There’s a specific scent that whisks me straight back to my teenage bedroom, somewhere between antiseptic and rotting eggs. I’m talking about the scent of every “miracle” drying lotion I lathered onto my skin before bed.
Back then, I swore by Mario Badescu’s classic drying lotion, or Eve Lom’s equally pungent and oh-so-dry Dynaspot (which has, sadly, since been discontinued). These were products that promised to shrink a zit overnight (if you could endure the fumes), as well as the itchy dryness after a night covered in the stuff. Teenage acne, however, is a fickle beast; mine was mostly hormonal, and no amount of sulphur or salicylic witchcraft could coax my skin out of its tantrums.
