Behind The Scenes

In case you’ve ever seen that little red seal and thought, What does this mean, anyway? (Eight months, thousands of products, several dozen testers, and a whole lot of wet wipes.)

FEBRUARY 1:

We reach out to the entire beauty industry and ask: What do you think is the best stuff you make?

They answer. And then, over the ensuing weeks, roughly 7,000 products, in 199 different categories, are distributed to 61 desks. (That’s about 115 mascaras, body washes, and sheet masks per person.) Distended bags with splits at their seams spill into the walkways between cubicles. The fun begins—if you want to call it that.

FEBRUARY 13:

In the field, an editor discovers a future award-winning eyeliner from Japan, by way of New York Fashion Week.

Anastasia Romanov, Iceman, JFK: I love a good mystery. At first, the UZ Eye-Opening Liner was just that. I was clandestinely introduced to it backstage at Marc Jacobs’s fall 2019 show featuring no-makeup makeup. An assistant makeup artist surveyed the room before pulling out an unmarked tube of caution orange liquid liner. I shielded her as she swatched it onto her hand—the pigment was so dense it practically shouted out loud. She had no idea who made the liner; it was given to her at another show without any explanation. The J-beauty brand behind it didn’t even reveal itself (exclusively to Allure) until weeks later: a range of high-octane, higher-quality liners, made with artisanal brushes from the Kumano region of Japan. I don’t speak Japanese, but that sounded like a winner to me. And once we tested it, it was. —Devon Abelman, digital beauty reporter

MARCH 18:

Someone who gets hives from the word moisturizer finds the best one there is.