A Skincare Routine for Men, Done Properly

Open the average man's bathroom cabinet and you will find the remains of several good intentions: a serum bought after a podcast, a charcoal mask from a social feed, three half-finished moisturisers and a can of foam. None of it is doing very much. What follows is the opposite approach. Six products, two tools and eight and a half minutes a day, and nothing you will ever need to explain.

Two centuries ago, when fashionable men perfumed rather than washed, I made London take up soap. Clean skin, clean linen and a close shave were the whole of the secret. They still are.

Nobody requires two hours of you. The routine below takes two minutes in the morning, five more on the days you shave and ninety seconds at night: eight and a half minutes at the outside. It is laid out step by step, with the timings, in the chart that follows. It rewards consistency over enthusiasm, and that is the entire trick.

The kit, in order of use

The principle: fewer things, done properly

The case for spending well on your skin is the same as the case for spending well on a white shirt. You wear it every day, it is the first thing anyone sees, and the difference between good and indifferent is invisible on day one and unmistakable after ten years. Spend where the product stays on your face all day: the moisturiser and the sunscreen. Spend sensibly on what is rinsed off within a minute. And spend nothing on whatever promises to transform you, because nothing in a jar will. The men who look well at sixty are, without exception, the ones who did the dull things daily.

Morning: wash, shave, moisturise, protect

Wash first, in lukewarm water rather than hot, with Augustinus Bader's The Cream Cleansing Gel. Sixty seconds, then rinse. It cleans without stripping and leaves the skin as it found it, minus the night. That is all you should ask of a cleanser, and more than most deliver.

The order matters: wash, shave, moisturise, then sunscreen last. On a shaving day the shave comes straight after the wash, before anything else goes on the face. On other days, go directly to the cream.

Then the shave, five minutes: a brush, a bowl and a single blade

The shave is the one part of the routine that rewards a little ceremony, and even here the ceremony is short. Foam from a can is mostly air. A proper cream, whipped into a lather with a brush, lifts the beard, cushions the blade and leaves the face in better shape than it found it.

The cream should be Truefitt & Hill's Trafalgar Shaving Cream, from the barbershop Guinness World Records lists as the oldest in the world. It smells faintly of cedar and sandalwood: a dressing room, not a pharmacy. The brush should be silvertip badger, the finest grade there is, and Mühle's Classic, made by hand in Germany's Ore Mountains, will outlast several razors. The razor itself should be a single, honest blade: the Mühle R89 safety razor, heavy enough to do the work under its own weight.

The method is brief. Shave straight after washing, while the beard is still damp and soft. A minute to build the lather. Three minutes with the razor, with the grain and with no pressure at all: a weighted razor needs a steady hand, not an earnest one. A minute of cold water to finish, pat dry, then the moisturiser. Five minutes, and the best five of the morning.

Then moisturise and protect: two products, one minute

After the wash (and the shave, if it is a shaving day), the moisturiser, which is where the money belongs. The Cream by Augustinus Bader was developed by a professor of stem-cell biology, and its great merit in a man's routine is that it disappears in under a minute. One pump, pressed in rather than rubbed. It does not shine, it does not smell like a hotel spa, and it does not announce itself. A good moisturiser should behave like a good chief of staff: indispensable and never seen.

Last, without exception, sunscreen. The American Academy of Dermatology advises a broad-spectrum SPF 30 or higher every day, cloudy or not, and a man who ignores the advice will find the consequences recorded faithfully on his face. Most sunscreens are greasy, chalky or both, which is why most men skip them. Dr. Barbara Sturm's Sun Drops SPF 50 are a few drops of fluid that vanish into the moisturiser. Thirty seconds, and you are done.

Night, ninety seconds: wash again, and something richer

By evening your face has spent a day in offices, airports, Ubers and other people's air. Wash it again with the same gel, for the same sixty seconds. Then a heavier cream, because the skin does its repair work while you sleep and is grateful for help.

Crème de la Mer is the obvious choice and, unusually for the obvious choice, the correct one. By the house's own account it was devised by an aerospace physicist, Dr. Max Huber, after a lab accident left him with burns, and it took twelve years and some six thousand experiments with fermented sea kelp. You need not believe every word of a founding myth to enjoy the cream. Warm a little between your fingertips and press it in. Thirty seconds. A jar lasts longer than you would expect, because a little is the correct amount.

Weekly and monthly: polish, and the barber

Once a week, in place of the night wash, use Dr. Barbara Sturm's Enzyme Cleanser. It is a fine powder that turns to foam in wet hands and removes dead skin without the grit of a scrub. Your face looks rested, which is the entire point. More often than weekly is overdoing it.

The rest belongs to a professional. A great barber every three or four weeks does more for a man's appearance than any jar, and the smart move is to book the next appointment before you leave the chair. Truefitt & Hill has been cutting hair since 1805 and has kept its shop at 71 St James's Street since 1994, a short walk from where I lived and a shorter one from the clubs. If you cannot get to London, find the barber nearest you who keeps the same standards: hot towels, a straight razor and a disinclination to talk.

What to leave out

Almost everything else. The ten-step regimen, the jade roller, the sheet mask, the toner that tones nothing, the gadget with LED lights you saw advertised between episodes. None of it is wicked, but a man who owns all of it has mistaken shopping for discipline.

Fragrance belongs here too. I held, and was quoted holding, that a gentleman should smell of nothing but clean linen. If you insist on a scent, put it on skin rather than clothes, use one spray rather than three, and let it fade before dinner.

That is the other half of the argument, and it is worth saying plainly. Taking care of your face is not vanity. Neglect, worn as a badge of seriousness, is the vainer pose. The man who looks rested, close-shaven and well kept has simply done the dull things daily and then forgotten about them.

The routine at a glance

• Morning, in this order: 1. wash with The Cream Cleansing Gel; 2–4. on shaving days, the shave: Trafalgar Shaving Cream and a silvertip badger brush for the lather, an R89 safety razor with the grain, then cold water and pat dry; 5. one pump of The Cream; 6. Sun Drops SPF 50, always last. Two minutes, seven with the shave.
• Night, ninety seconds: wash again; Crème de la Mer.
• Weekly and monthly: the Enzyme Cleanser in place of the night wash; the barber every three or four weeks.

Six products, two tools, eight and a half minutes. Do it every day and nobody will ever ask what you use, which is exactly the point. For the rest of a well-kept life, see things worth spending money on.

Sources: Captain William Jesse, The Life of George Brummell (1844); Harriette Wilson, Memoirs (1825); Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope (1845); Brummell, Male and Female Costume (written c. 1822, published 1932); American Academy of Dermatology sunscreen guidance; Guinness World Records, oldest barber shop; Truefitt & Hill company history; La Mer company history.