The economy reversing backwards with no tyres on serendipitously coincided with the opening of a new make up mecca. Businesses are cutting jobs left, right and centre and cancelling investment plans. President Trump’s trade war has tossed a smoke bomb of uncertainty into an already murky future outlook. And Harrods has just opened its 22,500 square foot beauty emporium in Silverburn.

If you were to ask me which of these headlines resonated more, I would say the H Beauty opening. As far as the economy goes, well, the cost-of-living crisis has been biting so hard for so long that I’m not really sure what difference a 0.3% dip will make to the average person like me. We are at a point where the future is so bleak and making ends meet is so difficult that you have to throw your hands up and say, sod it. The ship is going down, at least let me have a nice complexion when I get sucked under. And the right shade of lip liner.

The majority of my 30 years have been spent poring over the lotions and potions that will ensure my eight-pound skin sack has the best time on this little blue rock. Not because being blemish-free, dewy, radiant and taut is the only way to matter in this world. But because the fountain of youth implies an endless flow of time.

“Traditionally, skin care represents an attempt to deny the inevitability of the future,” Jia Tolentino wrote in her 2017 essay for the New Yorker.........

© Herald Scotland