May arrived with weather we could finally trust. The first Monday brought the Met Gala — the Manus x Machina theme, fashion in an age of technology — and the post-show coverage spent the rest of the week dissecting the precision-cut chrome looks, the embroidered metallic shifts, and the sleek-back hair that read more salon-finished than runway-styled. The brief filtered down through the rest of the month: hair that read polished, makeup that read economical, skin that read like skin. By the Memorial Day weekend, every reader we knew had built a ten-product summer routine and felt better for it. May was the month the season’s beauty thesis finally landed on the bathroom counter.
The Met Gala chrome echo
The Manus x Machina red carpet was the year’s most-photographed event by Tuesday morning, and the makeup-and-hair vocabulary spread fast. Beyoncé’s pearled latex Givenchy was the gown everyone discussed; Lupita Nyong’o’s Marie Antoinette-inspired updo with MAC Russian Red lipstick was the makeup look the editors at Allure kept reaching back to. The recurring techniques across the carpet read editorial: a full strobe down the centre of the face, a metallic eyeshadow placed only on the centre of the lid, a hairline that had been polished rather than tousled. The trickle-down landed in our group chat by the next weekend; we tried the centre-lid metallic with Pat McGrath Skin Fetish 002 on a Saturday and admitted it looked better than we expected. The takeaway: the Met Gala still earns its position as a beauty-trend amplifier. The other recurring takeaway: the artists who win the night are the ones who solve a brief, not the ones who execute a maximalist statement. The Manus x Machina theme rewarded restraint, and that rewarded the working-day reader more than any fall red carpet had in years.
Hair colour, finally bronde
The salon conversation in May was bronde — the warm balayage between brown and blonde — and our colourist friends in New York and Los Angeles were doing it in volume. The look had been incubating since 2015, but May was when the celebrity sightings (Jennifer Lopez, Gigi Hadid, Sarah Jessica Parker) made it the consensus pick for the summer. The home-care infrastructure had finally caught up: Olaplex No. 3 lived in our Sunday rotation, the Bumble and bumble Save the Day daily UV protector was the first day-of-pool product we packed, and the deep-conditioning weekly mask from Philip Kingsley Elasticizer was the trustworthy backup. The takeaway: bronde works when the at-home routine respects the salon work. We learned the hard way, after one sun-bleached Memorial Day weekend, that the heat protector matters as much as the colour glaze. The lesson held: nothing aged a fresh balayage faster than three afternoons of unprotected pool exposure.
The summer SPF reorganisation
By Memorial Day, our SPF rotation had reorganised itself completely. Daily face: EltaMD UV Clear under makeup, no question. Body: the chemist-aisle Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Drytouch in spray and the proper-credentialled mineral lotion from Thinkbaby for swim days. Top-up through the day: powder SPF for the desk, water-resistant chemical for the beach, and the quiet rebrand of the Shiseido Ultimate Sun Protection lotion that lived in every editor’s tote. The conversation around chemical-versus-mineral SPF was finally leaving its first wave of moralism behind; in May the consensus was just to wear sunscreen, period. The takeaway: 2016 was the year SPF became a non-negotiable layer for every skincare reader, not a debate.
Mother’s Day and the gift-edit problem
The Sunday before Mother’s Day on May 8 was when the gifting question got serious, and the answers we gave each other broke down by category. The all-purpose answer: a hand-cream gift set from Aesop or Chanel No. 1 candle. The skincare-savvy mother’s answer: a Drunk Elephant Babyfacial. The fragrance answer: a discovery set from Frédéric Malle. The makeup answer for the mother who actually wears it: a Charlotte Tilbury Magic Cream and a Pillow Talk lipstick set, which by mid-May had become the universal beauty gift answer of 2016. The lesson: a beauty gift earns its place when it slots cleanly into the recipient’s existing routine.
The ten-product summer routine
By the second-to-last week of May we had each pared the bathroom counter down to ten products, and the small-batch group-chat audit kept landing on the same shape. Cleanser, toner, serum, moisturiser, SPF, tinted moisturiser, cream blush, mascara, brow gel, lip balm. The list was the result of a year of Cloud Paint, Boy Brow, EltaMD UV Clear, and the post-Oscar afterglow brief slowly displacing the heavier pieces of our 2015 winter routines. We packed it into a single travel pouch on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, took it to the beach for three days, and came back unbothered. The other surprise from the audit was psychological: the smaller the routine, the more reliably we used everything in it. Products that had been on rotation for months disappeared without complaint. The takeaway: paring back is the most satisfying beauty exercise of the year.
Brow update: cream pomade in
The brow conversation in May tightened around cream pomades. Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade was still the workhorse for fuller filling, but the gel-based wax-set products — Boy Brow, the new Benefit Gimme Brow tube — were displacing the pencil-and-powder routine for everyday wear. We shopped a brow trio: Brow Wiz for the gap-filler, Boy Brow for the fluff, and a clear gel for the holding. The takeaway: a brow that takes ninety seconds is the new everyday brow.
What we are watching in June
June brings the third Tuesday’s summer jewellery edit and the official start of beach season. We are watching for the first proper hair-protection reformulations of the year, the new wave of dry-shampoo formulas that we suspect will start to land in the second half of the month, and the inevitable Father’s Day gift-set wave from grooming brands that we will dutifully skim and not buy from. Our own June plan: protect the bronde, keep the routine at ten products, and pack a sun hat. We will see you on the first Tuesday of June.