5 quick beauty tricks to protect your skin in Singapore’s heatwave!

1. Come clean, so to speak.

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Cleanliness truly is of the essence, not least of all when your skin has been stewing in a slurry of airborne pollutants the entire day. The solution? Splash out on superior skincare cleansers, which are less likely to strip moisture from your fragile face.

Any #DieDieMustTry obsession du jour to recommend? Glad you asked. You’ll be in for a ton of good clean fun with Kenzoki’s Amazing Cleansing Water, $52 from June 2016. This micellar water comes with a detoxifying ginger extract and does an ace job at debriding your skin of dirt and debris without aggravating acne or eczema. To use, simply massage into your face with a saturated cotton pad – rubbing releases the microscopic “micelles”, or oil molecules suspended in a “shell” of water, instantly sopping up grime and grease on your skin – no rinsing required!

2. Mist your mien.

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The second order of business is to squelch the splotches that makes ruddy skin so unpleasantly prominent. For this purpose, consider blasting your face with a soothing spray – the dip in temperature shrinks the skin’s blood vessels and blots out blotchiness in a process called “vasoconstriction”. I’m addicted to the incredibly invigorating tingle of Shiseido’s sensational new Ibuki Quick Fix Mist, $25, which cools “hotspots” as if it were a cold compress. Being somewhat of a mist connoisseur, I love how ultra-fine and ultra-addictive the delicate droplets are. Perfect as a deeply hydrating pick-me-up you can practically douse yourself in without fear of disrupting your face paint!

Simply spritz your spray of choice at arm’s length in an X-shaped formation, then let it sit for a minute or so. Here’s a quick tip: Whenever you use a facial mist, be sure to dab off the excess with tissue after a few minutes, as you want to prevent the evaporation process from wicking precious water off the top layer of your skin.

3. Seal in all of the goodness.

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Comfort your complexion by topping up periodically with a protective poultice that won’t “pill” when layered over the other stuff on your face. Product recommendation-wise, I’m in love with Ettusais’ recently reformulated Skin Version UP Lotion, $50, which comes crammed with calming chamomile and what the J-Beauty brand calls a “soft lustre” ingredient that’s supposed to serve as a moisture-retaining magnet on your skin’s surface. The intriguingly spongy springiness of this lightweight lotion works like a dream over makeup: Simply dab a dollop over any dry patches or spots for an instant smoothening fix.

4. Cushion your skin from the sun.

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Little Miss Sunshine, cover up, please. Living as we do in Singapore, frequent reapplication of sunscreen is a no-brainer, but also back-breakingly burdensome to pull off: Us working folk have enough to worry about, thank you very much. Asking us to slather on globs of greasy sunblock that’s going to lay waste to our existing warpaint? Ain’t gonna happen.

Enter the latest and lightest cushion compacts, all of which are true “weightless wonders” – welcome watchwords indeed, given the constantly clammy clime of sweltering Singapore. I absolutely adore the sexy second-skin smoothness afforded by Biotherm Aquasource CC Evermoist Cushion, $69, which comes packed with thirst-quenching moisture magnets and pretty pearlescent pigments to “colour correct” patchy complexion.

Best bit: The more-than-respectable SPF 50 rating, which means that you should be able to skip sunscreen if you’re an indoorsy boardroom warrior. (Just remember to top up before venturing out into our searing streets.)

5. Pamper your peepers with a custom CC cream.

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Not sure if the heat and humidity’s to blame for your puffy peepers? Try this neat little self-evaluation exercise. Look down into a mirror placed flat on a table and locate the crescent-shaped wedge beneath your eyes – the specific shade of your undereye shadows can be a clue to the cause of your circles. Bluish lower lids may point to the pooling of blood from broken capillaries; pronounced purplish pigmentation, on the other hand, tends to be pollution- and allergy-related.

All of these unwanted hues also mean that you can consider using different colour-correcting shades to address your eyes’ exquisitely unique demands: Green concealers reduce redness, for instance, while lilacs are brilliant brighteners for sallow skin … and so on and so forth. Can’t be arsed to memorise an entire colour chart? Your best bet, my friend, is to create your own. Mix one part eye cream – try Origin’s depuffing and detoxifying Plantscription Anti-Aging Power Eye Cream, $70 – to two parts of your go-to concealer onto the back of your hand to create a sheer-coverage “CC cream” that’s perfect for pampering your peepers – sort of like brushing on a tinted treatment that comforts and conceals at the same time.

Easy enough, right? We can’t change the weather, but we can certainly buffer it against the elements with these simple skincare tips. Cheers to looking and feeling cool as a cucumber!