The iVillage anti-ageing guide

In winter, though, and certainly if you live in Northern Europe, you’ll need to rethink your sunscreen strategy and adapt your skincare routine. If you spend more of your time indoors, or it’s raining or cloudy and you barely see the light of day, there’s no need to overload skin with chemical sunscreens. An antioxidant moisturiser featuring a generous dose of vitamins like A, C, E (and other plant elements such as pycnogenol, an antioxidant from pine bark, or polyphenols, which comes from grapes and help ‘mop up’ the damage caused by exposure to sun and pollution) will offer adequate protection. However, ‘if you’re going skiing or spending a lot of time outdoors, playing golf, or walking on a bright winter’s day when there’s frost on the ground, an SPF15 is a good idea,’ says Professor Nicholas Lowe, a Consultant Dermatologist who has clinics in London and Santa Monica, California, and is a Clinical Professor at University of California in Los Angeles.

According to Dr Daniel Maes, Estée Lauder’s star skin researcher, ‘if women are only going to do one thing for their skin, I would say use a moisturiser with an antioxidant.’ Dr Maes is such a proponent of antioxidants that he believes, ‘it ought to be the duty of the cosmetics industry to provide this protection in every new product.’ He explains that antioxidants protect skin and actually enable it to repair itself to a small extent.