This year has been hard on us all, and it shows. If you’ve spotted more wrinkles than you’re comfortable with, or have a bad case of stress-face and need a relaxing grooming routine, contact us at asky@mrporter.com or on social media with all of your style and grooming enquiries. We’ll do our best to help solve your grooming and skincare-related questions, and get you looking as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as you did in distant 2019.

Mustering up the energy to look your best when you’ve nowhere to go is no mean feat, but what about just preventing yourself from looking your worst? Frustrating isn’t it, that most of us have had more time to sleep than ever in our adult lives, and yet it seems we’ve never been more exhausted. The endless hours spent staring into Zoom and Slack certainly haven’t helped, and neither has the constant hum of crisis and stress that has permeated the last year.

Dr Wassim Taktouk, one of London’s best respected aesthetic physicians, says that although we may feel like we look much worse, this is probably down to the fact that we spend more time analysing our own faces on video calls. “Longtime patients that I’d known for 10 years were coming back to me with problems that they said that had never bothered them before [lockdown],” he says. “We’ve all become so hypercritical of ourselves, and it may be irrational. If anything is bothering someone that hadn’t bothered them before this year, I usually say, ‘Let’s review it in six months to a year’. There has definitely been a trend for people coming in and wanting to look less tired, though, and men are looking more at their skin, skin hydration and texture.”

Dr Taktouk says that men are increasingly looking at skin treatments like injectable skin boosters such as Profhilo and Redensity 1. “Profhilo is hyraluronic acid, which hydrates the skin, and Redensity 1 is hyaluronic acid and a cocktail of amino acids, antioxidants, minerals and vitamins, which gives skin a rested glow,” he explains. “I didn’t think it would be something men want to do, because there’s a little bit of downtime to them where you have some bumps under your skin, but look glorious afterwards.”

The physician also has a neat trick for tired-looking peepers: “We’re all wearing masks, too, so we focus a lot more on our eyes,” he says. “You can put a tiny bit of very light hyaluronic acid filler underneath the eyes. That will help with the groove and that tired undereye appearance. So, we can put some toxin [Botox] in the crow’s feet, but it’s always very, very subtle when we’re dealing with men, it needs to be undetectable. If anything, if it feels too light, you’re probably doing the right thing.”

Mr Ashley Clarke, MR PORTER’s Deputy Editor and in-house grooming product hoarder, hasn’t reached for the needle just yet. But he has found a few products that are helping combat looking tired. “This year has given me plenty of opportunity to sit around trying out all the skincare I have at home, and there’s definitely been some breakthroughs,” he says. “Something I discovered recently that makes a huge difference is Tata Harper’s Retinoic Oil and Hydrating Essence. Tata Harper is a relatively new brand to us, and everything is made on an organic farm in Vermont. I put on the oil overnight, which seems to do the trick in keeping my skin looking its best.

“Something else I’ve been using is Seed to Skin’s Alche’Mist, which is a spray-on serum that’s full of nutrients to keep the skin looking bright. I feel like that sentient piece of skin from Doctor Who that screams ‘Moisturise me!’ when I’m spraying it on, but I’ve genuinely found it to be a great way to freshen up throughout the day, especially when I’m working from home.”