UV protection comes up several times; I tell Paula that given the current preoccupation with natural skincare, I’m worried that people are missing out on adequate sun protection. "Absolutely," she concurs. "You simply can’t make a good enough broad spectrum SPF with totally natural ingredients. The natural companies say, oh, some vitamin D is good for you, sunscreens are killing you, they’re so evil. Otherwise they look like assholes – for not selling you a sunscreen. And if you leave a beauty counter with some new skincare and don’t have an SPF, you don’t have a routine at all." In fact, Paula is spending more time than ever navigating the waters of natural and organic skincare. "It’s a question of perception, really. Naturals are recognisable. You want to see lavender oil on an ingredient list because you know what that is, unlike some long chemical name," she explained. It’s the dictum we were told to apply to our diets: Avoid processed foods, and if your grandmother wouldn’t recognise the ingredients, don’t eat it. But in beauty, that means forgetting that even water has a chemical name. Paula adds: "It’s also a question of getting the right molecular weights, which has to be crafted. Don’t get me wrong, I need plants, I need some of those extracts. But I can’t readily get the benefits they offer. It needs tweaking." Plus, we face unnatural aggressors: pollution, glycation from sugar-loaded diets, smoking, alcohol... It’s a tall order to expect a wholly natural solution to all that. "Some of the best ingredients for skin – niacinamide, retinol, ceramides, peptides – they aren’t natural! You can’t make them natural and get them into your skin. But you can bioengineer them to make them seem natural to your skin and be absorbed efficiently, so your skin thinks, 'Aha! I know what to do with this'."