November 2018 was the third year we have written about the holiday push, and the rhythms had stabilized into something predictable. The Sephora Beauty Insider holiday event ran in mid-November in two waves. The Black Friday beauty sales sprawled across the entire week of Thanksgiving and increasingly into Cyber Monday and beyond. The advent-calendar conversation had reached a new peak — every major prestige beauty house had launched one, and the question among editors was which were genuinely good and which were just gift-set arbitrage. We tested several, picked our two favorites, and called the gift list largely sorted by mid-month.
The Sephora holiday event, year three
The Sephora Beauty Insider holiday event ran in two waves. The strongest buys we made: a back-up pump of Fenty Beauty Pro Filt’r foundation, the Drunk Elephant The Littles set (third year buying it), the Pat McGrath Mothership III with the discount, the Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk advent calendar (the second one we have bought; it was good in 2017 too). The event delivered what it promised. The post-Fenty market continued to push prestige brands toward stronger Q4 launches; the assortment was strong enough that we spent more than we had planned for the third year running.
Black Friday at the drugstore, structural advantage
The Black Friday beauty conversation had structurally shifted to the drugstore over the previous three years. CVS, Walgreens, and Target ran serious beauty discounts the week of Thanksgiving — buy-one-get-one on most cosmetics, fifty percent off selected hair-care lines, twenty percent off the entire CeraVe aisle. The drugstore was now the smartest place to spend the Black Friday beauty budget. We loaded up on backup mascaras, replacement CeraVe tubs, the Maybelline Fit Me forty-shade range that had launched the previous year. Total spent: under $80. The drugstore’s structural advantage on price was now a permanent feature of the Q4 calendar.
The advent calendar conversation, peaked
The advent calendar push in 2018 reached a level of excess that even the editorial press had to acknowledge — every prestige house had one, every retailer had its proprietary version, and the average price had climbed to $200. Our position was that two were genuinely good — the Charlotte Tilbury calendar (the makeup samples were full-size or near-full-size, the curation was strong) and the Diptyque calendar (smaller candles and rollerballs that delivered actual usable product). Most of the rest were dressed-up sample sets. The category had reached saturation. The gift conversation in 2018 had begun to move toward the smaller, thoughtful single-product gift rather than the elaborate calendar.
The female-founded brands gift list, year two
The female-founded brands gift list that we had built around in 2017 had matured into a default for our 2018 buying. Glossier‘s pink balm dotcom and Boy Brow remained the easiest under-$30 gift in beauty. Tatcha‘s gift sets earned the second-tier slot. Fenty Beauty‘s holiday collection (released early November) was the prestige pick we bought twice. Sunday Riley‘s holiday set anchored the prestige skincare gift category. Glow Recipe‘s Watermelon Glow set was the new addition for 2018 — the gift to give a friend testing K-beauty for the first time.
The candle gift, fourth year
Holiday-season candles continued to anchor the gift conversation. Diptyque‘s Sapin candle remained our default pine fragrance, and the holiday collection’s collaboration packaging continued to be the prettiest in any prestige house. Byredo‘s woody-spicy holiday candle was the gift to give the friend who already had a Diptyque. Boy Smells, the LA-based fragrance house we had highlighted in 2017, had built a real following through 2018, and the brand’s Cinderose candle was the gift to give the friend who had decided that prestige fragrance was no longer interesting. The candle category had effectively become the universal beauty gift. Every recipient list had at least one.
Closing
By the last week of November the gift list was 90% done, the Sephora event purchases had arrived, the Black Friday haul had been organized, and the candle for our own home was already lit. December will bring the New Year’s Eve makeup conversation, the year-end best-of we have been drafting since November, and the final stretch of gifting. We will see you on the first Tuesday of December, and on the third Tuesday for the winter jewellery roundup.