October is the loudest month of the year for beauty. The Allure Best of Beauty winners are still rotating through every magazine column, the holiday gift sets land at every retailer in the second week, the fragrance launches that will dominate Q4 are dropping every Tuesday morning, and Halloween costume conversations have effectively been a separate beauty category since 2010. By the first Tuesday of October 2013 the bathroom counter had quietly rotated to its winter setup — heavier serum, a richer night cream, the smoky-eye palette pulled out of the back of the drawer — and the gift-buying dread had not quite started but was on the calendar. Below, what we kept reaching for in the year’s most makeup-forward month.
Halloween got couture
The Halloween makeup conversation in October 2013 was a meaningfully different thing than it had been five years earlier. The reference points were no longer drugstore costume kits — they were the Halloween posts that the major beauty editors and YouTubers had started building elaborate routines for. Kryolan’s pro pigments, available at the West 39th Street counter in Manhattan and via online order to the rest of the country, had become the editor reference for any costume that involved actual color work. M·A·C’s Chromaline gel paints in the color-pure brights — Pure White, Black Black, the saturated reds — were the prestige alternative for anyone who wanted to do the Halloween makeup once and use the products for the rest of the year.
The looks that dominated Pinterest in mid-October all leaned in the same direction — high-precision graphic costume makeup that would not have been possible at the home-bathroom level even three years earlier. We saw a half-galaxy face, a single sugar-skull side, a Lichtenstein-style halftone cheek. Almost none of it was wearable in the daylight test, but that was the point. October was the month where US beauty made room for actual experiment.
Fall fragrance went deep, warm, and fully gourmand
The Q4 fragrance pushes of October 2013 leaned harder into the deep, warm, sometimes-genuinely-edible category than any October we could remember. Tom Ford’s Black Orchid was getting a heavy promotional push as the centerpiece holiday fragrance set, the small bottle priced perfectly for what would become the most-given prestige beauty gift of the season. Byredo’s Gypsy Water — green, dry, slightly nostalgic — was the editor counter-recommendation for anyone who did not want to smell like everyone else in the elevator come December.
The drugstore tier kept its standard offering. Victoria’s Secret’s holiday body-spray sets were everywhere, and one of them was almost certainly going to end up in a Yankee Swap whether you participated voluntarily or not. The point was clear by mid-October: the warm-fragrance consensus of fall 2013 was wider than usual, and the prestige-versus-drugstore divide closer than it had been.
Holiday gift sets landed two weeks earlier than usual
The 2013 holiday gift-set rollout at Sephora and at department-store beauty counters was visibly earlier than the 2012 version — the second-week-of-October launches were already prominent on endcaps where the equivalent ones in 2012 had landed in late October. Benefit’s Sexy Box of Tricks set was the under-thirty-five-dollar workhorse, bundling a few of the brand’s travel-size standards in a box that looked good even unwrapped. Kiehl’s kept its annual Limited Edition Holiday Collection — the cans always designed by a guest illustrator each year — and the 2013 version was fully designed by Peter Max.
The category that had genuinely improved was the under-twenty-five-dollar drugstore set. Maybelline’s holiday lipstick trios — three sheer-finish lipsticks in a small clear box — were the gift you bought five of and kept on the counter for stocking-stuffer emergencies. Essie’s Holiday Mini Cube — four mini polishes in seasonal colors — held the same role for nail-polish-loving cousins.
The fall foundation conversation finally settled
The September drugstore reformulations had stopped being news by mid-October, and what was left was a clearer set of reference recommendations than the year had started with. Maybelline Fit Me Matte + Poreless held its position as the under-ten-dollar workhorse. Giorgio Armani Beauty’s Luminous Silk and NARS Sheer Glow held the prestige slots. The Marc Jacobs Beauty Re(marc)able foundation had the freshest launch energy and was the most-restocked at every Sephora we walked through.
What changed in October was the technique conversation. The makeup-artist-recommended approach was finally beauty-bag-friendly: a primer, a lightweight foundation buffed in with a damp Beautyblender, a concealer where actually needed, a setting spray to lock it. The Beautyblender — pink, latex-free, sponge-shaped — had been the secret weapon of a generation of pro artists for years, and it crossed into mainstream awareness in October 2013 in a way it had not previously.
Allure Best of Beauty became the buying list
The Allure Best of Beauty list had landed in mid-September but its real consumption window was October — the issue stayed on bedside tables for the full month, dog-eared and circled. The 2013 winners that quietly drove the most actual purchasing were lower-key than the headline coverage suggested. The Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder kept selling. The Living Proof Perfect Hair Day Dry Shampoo kept selling. Bioderma’s Sensibio H2O — the pink-cap French-pharmacy micellar water that beauty editors had been quietly importing for years — finally got a proper US distribution push and showed up in the column. By the end of October it was on Sephora’s shelves and had become the late-night-makeup-removal product of the moment.
What we’re watching for November
November is the holiday-gift-guide month and the start of the in-house holiday party season, which means concealer sales spike and red lipstick gets its second annual press cycle of the year. We were watching the deep-burgundy nail conversation, which had built quietly over October and was about to become impossible to ignore. We were also watching for the inevitable Thanksgiving-week sales that had become a major part of the prestige-skincare buying calendar — the lighter retinol launches and the hydrating-mask category were primed to land in the second week. We will see you on the first Tuesday of November.