April was the month the Pat McGrath Mothership II palette finally landed in our hands. We had pre-ordered it at the end of March, watched the tracking number every morning, and on a Wednesday afternoon a small black box turned up wrapped in tissue with the gold logo across the lid. The Sublime palette was the one — six shades of brown-mauve-burgundy that read like a study in restraint after the chrome maximalism of the first Mothership. April beauty, in general, was a month of arrivals: the Coachella content moved from speculation to evidence, the festival edition sets dropped, and the spring drugstore launches that had been teased through Q1 finally hit shelves. The bathroom counter felt fully spring — a lighter foundation, a brown-mauve lip, less coverage everywhere. And we were already starting to think about Mother’s Day, the Met Gala, and the long stretch of warm-weather product testing that defines the months ahead.
Pat McGrath Mothership II Sublime — the palette of the spring
The second Mothership palette from Pat McGrath Labs arrived in early April and immediately defined the spring eye look. The Sublime palette dropped the chrome and metallic pigments of the first Mothership in favor of a deeper, more wearable progression — six shades that read as a single study in russet and burgundy. We did three weeks of looks out of it: a soft wash of the palest shade for daytime, a smoked-out brick lid for dinner, the deepest shade pressed into the lash line for an old-Hollywood evening. The texture was the most uniform of any high-end palette we had used in the previous year. It also had an effect on the rest of the prestige market — by mid-April every artist brand at Sephora was suddenly leaning into burgundy and brown shadow, and the chrome-eye conversation that had dominated late 2016 quietly retired. Pat McGrath had set the agenda for the second time in eighteen months. Pat McGrath Labs had also restocked the original Mothership for the first time, which meant a dozen of our group chat finally got their hands on the gold one as well.
Coachella moved from speculation to evidence
The first weekend of Coachella ran April 14–16 and the second the weekend after, and the festival makeup that had been teased through March arrived on Instagram in full saturation. The defining looks of the year were softer than the previous two — less full-face glitter, more single-feature glam. A holographic lid paired with neutral skin. A glossed lip and barely-there brow. A pop of color on the inner eye corner using a single pigment from a brand like Makeup Geek or ColourPop, which had spent the first quarter of 2017 building festival-tied edits at very accessible price points. We tested the look at home in our bathroom mirror, decided we were too old for the holographic lid, and kept the inner-corner pop. The festival’s takeaway product, predictably, was glitter eyeliner — and by the end of the month every brand we owned had at least one in the lineup.
Drugstore strobe vs. prestige glow, the verdict
We had spent March stockpiling drugstore strobing creams to test against the new prestige glow drops, and April was the month the verdicts landed. The Maybelline Master Strobing Cream and L’Oréal Paris True Match Lumi Glotion both delivered a believable lit-from-within finish for under $15, and the Glotion in particular blended into foundation in a way that felt indistinguishable from the prestige equivalents. The prestige category — Charlotte Tilbury Hollywood Flawless Filter, Marc Jacobs Dew Drops, Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector — still had the edge on shade range and longevity, but the gap had closed dramatically. April was also the month Fenty Beauty was rumored to be in development, though nothing official had surfaced and we were still six months away from the launch that would change everything about the foundation conversation.
The Glossier expansion is starting to look like a strategy
Glossier had spent the spring extending its Phase Two color cosmetics — the Cloud Paint cream blushes that had launched the prior April were now fully restocked in all five shades, the Generation G lipstick had added shades, and the Boy Brow had retained its position as the single product anyone in the office wanted to be gifted. The brand’s New York pop-up — the showroom in SoHo that doubled as a retail concept and Instagram pilgrimage — was running a constant queue at lunchtime through April. The conversation among beauty editors had shifted from “is Glossier a real brand” to “is Glossier the most influential beauty brand of the decade.” We were not arguing the negative. The product range was still small, but the rate of new launches had accelerated and the brand was starting to feel like a category builder rather than a niche player.
Mother’s Day skincare and the gift-set season
By the third week of April every retailer had pivoted to Mother’s Day, and the gift-set assortments told us a lot about where prestige skincare was heading. Sephora‘s Mother’s Day push leaned heavily on retinol and acid kits — Sunday Riley Good Genes, Drunk Elephant T.L.C. Framboos, Tatcha rice polish — at a price point that suggested the brand was confident a casual gift-giver would spend $80 to $120 on a thoughtful skincare product. Tatcha in particular had emerged as the gift-set winner; the rice polish was packaged with a small dewy serum and read as a complete mini-routine. We bought three of these and quietly kept one for ourselves. The acid-and-retinol category was about to become the dominant prestige skincare conversation for the rest of 2017, and Mother’s Day was the on-ramp.
Closing
By the end of April the bathroom counter looked entirely different than it had in March. The Mothership II Sublime had taken pride of place. A glitter liner sat in the makeup bag for a Saturday-night occasion. Two drugstore glow drops had earned permanent residence next to the prestige equivalents. May is going to bring the Met Gala on the first Monday of the month — the Rei Kawakubo Comme des Garçons exhibit will set the tone for the red-carpet beauty conversation — and the start of summer skincare prep. We are testing a new SPF, looking for a tinted body lotion that does not streak, and counting the days until the warm weather lasts past sundown. We will see you on the first Tuesday of May.