The time was October, 1996. The Yankees were about to win the World Series, Bill Clinton was on his way to a decisive reelection victory, and, even more consequentially, Chanel Vamp was the nail polish color du jour. It was also the date we published our very first Allure Best of Beauty awards. The notion of testing beauty products, assessing how well they performed and matched their claims, while selecting a slate of winners in each category (and explaining why each won) was a pretty radical idea.
Best of Beauty filled an information void at a time when dial-up internet was glacially slow (and made these ridiculous sounds), and social media on smartphones was still a glimmer in a few baby tech bros’ dreams of world domination. Women tore out pages of the magazine and began to shop the list of our inaugural group of 234 winners (including Chanel Vamp), while the familiar bright red seal on products came along a little later to make consumers’ choices that much easier.
Over 30 years, we’ve tested enough serums, creams, oils, lacquers, shampoos, and the like to float a battleship. And we’ve added categories and subcategories, such as clean beauty, tubing mascaras, hair bonnets, and more. We have 319 winning products this year, the result of six months of scrunching hundreds of styling products into our own curls and waves, smoothing scores of antioxidant serums over our lines and sunspots, and covering our T-zones with clarifying masks and acne stickers.
We scrutinized skin-care ingredients, compared notes on nail polish, and argued the merits of leave-in conditioners with the intensity of a Supreme Court hearing. And yes, our hair has never looked shinier or our skin dewier. (Thank you for asking.)
So here are the products that we guarantee will make your eyes shine, your lips shimmer, and your skin glow. And if they add a little joy to your day, that truly would mark the best of beauty.
