.
I always thought routines only made sense in the context of other, more important routines. A strict regimen of morning exercise existed because that was the only time available after your financial routine (work) and social routine (pubs), which were both more important. But now I see that routines not only help you to get stuff done, but they can keep you from going completely insane.
In the landscape of 2020, exercise has been promoted from a micro to a macro routine. If you don’t leave the house, get some fresh air and vigorously thrash your limbs about then you are guaranteed to lose the last few marbles left clinking in your dangerously empty head. And eating, which was previously important but oft overlooked in favour of work or exercise or media, is now paramount. Food is god; all things now orbit the consideration of how, when and what we eat.
“Can we do a Zoom quiz for your mum’s birthday?”
“Sorry dad, I need to spatchcock a pea hen that I’ve been brining for the past two weeks. It’s Ottolenghi, so….”
And I’ve got a ‘grooming regime’ again. (It’s an odd phrase, for obvious reasons. Some people now say ‘self-care’, but that sounds way too onanistic for the decorous application of lotions.) When I first started out in this crazy world of men’s fashion and cultured living, I was dismissive of the need for an arsenal of products. But as luxury publishing slowly enveloped me in its irresistible, gilded shearling, I was drawn to the appeal. The skin on my face didn’t just need washing, it needed cleansing, like it had sinned. I was a topical crusader, and my gaping pores were the battleground. There were scrubs, peels, pastes, tinctures, serums, oils, gels, toners, masks, tonics and mists. Pre-shaving regimen, post-shaving regimen, things I’d slather on at night, things I’d slather on in the morning, things I’d carry in my pocket in case – god forbid – a patch of skin was momentarily un-quenched.
I got into fragrances, too. Forever searching for that scent that wasn’t just unique, but the olfactory distillation of my very being. I thought I had found it in Dunhill’s Icon, or Byredo’s Super Cedar, or Tom Ford’s Neroli Portofino, but they all lost their lustre eventually. (I actually think Neroli Portofino might be the one, but even I’m not sure that 100ml of the ‘olfactory distillation of my very being’ is worth £240.) And no matter how thorough my search, no hair product ever ticked all the boxes. Perhaps it had the flexible hold but lacked the longevity, or it had the staying power but grew slimy as the day wore on. Of all the world’s ills, surely the lack of an un-greasy, re-mouldable, mid-shine paste would be an easy problem to fix?!
But over the years the mania faded. In fact it flipped to a kind of cosmetic nihilism – I not only lost interest, but wondered if all the constant application of potions and scents wasn’t perhaps a poor use of my time. I read more, I went to pottery classes, I rode my bike. I kept the litany of fragrances, but the spritzing was more conservative. (I still showered, if you’re wondering. I’m not an animal.)
This nice big tub of Amazonian white clay makes a great follow-up to the brand's universal cleanser.
Horace's bright-blue face mask contains kaolin clay as well as antioxidant plant extracts and silica to control excess oil production. It's also remarkably well priced.
Spend on your serums; save on your clay masks. This one works just as well as a pricier alternative.
Malin and Goetz Clarifying Clay Mask
This weekly deep-cleanser will sort out excess oil and sebum in as little as ten minutes.
Then lockdown happened and everything lost shape. It became quickly apparent that the content of our daily lives was really just a distraction from the yawning void of introspection. Clothes, work, Netflix, the gym, street food, five-a-side, Twitter, interior design, Swedish cinema, festivals, Billie Eilish and Love Island. All just things we use to make sure we don’t think too hard about our lives. (Sorry, perhaps I should have alluded to the misery a few paragraphs sooner?) It’s why we scrambled to pints over Zoom, why people that had never so much as jogged to the kitchen became avid runners, why I couldn’t buy a bloody tie-dye kit on Amazon!
Gradually, in the hunt for some semblance of structure, the grooming regime returned. This time, though, it was healthier; less fanatic. Post shower, I might wipe a bit of toner over my face (I might not – I’m still not really sure what toner is, but it sounds like something my face needs), then something to soften my stubble, something to stop my face from cracking in the arid air of my flat and something to mask the smell of weeks spent working in the same room I eat in. More often than not, the hair gets a splash of sea-salt spray, and then whipped into shape by a blob of Maria Nila’s ‘Schist’ fibre cream, which might just be that perfect product I’ve always wanted.
Utilising a few well-chosen products makes you look and smell better and punctuates the morning, and god knows we need as much punctuation as we can muster these days. As we start to return to some vague semblance of a past reality, I’m happy to report that I have a healthy handle on self-care (lol). But then again, I was hungover the other day and put some of those liquid gel pads under my eyes and it was great, so a relapse might be on the cards.
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