There is an appealing logic to setting aside an hour on Sunday evening for skincare. The week is ending, another is about to begin, and there is enough time to wash away the accumulated sunscreen, makeup and ordinary grime of the day without immediately rushing towards whatever comes next. Yet the temptation, once an hour has been designated as a skin ritual, is to fill it with activity. A cleanser is followed by exfoliation, perhaps a mask, then toner, essence, serum, facial oil and moisturiser, until what began as an opportunity to slow down becomes another project to complete.

Our Sunday ritual is deliberately different. We are going to cleanse gently, look at our skin, moisturise it if it needs moisturising and then largely leave it alone. Vitamin E provides the thread running through the ritual, but not because we are going to open a capsule and cover our faces in neat tocopherol. Its place here is more interesting than that. As we discovered in Botanical Library Monograph No. 003, vitamin E is part of the antioxidant chemistry of human skin and has also become an enormously common cosmetic ingredient, yet the history of vitamin E illustrates particularly well how a scientifically interesting molecule can acquire claims that run considerably further than the evidence supporting them. The ritual is therefore partly about skincare and partly about learning to distinguish what a formulation actually does from what we have been encouraged to imagine that it does.

Before we begin: why vitamin E?

Vitamin E is not a single molecule but a family of related tocopherols and tocotrienols. In human tissues, alpha-tocopherol is the predominant form, and vitamin E is an important lipid-soluble antioxidant. Human skin contains vitamin E in the epidermis, dermis and stratum corneum, while sebum also provides a route through which alpha-tocopherol reaches the skin surface. Research has shown that environmental stresses, particularly ultraviolet radiation, can deplete vitamin E within the skin, which helps explain the longstanding scientific interest in its relationship with oxidative damage and photoprotection.

That biology makes vitamin E interesting to cosmetic formulators, but it does not mean that applying more of it is automatically better. The dermatological literature contains substantial experimental work on vitamin E but considerably less controlled clinical evidence establishing precise topical doses or clearly defined clinical indications. A major review of vitamin E in human skin made exactly this distinction: the underlying physiology and experimental evidence are substantial, while controlled clinical evidence for many of the claims associated with topical vitamin E remains much more limited. This is a useful principle to carry into the bathroom. We can be interested in an ingredient without turning it into a miracle. Explore Vitamin E, Botanical Library 003 →

Beginning with the skin we actually have

Before reaching for anything, spend a moment looking at your skin as it is rather than as you think it ought to be. There may be some dryness around the cheeks, an oily area around the nose, a blemish that was not there yesterday or absolutely nothing noteworthy at all. The purpose is not to conduct a Sunday evening dermatological examination, but to break the habit of assuming that a routine must remain identical regardless of what the skin is doing. This matters because skincare is often sold as a fixed sequence, whereas skin changes with environment, season, age, hormonal influences, cleansing, exposure and individual biology.

Our article on the skin barrier provides the biological background. At the surface of the epidermis, the stratum corneum creates an extraordinarily effective permeability barrier from corneocytes embedded within an organised extracellular lipid matrix rich in ceramides, cholesterol and free fatty acids. Its function includes controlling the movement of water from the body into the environment while protecting the living tissues beneath from external exposure. Understanding that structure immediately changes the objective of this ritual. We are not beginning with dirty, deficient skin that needs to be transformed by products; we are beginning with functioning biological tissue that may occasionally benefit from a little assistance and can certainly be irritated by excessive intervention.

Cleansing without trying to start again

Begin with a gentle cleanser suitable for your skin and use comfortably warm rather than very hot water. The purpose is straightforward: remove whatever needs removing without trying to achieve the tight sensation that can follow aggressive cleansing. The American Academy of Dermatology similarly recommends gentle cleansing and cautions that using too many skincare products can irritate the skin, particularly when several potentially irritating anti-ageing products are combined. That advice is rather less exciting than a complicated Sunday facial, but it is much closer to what we are trying to accomplish here.

Once the cleanser has been rinsed away, gently pat the skin rather than rubbing it vigorously and leave it slightly damp if you intend to moisturise. Dermatologists commonly recommend applying moisturiser while skin is still damp because this can help retain water that would otherwise evaporate. Then, before applying anything else, stop for a moment and notice how the skin feels. If it feels comfortable, that information is useful. If it feels immediately tight or irritated after every cleanse, that is useful information too, because the answer may not be another serum but reconsidering the cleanser, water temperature, frequency of cleansing or other parts of the routine.

The treatment we are deliberately skipping

This is the point at which a conventional Sunday skincare ritual might introduce exfoliation. We are not going to. That does not mean exfoliating ingredients are inherently harmful. Alpha- and beta-hydroxy acids, retinoids and other active ingredients have legitimate cosmetic and dermatological uses, and appropriately formulated products can be extremely useful. The problem is the assumption that because an ingredient can be useful, adding another application of it must be more useful still. There is also something slightly contradictory about spending the week applying active products and then responding to irritated skin by creating an even more elaborate Sunday routine intended to repair the consequences. For this hour, there is no scrub, peel or attempt to remove another layer of skin. We are allowing the stratum corneum to remain where biology put it.

Finding vitamin E on the label

Now take the moisturiser or facial product you normally use and turn the packaging around. If it contains vitamin E, you may find Tocopherol or Tocopheryl Acetate somewhere in the ingredient list. These names are related, but they do not describe exactly the same chemical material. Tocopherol is the free form of the vitamin, whereas tocopheryl acetate is an esterified derivative with greater oxidative stability and consequently a long history of use in cosmetic formulations. Reviews of topical vitamin E note that commercial skincare products can contain different forms, derivatives and concentrations, making the simple front-of-pack claim with vitamin E much less chemically informative than it initially appears.

This is a useful moment to consider the product as a formulation rather than searching the ingredient list for a hero. The moisturiser may contain water, humectants, emollients, oils, emulsifiers, preservatives, texture modifiers and perhaps occlusive materials, all working together to create the product you actually experience. Vitamin E may contribute antioxidant properties or have a role associated with the lipid phase of the formulation, but it does not perform every function of the moisturiser simply because its name is familiar. Apply the product as you normally would, using enough to leave the skin comfortable rather than trying to maximise the quantity of vitamin E delivered. Then put the bottle down.

Why we are not using neat vitamin E

There is a persistent idea that if vitamin E in a formulated cosmetic is useful, concentrated vitamin E applied directly to the skin must be better. The same reasoning appears throughout botanical and natural skincare: if a little of an ingredient is desirable, surely using it neat removes all the unnecessary material standing between us and its benefits. Formulation science does not work quite like that.

One of the best-known claims surrounding topical vitamin E is that it improves scars, yet the clinical evidence does not support recommending vitamin E monotherapy routinely for this purpose. A systematic review examining prospective studies of topical vitamin E for scar appearance found only six eligible studies, with inconsistent results, and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to justify its widespread use as a monotherapy for improving scars. Adverse reactions including itching, rash and contact dermatitis were also reported. An earlier double-blind study following skin-cancer surgery found no improvement in scar appearance from topical vitamin E and reported contact dermatitis in a substantial proportion of participants using it. The study was small, and it should not be treated as the final word on every topical formulation containing vitamin E, but it provides a particularly useful warning against assuming that applying concentrated vitamin E directly to healing skin must be beneficial.

There is an important difference between vitamin E being an interesting and biologically relevant antioxidant and neat vitamin E being a proven treatment for scars. Both statements can sound superficially similar in marketing copy, but scientifically they are quite different propositions. Our Sunday ritual therefore uses vitamin E where it makes most sense for ordinary cosmetic use: as one component of a properly formulated product rather than as a home treatment requiring us to become amateur formulators.

An hour does not require an hour of products

With the practical skincare finished, we now encounter the slightly strange part of this ritual: most of the hour remains. That is intentional. Make tea, read a chapter of a book, listen to music or simply sit somewhere comfortable. If you have been exploring our restorative yoga article, this is also a natural opportunity for a supported posture, perhaps with a bolster or folded blankets, provided that the position is comfortable and appropriate for you. There is no need to turn the remaining time into another therapeutic programme. We do not need to claim that combining moisturiser, vitamin E and twenty minutes on a bolster creates a special biochemical synergy. They are simply different things that can belong to the same quiet hour.

There is a useful parallel here with our Rose Water at the End of the Day ritual. Rose water can provide fragrance and sensory pleasure without needing to become medicine, while vitamin E can be appreciated for genuinely interesting antioxidant chemistry without being required to cure every cosmetic concern. In both cases, understanding an ingredient more deeply allows us to expect something more realistic from it.

What about lavender and rose?

If your normal skincare happens to contain lavender or rose, there is no reason that those botanicals cannot sit alongside vitamin E in a formulation, provided that the product is appropriate for your skin. Our Botanical Library already gives us the tools to understand why they should not be treated as equivalent ingredients. Lavender contributes a complex collection of volatile aromatic compounds and has a long history in fragrance and traditional practice. Rose can mean several very different materials, including hydrosol, essential oil and absolute. Vitamin E, meanwhile, is a family of lipid-soluble compounds whose biological and formulation roles are quite different again.

That diversity is precisely why we are building the Library. The fact that three ingredients can appear in the same moisturiser does not mean they perform the same function, possess the same evidence base or require the same safety considerations. If your skin is particularly reactive or affected by eczema, fragrance deserves additional consideration. The American Academy of Dermatology recommends fragrance-free products for people with atopic dermatitis because fragrance can provoke flares in susceptible skin. That does not mean everyone needs to abandon fragranced skincare, but it is another example of why an enjoyable botanical ritual should be adapted to the person rather than treated as universally appropriate.

Leaving the skin alone

Perhaps the most useful part of the Sunday ritual happens during the hours after it has technically finished. Nothing. There is no second mask later in the evening, no experimental acid because we have suddenly remembered it is in the cupboard and no attempt to compensate for missing a treatment earlier in the week. Unless there is a prescribed treatment or another genuine reason to apply something, the moisturiser can simply remain on the skin while the evening continues. This simplicity is particularly useful when skincare has begun to feel like a project. Dermatologists themselves caution that using too many products can irritate the skin, which provides a rather good evidence-based counterweight to a beauty culture in which adding another step is routinely presented as progress. Doing less does not mean that sophisticated skincare is pointless. Sunscreens, retinoids, appropriately selected exfoliants, moisturisers and dermatological treatments can all have important places in skin care. It simply means that the existence of useful interventions does not oblige us to use all of them at once.

A different way of thinking about ingredients

Vitamin E makes a particularly appropriate ingredient around which to build this ritual because its scientific story contains almost everything we are trying to learn through Botanicals and Co. It began as a nutritional mystery, was isolated from plant oils, became recognised as a family of related compounds and eventually emerged as an important part of antioxidant biology. From there it entered supplements, dermatology and cosmetics, accumulating an increasingly impressive collection of claims along the way. The underlying science is genuinely fascinating, but the clinical evidence for many topical uses remains much less definitive than the familiarity of the ingredient might suggest.

Learning that distinction does not make vitamin E less interesting. It makes it more interesting, because we no longer need to flatten a complicated molecule into a marketing claim. The same approach will follow us through the Botanical Library. Lavender does not need to cure anxiety for us to value its fragrance and history. Rose water does not need to rebuild the skin barrier before we can enjoy it as an aromatic cosmetic material. Vitamin E does not need to erase scars before its antioxidant chemistry deserves our attention. And when we shortly reach Sea Buckthorn 004, we will encounter those connections again, because sea buckthorn oils bring us into the overlapping worlds of fatty acids, tocopherols, carotenoids, oxidation and skin formulation. The Library becomes more useful each time one ingredient helps us understand another.

Sunday evening, simplified

At the end of our hour, very little has happened. We have looked at our skin rather than immediately deciding what is wrong with it, cleansed it gently, applied a suitable moisturiser and spent a few minutes understanding one of the ingredients that may be sitting quietly inside the formulation. The remaining time has belonged to us rather than to another sequence of products. There is something appealing about allowing skincare to be this ordinary.

The cosmetics industry understandably concentrates on novelty because novelty gives us reasons to buy things. Skin biology operates on a rather different timetable, continually renewing cells, synthesising lipids, maintaining gradients, regulating water and repairing everyday disturbances without requiring us to supervise every stage. Good skincare can support those processes when necessary, while well-designed products can also give us fragrance, texture and the simple pleasure of caring for ourselves. What they do not need to become is an endless attempt to correct skin that was never defective in the first place. Perhaps that is the real Sunday ritual: not abandoning skincare, but becoming a little more selective about what we ask it to do. The face is clean, the skin is comfortable and the moisturiser has been applied. For the rest of the evening, we can leave the skin to get on with being skin.

References and further reading

  • Thiele, J. J. & Ekanayake-Mudiyanselage, S. (2007). Vitamin E in human skin: organ-specific physiology and considerations for its use in dermatology. Molecular Aspects of Medicine, 28(5-6), 646-667. doi:10.1016/j.mam.2007.06.001
  • Thiele, J. J., Hsieh, S. N. & Ekanayake-Mudiyanselage, S. (2005). Vitamin E: critical review of its current use in cosmetic and clinical dermatology. Dermatologic Surgery, 31(7 Pt 2), 805-813. doi:10.1111/j.1524-4725.2005.31724
  • Baumann, L. S. & Spencer, J. (1999). The effects of topical vitamin E on the cosmetic appearance of scars. Dermatologic Surgery, 25(4), 311-315. doi:10.1046/j.1524-4725.1999.08223.x
  • Tanaydin, V. et al. (2016). The role of topical vitamin E in scar management: a systematic review. Aesthetic Surgery Journal, 36(8), 959-965. doi:10.1093/asj/sjw046
  • Keen, M. A. & Hassan, I. (2016). Vitamin E in dermatology. Indian Dermatology Online Journal, 7(4), 311-315. doi:10.4103/2229-5178.185494
  • American Academy of Dermatology. Dermatologists’ top tips for relieving dry skin. AAD dry-skin guidance
  • American Academy of Dermatology. Should I apply my skin care products in a certain order? AAD skincare guidance