Happy holidays, Team PCA! Did y’all travel? I did! My gentleman friend and I schlepped to northern Louisiana with the hopes of a warmer climate, only to find we’d left behind 75-degree days in DC in favor of the 30s in Shreveport. Still, it was a fun week filled with family, food, and the best dog ever:

As much fun as we had with all the friends and family (and puppies) in Louisiana, what I didn’t enjoy was the havoc wreaked upon my skin by air travel. Airplanes enact a special kind of terror on my face – the incredibly dry onboard air conditioning simultaneously parches my skin and sends my pores into oil over-production. Thankfully, years of trial and error have led me to a great system for avoiding (most) of the damage. My tips for successful air travel, skin-wise, are:

1. Over-hydrate before getting on an airplane! For me, this is tricky, because my skin detests oil. Enter hyaluronic acid, my newest favorite ingredient. HA binds moisture to your skin from within rather than trapping it in from the outside, all without the use of oils. Before getting on the airplane both to and from Louisiana, I did my normal morning routine but added a layer of serum and eye cream (Estée Lauder’s Advanced Night Repair over Idealist and Advanced Night Repair Eye over Clinique’s Even Better Eyes). Then I heaped an extra slather of my regular daytime moisturizer for good measure.
2. Pay extra-close attention to what your skin is telling you while you’re in a different climate. Given that Louisiana was somehow colder than DC, my skin was a bit drier than usual, and somewhat dull because of that. I had my trusty Clarisonic Mia (true story: I love my Clarisonic so much I have two of them – a fancier Aria that stays in my bathroom and a travel-size Mia for my gym bag and such events as Christmas in Louisiana) and a small tube of Fresh’s Soy cleanser, and the combination of the two helped bring my skin back to radiant. I brought a small container of Korres’ Wild Rose + Vitamin C sleeping facial for some extra glow, but I ended up only needing my regular nighttime moisturizer.
3. Masks! Masks, masks, masks. I did three masks this week: one the night before getting on the airplane (Renee Rouleau’s Vitamin C mask), one the morning after arriving (GLAMGLOW. Y’all, do you know about GlamGlow? You should know about GlamGlow) and one upon my return home (Peter Thomas Roth’s Therapeutic Sulfur Mask to suck out all the airplane toxins). I also did an eye mask (more GlamGlow! Check out the BrightMud sometime – it’s filled with antioxidants and caffeine to wake up your face) upon my return home, after the sulfur mask, to brighten my exhausted eyes, though that’s less due to the stresses of air travel and more to the fact that I slept poorly last night.

I’m proud to report that, upon return, my blemishes are few and my skin is breathing well. What key products do you keep on hand for skincare triage?