Fiona Westerhout talks about her skin as though she is giving directions in a familiar neighbourhood: oily around the T-zone, dry cheeks, sensitive with the occasional breakout.
Westerhout, 29, had just started blogging about skincare when she and her partner moved from Perth in Western Australia to Shanghai in May 2016. There she found a new cause for skincare concern: pollution. “You notice the grey dust in the street, you see pollution in the air,” she says. “You can’t help but think, ‘What is this doing to my skin? Surely it can’t be good.’”