My little guide to shopping for beauty in Europe

My obsession with Superdrug, love of European sunscreens, and favorite French retinoid.

If I wrote out all my issues with America, it’d be a list as long as a CVS receipt. But I’d be lying if I said there aren’t plenty of things I miss about living there. For example, all I want to do on this fine Sunday is buy a bunch of stuff from the Trader Joe's frozen section and respectfully flirt with the cashier on my way out. Or go to Target with my sister, shop for seasonal decorations (I’m a victim of the Target birds), and sniff candles. But above all—and I’m so deeply serious—there’s an iced latte-shaped hole in my heart. The following is for my fellow Americans, European readers please skip to the following paragraph: You guys, the iced drinks here in London are a disaster. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve ordered an iced latte and it was served with two ice cubes in a paper cup or with a freaky dome top…hell!

And since I’m already being a little fiesty, I won’t lie to you, shopping for beauty in Europe also has its drawbacks: I still have to wait until I’m back in the States to stock up on my trusty Panoxyl benzoyl peroxide face wash or Tretinoin prescription, both of which are ingredients that are significantly harder (but not impossible!) to get here. But having said all of that—Europe, sweetie, I’m sorry. I do love you!—there are lots of genuinely amazing things about shopping for skincare here. So much so, when I go back to the States, I can’t help but feel sort of sad about the innovations and formulas Americans lack easy access to.

But whether you live here or have plans to visit this summer, I’m going to spend this week’s newsletter walking you through the best things about shopping for beauty in Europe while sharing the best formulas and brands I love.

European sunscreens are better

Sunscreen is one of the things about America that actually infuriates me. Basically, sunscreens are classified as a drug in the United States, which means they have to go through the FDA’s super complicated approval process that demands extensive testing and absurd amounts of money in order to make it to shelves. While rigorous testing might sound like a good thing, there are aspects of it that are actually pretty detrimental to Americans: US sunscreen filters (the active ingredients in the formula that protect us) are straight-up outdated. For context, the final filter was incorporated into the approved American list in 1999, whereas elsewhere in the world, ongoing innovation led to the approval of new filters for more advanced sunscreen formulas.

American sunscreens are, by global standards, pretty terrible. If you were to go to a drugstore in the States and pick out ten random sunscreens, you’d notice so many leave behind chalky white casts, making it disturbingly difficult for consumers with darker skin tones to find proper sun protection. Also, American sunscreens are frankly just cosmetically inelegant compared to other countries and do things like look bad underneath your makeup, pill, and sting your eyes.

Europe, on the other hand, regards sunscreen as cosmetics, resulting in significantly less stringent bureaucratic hurdles for filter approval. But here’s what’s wild: even after all the hoops the FDA makes formulators jump through, it’s not like US sunscreens are “safer” than European ones. As a matter of fact, Europe is actually known for their extremely thorough testing protocols for cosmetics—in 2017, a study found only half of American sunscreens actually met Europe’s protection standards. So…make it make sense!

TLDR: Europe offers a lot more advanced sunscreen options, often at really great prices. It’s possible that you’ve seen some of these sunscreens before in American drugstores, but that’s because they’ve adjusted the formula for the U.S. market, omitting filters not approved there. So even though the US versions are pretty good, the European ones are often even better. Here are some of my very favorites.