skin – The Grooming Guru

Don’t know what to get your dad for Father’s Day this year? Well, here are 10 bulletproof grooming gifts he’s bound to like.

Edwin Jagger 3ONE6 Stainless Steel Safety Razor, £83. Trad and yet uber-modern thanks to the colours (there are 10 different ones to choose from) this safety razor is great for eco-aware dads as it says goodbye to plastic. edwinjagger.co.uk

Aesop Adventurer Roll-Up, £45. A super stylish collab with Christopher Raeburn this roll-up pouch features pocket-sized hand essentials including a cleansing gel, evaporative mist and hydrating balm. Perfect pandemic protection for papas. aesop.com

BaByliss Super-X Metal Series Nose, Ear and Eyebrow Trimmer, £25. It might not be the most glamorous gift but it’ll certainly be the most useful one your old man will ever have and is the best quality trimmer I’ve ever tried. BaByliss.co.uk

Miller Harris La Fueille Eau De Parfum, £160 for 100ml. I wrote about this for the Miller Harris website recently and totally fell in love with it its green, horticultural heart notes of ivy, tomato leaf and fig. Perfect for keen gardeners.

Bolin Webb 10th Year Anniversary ‘Racing Green’ Razor with stand, £90. British, award-winning, stylish AF. What’s not to love? bolinwebb.com

Eco Warrior Total Works Gift Pack, £27. As the name suggests, this six bar soap pack from the Little Soap Company has everything a dad into ethical grooming might need. littlesoapcompany.co.uk

Halston Z-14. Like your dad, Halston’s classic fragrance for men is an oldie but a goodie. I wrote about why it’s so good for Robb Report but let’s just say that truly great fragrances never go out of fashion. fragrancedirect.co.uk

Heath X Liam Mertens Washbag Set, £44. Exclusive to Anthropologie this trio of skincare essentials from one of my favourite grooming brands, Heath, comes with packaging designed by up-and-coming artist Liam Mertens and is housed in a cool vegan leather washbag. anthropologie.com

Barber Pro Foot Peel, £7.95. Featuring a raft natural botanical extracts to remove dead, rough and unsightly skin, this is the perfect product for ensuing your father avoids any foot faults this summer. barberpro.com

Harry’s Shave With Pride Set, £28. Launched for Pride month this cool-looking shaving set, with its unique irridescent rainbow razor, not looks the biz – it helps raise money for LGBTQ+ youth too. Because not all dads are straight right? harrys.com

[Press samples of some, but not all, of the products listed here were provided for review purposes]

When it comes to combatting oil and shine – one of men’s biggest skincare concerns – high performance skincare specialists Lab Series have always led the way. They were one of the first major male grooming brands to launch a dedicated oil control range and now they’ve launched a new three-step, 8-hour oil control system, consisting of three core products.

You start your grease-busting regime with the new Oil Control Clay Cleanser + Mask, which eliminates grease and grime without leaving skin feeling dry and tight, then use the Oil Control Clearing Solution to remove any remaining oil and dead skin cells (you’ll need some cotton pads for this) and finish off with the Oil Control Daily Moisturiser – an oil-free hydrator that keep skin shine-free for up to eight hours.

Of the three products, the Clay Cleanser + Mask is probably the most interesting (the other two existed in slightly different forms in Lab Series’ existing Oil Control range). A money-and-space-saving 2-in-1 product, it can be used as a straight-forward cleanser but also as an oil-absorbing face mask to give skin a deep clean and unclog pores. To use, you simply apply a thin layer once or twice a week and leave on for five minutes before washing off – the detoxifying Amazonian white clay and dead cell-dislodging salicylic acid in the mask do the rest.

With men’s skin naturally oiler than women’s and everything from heat and friction to sun and stress known triggers for oil production, a range like this is one of the best insurance policies a man has against oil slick skin and a shiny schnoz. You don’t even have to have excessively oily skin to benefit from the range. Now that I’m a bit older my skin isn’t nearly as greasy as it used to be (oil production slows down as you age) but the Oil Control Moisturiser is a godsend for when little patches of shine do appear (I just apply a little to problem areas around the nose and forehead before I go out) and I find the Clay Cleanser + Mask a little less aggressive than some other oil-absorbing masks on the market, so it might be worth a try if other masks have left you, quite literally, a little red-faced.

Lab Series’ new 8-Hour Oil Control System is available now.