Now through May 22, Pop-In@Nordstrom is partnering with the much-loved skin care brand Aesop, celebrating the simple virtues of our daily routines. In this blog series, we explore five skin care rituals with Aesop's own Dr. Kate Forbes, manager of products and research & development.

Shop: The Silhouette of Morning

"Even a single hair casts its shadow." Publilius Syrus

A ceremonial approach to the morning shave begins with:

1. Purifying Facial Exfoliant Paste 75mL
2. Moroccan Neroli Shaving Serum 60mL
3. B&T Toner 100mL
4. Moroccan Neroli Post Shave Lotion 60 mL

What is this ritual all about? We'll get into that in a moment. First let's meet Dr. Forbes and learn about Aesop in general.

Shop: Pop-In@Nordstrom / Aesop

Dr. Kate Forbes Nordstrom blogs: Let's take it back to the essence. Can you remember when you first heard about Aesop?

Dr. Forbes: It's been a long time. I've been with Aesop for over 15 years, and it was a very different company back then. Much smaller. Even back in those days, it was stocked globally: Colette in Paris and interesting shops around the world. We've always had a global vision but it was a very small company back then. My first discovery of it was in a local department store here [in Melbourne], and I found they had a position advertised in their technical department, which suited what I was working on at the time.

Do you remember you impression in that department store?

It was a brand that was interesting because it was different from everything else. The approach of Aesop back then was very anti-conventional. The packaging was very simple in its approach. They used a lot of botanicals and essential oils, which was quite different for the moment.

At what point did you start thinking about Aesop on a chemical level?

Right away. I had come from a traditional chemistry background-I was actually still in school [at the University of Melbourne], finishing up my PhD-when I started at Aesop in the laboratory. It was interesting to me to come in and learn about the science of skin. How skin responds to different ingredients, what ingredients are actually beneficial to how skin appears. And the other benefit that we always look at in Aesop is lifestyle: how you live your life and how that affects your skin. Because we think it's not just what you're putting on your face that's going to have an impact. It's your diet, it's what you're around, it's how you live.

When you were in school, what did you think you would do professionally once you finished?

I was always interested in the pharmacology side of things. Why the drugs are working inside your body. And I was also looking into the synthesis side, chemical synthesis, how chemical structures are formed and what that then means. That helped me look at the technical side of chemicals and toxicology of chemicals and effectiveness of how they work on the skin.

Is there any way you can break down in layperson's terms how antioxidants work and what free radicals are?

I'll do my best and please stop me if you want me to go in a different approach. Free radicals. When a chemical's become a free radical, it's then wanting to stop being a free radical. It means that it's got to basically quench that reaction. So when your skin's exposed to UV rays, or other environmental pollution, free radicals can form. If these are forming within the skin it can become quite dangerous to the skin, because these compounds within the skin are looking to stop themselves becoming free radicals and they'll grab parts of other chemicals within the skin. They grab onto a part of DNA, or collagen, or whatever it can grab, and basically almost destroy what it grabs to keep itself from being so reactive. Antioxidants are things that can stop that reaction, before it's damaging your skin matrix.

How is the free radical grabbing? And is the free radical a molecule?

It's a molecule. And it's basically trying to grab an electron from somewhere. And to stop that, that we use things like Vitamin E, Vitamin B and polyphenols, which we use a lot in our parsley seed range of products. These are all ingredients that can basically quench that reaction before it does damage.

If that damage went unchecked, what would that look like visually on the skin?

You don't get an immediate effect, it's more the long term damage that's worrisome. When you're exposed to the sun and maybe you get redness or feel a burn, that's immediate and sometimes visual. But that's actually not what can cause long-term damage. That's UV-B exposure. Your UV-A exposure is actually causing damage to the skin underneath the surface, and that's not going to show up visually until later on, when you might find that your skin has lost some elasticity, that the skin tone becomes uneven, that your skin is drier and people start then to talk about a loss of "radiance." We try and support the skin to get to its best condition. We're trying to bring back vitamins to the skin that can support its appearance, and also nutrients to help lock in the moisture so the skin can help itself.

And now for our discussion of the specific ritual: The Silhouette of Morning This ritual, the way it's packaged, could be seen as targeting men. But it's really for everybody, isn't that right?

Every formulation, we imagine that it could be used for everyone. That said, there are certain products in this range which are geared specifically for men: the shaving serum and the post-shave lotion. We call it "post-shave" but it wasn't formulated with that in mind. It was created to soothe the irritation and deliver the moisturization people need after irritating their skin by shaving. And for men, if you're shaving every day, that's quite an aggressive thing for your skin to have to bear. But this is also something that I use, because it calms my skin. I have quite sensitive skin. So absolutely we aim to be unisex in all our formulations.

What's so effective in the post-shave lotion?

It's the botanicals and the essential oils. The ginger extract is quite soothing. So is the sandalwood.

Shaving is aggressive. I do it, but I don't like it. It's crazy that so many men drag a razor across their faces every day. It's warfare.

That's right. And the product you use during your shave affects your comfort level immensely. Making sure your skin is well-lubricated is crucial. That's essentially what that shaving product is doing. The simplest thing to do to shave more comfortably is wet your skin with warm water beforehand. Also use a shaving brush: it seems so old-fashioned, but the brush lifts the hairs to make them more accessible to the razor. It can really help. One of the downsides to shaving is ingrown hairs, and you can avoid that with exfoliation. So that's important to consider as well. For whatever it's worth, in Australia we're in quite a beard phase. A movement against shaving has hit Melbourne at the moment.

Last question: what is toner?

It's that first step of rehydration. It's that immediate splash-on you use right after shaving. Many women would use this in their regime as well. It's that rebalancing. The function is moisturizing, as opposed to astringent moisturizer which is about tightening the pores. It's got Vitamin D, green tea, ingredients that help moisturize the skin and prepare it for the next step.

-Andrew Matson