Earth Core: Grooming Highlights for the Modern Man

After years of waiting, Tom Ford is finally bringing his men’s grooming range to Singapore. Our particular favourite from the line is the Tom Ford Purifying Mud Mask. The mask is perfect for an intensive weekly exfoliation, thanks to its use of activated charcoal and kaolin clay. Both ingredients are incredibly porous and absorbent, drawing out grease, impurities and, most visibly, blackheads. The mask changes colour from an intensely sooty hue to a light grey, indicating peak absorption and the ideal time to wash off. Once or twice a week should do it with this product.

Diptyque’s forays into skincare are tragically unsung given how luxurious the products are, from texture to fragrance. But the latter is to be expected from the French fragrance brand after all. The Multi-Use Exfoliating Clay ($100, from Escentials) is way ahead of the anti-microbead movement and uses marble powder instead for its extremely fine particle size – perfect for gentle scrubbing and clearing out dead skin and clogged pores. The delicate exfoliants mean this clay mask is ideal for even the most sensitive skins. Rounding up the experience is the light and airy scent of violet and herbal mate – a real sensorial treat.

Much of Korean skincare seems geared towards excess and multitude steps, so thankfully Sulwhasoo’s range of men’s grooming products, launched this year, is simple and tightly-edited: well-formulated with enjoyable textures that do the job. We recommend the Inner Charging Serum ($90). Questionable name aside, the serum contains a formula with pine, skullcap, dried ginger, Siberian ginseng, and lingzhi mushroom extracts – all antioxidant-rich and anti-ageing ingredients that are proven to calm, hydrate and nourish skin. Its gel texture makes this ideal for combination skins that need the dual benefits of a non-greasy finish and loads of hydration.

Aesop’s Parsley Seed range of product sees a new, heavier duty addition to the roster this October. Meet the Parsley Seed Anti-Oxidant Facial Hydrating Cream ($95). It’s the first – and strangely overdue – “proper” cream moisturiser in the range. We recommend this as an overnight moisturiser for drier skins that will benefit from the skin-conditioning vitamin E in the formulation. Vitamin E, which has extensively-researched hydrating and antioxidant properties, is present here in the form of Tocopherol, which works as an anti-inflammatory to calm and settle skin – all the better after a long day facing off against UV damage and urban pollution.

Jonathan Anderson’s debut fragrance sees Loewe up the Spanish label’s fragrance game. There are two scents, very literally named 001 Man and 001 Woman (from $120). The series is hailed as an ode to “the morning after” and the uncertain promises as seen in the daylight – perfumery purple prose for soft, fresh and approachable. There are strong notes of chocolate-tinged iris that even the most unpractised nose will recognise as Dior Hommes’ influence in the men’s version. It does perfectly well on its own as a woody cologne with refined gourmand edges, but it really lights up when you layer it with 001 Woman. The floral-heavy sweetness of the woman’s scent gets its deserved developments in the base notes with 001 Man’s cedar and musk. While both are decent, it’s a shame it takes two fragrances to get to a good one.