November is the beauty industry’s loudest month. Sephora’s Holiday Savings event ran the first half of the month, the Allure Best of Beauty list dropped, and Dyson released the most-anticipated styling tool in years. The holiday gift sets started landing on shelves the week before Halloween and the bigger drops kept arriving through Thanksgiving. We spent the month making lists for ourselves and for everyone we loved, and these are the launches and conversations that defined it.
The Dyson Airstrait launches
The biggest hardware story of the year arrived in mid-November when Dyson launched the Airstrait, a wet-to-dry styler that dries and straightens hair in a single pass without contact-heat plates. The launch followed five years of Supersonic and Airwrap dominance, and the Airstrait was Dyson’s argument that the next-generation tool wouldn’t be a refinement of either but a different category entirely. The price — $499 — was steep, the engineering was impressive, and the product sold out at launch on the brand’s own site.
Whether the Airstrait was going to displace the flat iron in real life depended on hair type. On fine, wavy hair like ours, it delivered a smoother finish than a blow dryer plus brush could in less time, and we suspected it would become the daily tool for anyone who had been air-drying. On coarse, type-4 hair, early reviews suggested the no-contact-heat approach struggled with the tightest patterns, and a flat iron was still going to do the harder work. Either way, Dyson had positioned itself for another two-year run as the most discussed styling brand in the category.
Holiday gift sets that earn their price
The holiday gift-set business had been getting more cynical for a few years — too many sets were value-engineered down with tiny travel sizes and one full-size hero — but 2022’s batch had a few sets that actually delivered the savings they advertised. Charlotte Tilbury‘s Magic Cream Universe set bundled the full-size moisturizer with a proper-size eye cream and the brand’s hero serum at a real discount. Olaplex‘s holiday kit gave full-size No. 3 and No. 6 plus the new No. 9 in one box, which was the cleanest way for anyone curious about the line to test all three without committing to individual purchases.
The gift sets that we kept coming back to as actual gifts (not just personal stash-builders) were Diptyque‘s holiday candle set, the Le Labo seasonal Cumin 28 (released only for the city of Cairo’s annual rotation), and Glow Recipe‘s Watermelon Glow Best Sellers kit, which made an excellent under-$50 gift for any skincare-curious recipient.
Sephora’s Holiday Savings event redefined Black Friday for beauty
Sephora‘s Holiday Savings event ran from November 4 through November 14 — a full ten days, tiered by Beauty Insider status (Rouge first, then VIB, then Insider). The event had been quietly migrating earlier in the calendar for several years, and 2022’s version officially repositioned it as the de facto Black Friday for beauty, two weeks before Black Friday itself. The discount structure was simple: 10% to 20% off everything, depending on tier and timing.
The strategic implication for the category was significant. By moving its biggest event two weeks earlier than the rest of retail, Sephora had effectively trained its best customers to do their gifting (and personal stocking-up) in early November, leaving Black Friday itself as a secondary moment for beauty. Ulta followed the pattern with its own staggered November Beauty Bash. The brands paid attention; we expected most prestige beauty’s first half of November to look like this for the foreseeable future.
Allure Best of Beauty 2022
Allure‘s annual Best of Beauty awards published in early November, and the 2022 list was unusually balanced between legacy heavyweights and newcomers. Among the standouts: the Rare Beauty Soft Pinch Liquid Blush won (deservedly) in the cream blush category for the third consecutive year. Naturium‘s Phyto-Glow Lip Balm took home a clean-beauty pick. The Pete & Pedro Putty hair styler made an unexpected appearance in the men’s grooming category. And the K18 Leave-In Molecular Repair Hair Mask, which had quietly become 2022’s biggest hair launch, was named breakthrough product.
The bigger pattern in the list was a slight return of legacy luxury — La Mer, La Prairie, Sisley took several wins — alongside the indie wave (Naturium, Tower 28, K18) that had been dominating Best of Beauty lists for the previous three years. Allure was, in effect, calling the end of the indie-only golden era and confirming that the category was rebalancing toward a barbell of prestige plus mass.
Cherry-chocolate hair color and the post-balayage future
The hair-color trend of November was “cherry chocolate” — a deep, slightly red-violet brunette that hairstylists called the antidote to four years of dimensional balayage. Hailey Bieber, who had been the unofficial cover model for any hair conversation in 2022, debuted the color at a New York Knicks game in mid-November and the search volume on the term tripled within a week. Matrix‘s SoColor in Mahogany Cherry was the most-requested formula at salons. The DIY version, courtesy of Madison Reed and Color Wow, sold through.
What made the trend interesting was the styling philosophy underneath it. After several years of multi-tonal balayage that had to be maintained every six weeks, “cherry chocolate” was a single-process color that grew out without obvious roots — the kind of low-maintenance answer that made sense in a year of recession-pricing conversations. We expected a wider return to single-process color through Q1 2023.
November was loud, expensive, and full of decisions. The Airstrait was the year’s biggest hardware launch, the holiday sets were finally worth the money again, Sephora had decisively moved Black Friday earlier, Allure had named the year’s standouts, and the year-end hair-color moment had shifted toward simplicity. We will see you on the first Tuesday of December for the year-end roundup.
Shop the edit
- Revlon One-Step Volumizer — the perennial holiday-gift hair tool.
- Sol de Janeiro Bum Bum Cream — a gift-favorite body cream.
- Drunk Elephant Protini Cream — a prestige skincare gift.
- NYX Butter Gloss — a stocking-stuffer lip.
As an Amazon Associate, Tried & Tested Beauty earns from qualifying purchases. The links above are affiliate links.