Back in the day, we used to be told the secret to a great skincare regime was to simply cleanse, tone and moisturise. There were no serums or overnight treatments, no fancy ingredients like Collagen or Retinol to worry about, just three steps and a barrel of hope to take us from one decade to the next - with a couple of facials a year thrown in if you were super posh or loaded. I remember being introduced to the beauty of this routine while I was at university, and spent a small fortune on the iconic Clinique 3-Step system in the hope that I would awake one day with the complexion I always dreamed of. (Truth be told, I just needed to actually stop drinking pints of cider and take my makeup off properly.) However, the scent and stinging sensation the toner caused still lingers on the edge of my memory like a painful warning about trusting sales staff implicitly when there's commission to be made; the toner was a pretty horrendous addition to my non-existent regime that actually left my skin looking and feeling worse, so for years it's no surprise my opinion of toner was not that great.
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