If we are going to do the ABC of skincare, then this is C. Vitamin C. And surely this should be the easy one because everybody knows Vitamin C, don't they? Brightening. Antioxidant. Collagen. Pigmentation. Morning serum. SPF. Done.

If A is the one everybody wants to graduate to and C is the one everybody thinks they should own, B is sitting quietly in the corner wondering why nobody seems to know what it does.

Vitamin A. Retinol. Retinal. Retinoids. Retinoic acid. Tretinoin. Retinyl something-or-other. There are enough names, percentages, conversions, prescription products and TikTok declarations surrounding Vitamin A to make a relatively sensible person decide they'd rather buy a moisturiser and go home.

Pigmentation does not have one front door.

It has several pathways, several triggers and a frankly irritating habit of returning just when you think you have finally evicted it.

So why are we still sending one ingredient to deal with the whole building?

Some very clever people will tell you not to buy single-ingredient serums because you will end up layering products for days. And I do not disagree in principle.

We would all love one serum that simply did everything. If that existed, The Shelf and a million other skincare review platforms would become redundant. We would all use that one thing and get on with talking about something else entirely.

This cleanser reminds me of ordering sea bass in a restaurant and finding it accompanied by a lemon foam. Light, elegant and beautifully presented, but mostly air.

That is how the texture feels. Not dense or creamy. More like cleansing air. But foam alone tells us very little about how gentle a cleanser is. A dense foam can be gentle. A cleanser that barely foams can still be stripping.

I am a fan. A stan. Or, in the words of my 12-year-old, I am about to absolutely holy glaze this product.

Because I struggle to find much I don’t like about it.

The real measure of a product, for me, is how often it remains relevant after I have considered the whole person in front of me.

There is an entire Vitamin A conversation to be had. Retinyl esters, retinol, retinal, retinoic acid, conversion pathways, concentrations, stability, tolerance and why none of those percentages can be compared until we establish which molecule we are actually holding.

I think I was searching for another Cicaplast Baume B5 or Avène Cicalfate+ winner. Neither of which I have actually written up for The Shelf yet, which is slightly ridiculous because they are iconic. And somewhere in that search, this found its way into my life.

I’m reviewing these together because they are, quite honestly, much of a muchness. And I don’t mean that dismissively. I like them both. They are affordable, sensible hydration serums and they both deserve a place on The Shelf. I just couldn’t find a dramatic winner.

HOCl is actually something our own immune system knows rather well. Certain white blood cells produce it as part of our innate immune defence to help deal with microorganisms.

I grew up in a time when we just washed our faces with soap. In our house, it was Imperial Leather. And some people tell me that, compared with what else was around at the time, that wasn't even the worst of it.

AHA. BHA. Holy smokes, these guys are pulling their weight. Or is it packing their weight? I don’t know. But if there is one product I have chatted about more than most in 2026, it is probably these.

We've already talked about acids, haven't we? So we're beyond the absolute basics now. We know we're interested in brightening, more even-looking skin tone, post-blemish marks, pigmentation, clarity and radiance.