What Survives the Trend Cycle? A Skin Expert's View After 50 Years

The skincare principles that survive the trend cycle are not necessarily the ingredients that remain fashionable. They are the ideas that continue to make biological sense: understanding how skin changes with time, protecting it from cumulative environmental exposure, supporting its natural functions and respecting the limits of what skincare can achieve. After more than 50+ years of observing skin, I have found that the most interesting developments are often not the loudest ones. They are the discoveries that help us understand why skin changes in the first place.

Skin Measures Beauty Trends With Biology.

I have been around long enough to see beauty change its vocabulary many times.

There have been periods when a particular ingredient seemed to represent the future of skincare, followed by another period that questioned almost everything that came before it. Today, that cycle is still faster. An ingredient can become famous globally before most people have had the opportunity to understand what it actually does.

But there is another way of looking at time.

Skin does not experience a trend cycle. It experiences years of exposure, repair, stress, hormonal change, inflammation and gradual biological change.

That difference is important.

It means that when we talk about skin ageing, we are not really talking about one process. We are talking about several processes happening simultaneously, some from within the body and others shaped by everything the skin encounters along the way.

And some of those processes are surprisingly unfamiliar, even to people who know a great deal about skincare.

Your Skin Keeps a Record of the Life You Live

One of the more useful concepts to emerge from modern skin science is the exposome.

It refers to the totality of environmental exposures we experience across our lives. For skin, that includes ultraviolet radiation, air pollution and other external influences, alongside internal factors such as hormones and nutrition. Researchers have increasingly used this framework to understand why two people of the same chronological age can have very different skin histories. 

I find the idea of a skin “record” more useful than thinking of ageing as simply a number.

Consider two people who are both 50. One may have spent decades outdoors, travelling, commuting through polluted cities and experiencing repeated sun exposure. Another may have had a very different environmental history. Their birth year can be similar and their skin histories. 

 

Did you know?

Air pollution is now considered an important part of the skin exposome. Recent research describes mechanisms including oxidative stress, inflammation, microbiome disruption, and activation of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor. It also describes an interaction between pollution and solar radiation, sometimes referred to as photo-pollution.

That is a much more interesting way of thinking about skin than simply asking, “What age is my skin?”

Then There Is Glycation: The Ageing Process Nobody Talks About Enough

We often talk about collagen being lost with age, but there is another part of the story: what happens to the collagen that remains. One process involved is called glycation. In simple terms, sugars can attach to proteins such as collagen and form compounds called advanced glycation end products, or AGEs.

Think of collagen as a flexible network that gives skin structure and resilience. Over time, glycation can create extra links between these collagen fibres, making the network less flexible.

So skin ageing isn't simply about having less collagen. It's also about changes to the collagen that remains. Research has linked glycation with changes in collagen's mechanical properties and its ability to remodel normally.

That distinction rarely makes it into a viral skincare conversation, perhaps because “protect your collagen from glycation” is less immediately exciting than a new miracle ingredient.

But biology has never been particularly interested in what makes a good headline.

 

Did you know?

Collagen is an unusually long-lived protein. A 2025 review notes that the half-life of collagen in human skin is generally estimated at around 10 to 15 years, although turnover varies between collagen types and changes throughout life. 

That is remarkable when you think about it.

Some of the structural material in your skin has been around for years.

Skin Has a Clock

Another area that deserves much more attention is circadian biology.

We tend to divide skincare into AM and PM because it is convenient for a routine. But the skin itself has biological rhythms that influence processes such as cell proliferation, DNA repair, inflammation and immune activity. Recent reviews continue to explore how circadian rhythms influence skin function and responses to environmental damage.

That doesn't mean your skin magically switches into “repair mode” at a particular hour and that one must follow a rigid beauty schedule.

The more interesting point is that skin is not biologically static throughout the day.

It is a living tissue responding to time, light, hormones and environmental signals.

So when the beauty industry talks about “overnight transformation”, I find the real science much more fascinating.

The skin already has its own timetable. We don't need to invent one for it.

Your Skin Is Not Just Yours. It Is an Ecosystem.

The skin microbiome is another area where the science has moved considerably beyond the skincare conversations many of us grew up with.

The skin is home to a community of microorganisms that interact with the barrier and immune system. Recent reviews have explored how the microbiome changes with age and how external factors, including pollution and harsh skincare practices, can influence microbial balance and barrier function. This changes the way we think about skincare.

For a long time, the instinct was to think about the skin as something to clean, treat and correct.

Now we increasingly understand it as an ecosystem.

That does not mean every product labelled “microbiome-friendly” deserves our trust. In fact, it gives us another reason to be careful with marketing language.

A scientific concept can become a trend very quickly.

The science behind it deserves to move more slowly.

 

Did you know?

Recent research is exploring whether characteristics of the skin and gut microbiome could eventually contribute to measures of biological ageing. However, this remains an emerging field rather than a settled method of measuring how old someone's skin is.

We Have Been Thinking About Wrinkles Too Simply

There is another fascinating way to understand skin ageing: mechanics.

Skin is a layered material. It stretches, bends, compresses and moves constantly.

As the properties of its structural components change with age, its ability to withstand mechanical stress changes too. Research into the mechanical behaviour of ageing skin has shown that reductions in elastic fibres can substantially alter the skin's resistance to wrinkling. 

This is fascinating because it takes us beyond the usual language of “fine lines”.

A wrinkle is not simply a line appearing on a flat surface. It is the visible consequence of changes occurring within a complex, living, layered structure that is moving all day.

Your face smiles, frowns, squints,  You sleep on one side, move your mouth when you speak.  Skin is not a sheet of paper, It is living architecture.

This Is Where I Become More Interested in Skin Than in Skincare

Perhaps the biggest lesson of five decades is that skin is more complicated than the beauty industry often makes it sound.

A product can interact with one aspect of skin. It does not replace the biology of the entire organ.

Ageing involves structural proteins, cells, signalling pathways, environmental exposure, inflammation, pigmentation, the microbiome, mechanical forces and the body's own repair systems.

That complexity is not a reason to become overwhelmed.

It is a reason to become more selective.

The more we understand about skin, the less convincing the idea becomes that one ingredient can be the answer to everything.

 

The Newest Science May Actually Be Taking Us Back to a More Thoughtful Kind of Skincare

There is an interesting paradox here.

The more sophisticated skin science becomes, the less attractive simplistic skincare promises become.

We now understand that skin ageing is multifactorial. We understand that environmental exposure accumulates. We are studying the microbiome. We are learning more about glycation, cellular ageing and circadian biology. We are looking at skin not merely as an outer surface but as a complex biological system.

That should make us more discerning, not more obsessed with ingredients. It also changes the meaning of “advanced skincare”.

Advanced does not necessarily mean stronger; it can also  mean better understood.

 

What Five Decades Have Made Me Question

I have become increasingly cautious about certain assumptions.

That every new ingredient needs to be tried.

Visible irritation means a product is doing something useful.

That a complicated routine is necessarily a sophisticated routine.

 Correcting every sign of ageing is the same thing as maintaining healthy skin.

That a fashionable ingredient deserves our attention simply because it is fashionable.

And perhaps most of all, that skincare should constantly be trying to make skin behave as though it has not lived.

I would rather ask a different question:

What can we do to help skin function well through the years it is actually going to live?

That is a much more interesting problem.

 

The Dinyar Test: Will This Still Matter When the Trend Is Gone?

When something new arrives, I would put it through five tests.

That last question is probably the hardest. It is also the one I have had the longest to answer.

 

The Beauty Industry Will Keep Moving. That Is Not a Bad Thing.

I don't want to romanticise the past.

Some of the best developments in skincare have come from advances in science and formulation. We understand the skin better today than we did decades ago. We have technologies and research tools that simply did not exist when I started.

I welcome that.

What I question is the need to turn every advance into a revolution.

Sometimes an important development is quiet.

At times it takes years to understand.

Even the most valuable discovery is not a new ingredient at all, but a better understanding of why skin behaves the way it does.

That kind of progress rarely goes viral. It does, however, tend to last.

 

So What Survives the Trend Cycle?

After 50 years, I would not say that one particular ingredient has the answer. What survives is understanding.

Understanding that skin ageing is cumulative. That the environment matters.

That structural changes take years. That the skin has its own biological rhythms. That it is an ecosystem, not an empty canvas. That collagen does not simply disappear overnight. That inflammation is not a measure of intelligence in a formula.

And that a skincare product should work with the biology of the skin rather than treating the skin as something that constantly needs to be overpowered.

Perhaps that is what experience ultimately gives you.

Not a longer list of things to try. Rather, a shorter list of things you no longer feel the need to chase.

The Things Worth Keeping

The next trend will come. There will be another ingredient, technology, another phrase that suddenly seems to explain everything.

Some of it will be genuinely useful. Some of it will simply be better marketing. And some of it will be an old idea wearing a new name.

After five decades, I have become less interested in predicting which product will be famous next.

I am more interested in asking which ideas will still make sense when the excitement is gone. Those are the ones worth keeping.

 

Did You Know?

Your skin's biological age and your chronological age are not necessarily the same thing. Researchers are increasingly studying biological ageing through molecular, cellular and microbiome-related signals, although these approaches are still developing and should not be interpreted as a simple “skin age” number. 

FAQs

Q1. What skincare trends are actually worth following?

Look for trends built around a sound understanding of skin biology rather than novelty alone. A useful skincare trend should have credible evidence, a thoughtfully formulated product behind it, and a reasonable safety and tolerability profile.

Q2. How can you tell if a skincare trend is backed by science?

Look beyond social media popularity. Consider whether there is human research supporting the ingredient or technology, whether the evidence reflects the claims being made, and whether the formulation and concentration are appropriate for its intended use.

Q3. What skincare ingredients have stood the test of time?

Ingredients remain relevant when their benefits continue to make biological and scientific sense. Hydrating ingredients, niacinamide and certain peptide technologies are examples of areas that continue to be researched rather than relying solely on their popularity.

Q4. What is glycation and how does it affect skin ageing?

Glycation occurs when sugars react with proteins such as collagen and form advanced glycation end products, or AGEs. These changes can affect the structure and mechanical properties of collagen, making glycation one of the processes associated with skin ageing.

Q5. Why is collagen important for skin ageing?

Collagen provides structural support to the skin. With age, collagen production and organisation change, while the collagen already present can also undergo structural modifications. Skin ageing is therefore more complex than simply having “less collagen.”

Q6. Does expensive skincare work better?

Not necessarily. Price does not determine whether a skincare product will work well. Ingredients, formulation, stability, delivery, tolerability and suitability for the individual's skin are more meaningful considerations.

Q7. Can too many skincare products be bad for your skin?

Using several products is not automatically problematic, but unnecessarily layering multiple active or potentially irritating products can make a routine harder for the skin to tolerate. A well-considered routine is generally more useful than simply having more products.