Patina and Skin Ageing | Priestess® Press

Close-up of a gold door knocker on a wooden door

Objects We Let Age, Faces We Edit

A leather chair improves once somebody has actually sat in it. Brass acquires a softer colour where hands have passed over it for years. The centre of an old stone stair sinks almost imperceptibly beneath generations of feet. We seldom describe these changes as deterioration. More often they are the reason we value the thing at all.

There is, of course, a little hypocrisy involved. The leather has been conditioned. The floor was swept this morning. Someone polished the brass without polishing away everything that made it old. What we admire is not neglect, but age under care. The distinction becomes strangely difficult when the material in question is our own face.

A crease in leather gives it character; beside the mouth it becomes something to correct. A softened edge on a table is evidence of a useful life. A softened jaw is presented rather less generously. Beauty has developed an enormous vocabulary for this anxiety: reverse, erase, restore, rewind. Time, apparently, is welcome everywhere except the mirror.

Perhaps we have confused preservation with pretending that nothing happened.

Where Care Ends and Denial Begins

Skin does require maintenance. There is nothing philosophical about dehydration, irritation or prolonged exposure to ultraviolet radiation. Cleansing, replenishing moisture and protecting the barrier belong to the ordinary practicalities of looking after a body. The difficulty begins elsewhere.

Spend long enough inspecting a face at magnification and almost anything can acquire the character of a defect. A line caused by smiling becomes an intervention point. Texture becomes something to eliminate. The annual arrival of another birthday seems to require increasingly elaborate negotiations with chemistry. At some point, attention ceases to be care and becomes surveillance.

That is a peculiar bargain. We want years rich enough to alter us intellectually, socially, perhaps even morally, while asking the face to provide no evidence that those years occurred. A more interesting ambition would be to age well rather than invisibly.

Skin as a Kept Surface

There is something useful in thinking of skin as material. Not because a person resembles a piece of furniture, obviously, but because good materials are rarely improved by either neglect or excessive interference. Stone needs protection from weather. Leather needs enough oil to remain supple. Wood fares badly when allowed to dry beyond reason.

Skin has its own requirements. It loses water, encounters changes in temperature, responds to light and friction, and continually works to maintain its barrier. Cosmetic care can support that work without requiring the surface to become anonymous.

Hydration can make skin feel more supple. Lipids can support a compromised barrier. Particular actives can be chosen for particular concerns. These are modest propositions, but useful ones. The face need not be returned to some imaginary original condition. It only needs to remain a good place to live.

The Domina Position on Ageing

Priestess has little interest in declaring war on time. Domina was conceived around care of the surface as it exists now: keeping it comfortable, resilient and pleasurable to inhabit. There may be lines worth softening, dryness worth addressing, an uneven finish one would rather improve. None requires the fiction that age itself is a cosmetic failure.

This leaves room for a different sort of vanity, one I find considerably more attractive. The person who appreciates old leather precisely because it has been handled. Who notices the shallow hollow in a marble stair. Who would rather own something beautifully maintained than something pretending never to have been used.

The same courtesy might reasonably be extended to the face. A bottle on the bathroom shelf can help with dryness, texture or comfort. It cannot return Tuesday afternoon, 1998, and it would be rather suspicious if it claimed otherwise. The brass tap will eventually lose some of its brilliance. The mirror will acquire marks visible only when the light catches them. And the person standing before it will change too. That need not spoil the room.