December was the closing chapter of a long, uneven year. The holiday-party gauntlet ran from the second week through the thirty-first, the year-in-review beauty editorial cycle dominated the trade press, and our bathroom counter pared down to its essential winter shape one final time. The conversation in our group chat about what 2016 actually meant for beauty was, by the third week, a settled consensus: Glossier had become the brand of the year, Drunk Elephant had reset prestige skincare, Olaplex had taken hair-bonding mainstream, and Charlotte Tilbury had quietly become the brand the working-day reader bought every quarter. Below: the highlights, the last-minute gifts, and the looks we are taking into the new year.
The four brands that defined 2016
Glossier, Drunk Elephant, Olaplex, and Charlotte Tilbury were not the four most-launched brands of the year — that honour went to Maybelline, MAC, NARS, and Kylie Cosmetics on a strict count — but they were the four whose products our friends were actually using by year-end. The lesson: editorial saturation does not equal customer loyalty, and the brands that won the year were the ones that built durable routines rather than dropped permanent assortments.
Year-end Kylie restock chaos
The mid-month Kylie Cosmetics holiday restock was the year’s most-photographed sellout. Three new shades, one anniversary capsule, an entire website that buckled for forty minutes. The brand had finished the year with eight separate restocks, all sellouts in under five minutes. The takeaway: the matte-liquid silhouette was now the most reliably scalable beauty drop format on the calendar, and 2017 was going to be the year the established houses started shipping their answers in volume.
Last-minute gifting consolidates
The last-minute gifting question consolidated by the third week around five reliable answers. The Drunk Elephant Mini Trio for the skincare-curious. The Charlotte Tilbury Magic Cream and Pillow Talk gift set for the recipient who wears makeup. A Byredo discovery set for the fragrance reader. A Olaplex No. 3 for the colour-treated hair friend. And a Aesop hand-cream-and-soap pairing as the universal back-up. The takeaway: a beauty gift earns its place when it slots cleanly into an existing routine.
NYE makeup, three reliable looks
For New Year’s Eve, the looks our friends were actually wearing fell into three camps. The deep-burgundy bullet that had been doing dinner-party duty since October paired with a glow-skin base. The metallic centre-lid eye, with Pat McGrath Mothership pigments and a brown liner, paired with a balm-only lip. The full red, traditionally — MAC Russian Red on a rare few — paired with a clean cat-eye and skin that read like skin. The takeaway: a year of dewy mandate landed at NYE in a generation of artists who knew how to render glamour without obscuring the face.
Skincare, the last-week reset
The week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve was when we paused the actives, drank water, slept eight hours, and let the skin reorganise itself ahead of January. The retinol stayed off, the heaviest cream — Augustinus Bader The Cream — covered the night, and we used Tatcha‘s Luminous Dewy Skin Mist before makeup. The takeaway: the most useful late-year beauty decision is the one that pulls back rather than adds.
Hair through the holidays
The holiday hair brief was about endurance. Three full days between blowouts again, the bronde glaze still holding from the November salon visit, and the dry-shampoo budget back up by Christmas Eve. Oribe Gold Lust dry shampoo did most of the work; Batiste handled the second-day touch-up. We booked the next salon visit for the second week of January. The takeaway: the right holiday hair-care routine is one that survives travel without complaint.
Fragrance, the December commitment
For the long week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve we settled on a single fragrance — the Frédéric Malle Musc Ravageur — and wore it daily. The discipline of one bottle, worn at consistent strength, made it the signature scent of the holiday week for everyone we hugged. The takeaway: fragrance commits when the wearer commits.
The travel kit for the long week
The kit that travelled to family for the holiday week pared down to eight products. Cleanser, moisturiser, SPF, tinted moisturiser, cream blush, mascara, brow gel, lip balm. We added one heavier night cream as a ninth in the toiletry case. The whole pouch fit in a quart-size bag with room to spare. The takeaway: the carry-on routine ends the year as it began it: simpler, more reliable.
What we are taking into 2017
Our 2017 commitments, taped to the bathroom mirror: continue paring back the routine, commit to one daily SPF, finish the C-Firma at proper retinol pace, and resist the new-launch noise unless a product solves an actual existing problem. We are also watching for the launches we know are coming — Charlotte Tilbury Hollywood Flawless Filter is rumoured for early 2017, Tarte’s Shape Tape concealer arrives in Q1, the see-now-buy-now experiment will either expand or recede with NYFW Spring 2018, and Fenty Beauty is widely telegraphed for September 2017 launch. We will see you on the first Tuesday of January.