December 2017 closed the year on a particular kind of beauty exhaustion — the good kind, where the last gift had been wrapped, the last party makeup had been worn, the last advent-calendar window had been opened, and the bathroom counter looked like it had been audited by an accountant. We had drafted the year-end best-of in the second week of November, edited it twice in December, and were ready to admit that 2017 had been the most consequential year for beauty since the early 2000s. Fenty had reframed the foundation conversation. Glossier had reframed minimalism as a category. Drunk Elephant and the active-ingredient era had taken over prestige skincare. The cushion compact had matured. The drugstore had grown teeth. And the Pat McGrath Mothership lineage had pushed the rest of prestige to be more interesting than it had been since the early Tom Ford years. We had a lot to think about. We had also booked an extra hour on January 1 to do exactly that.
The year-end best-of, top six
Our internal best-of-2017 list, distilled to six: Fenty Beauty Pro Filt’r Soft Matte Foundation (the cultural and technical winner of the year), Pat McGrath Mothership II Sublime palette (the prestige eye palette of the year), Charlotte Tilbury Hollywood Flawless Filter (the glow product that got copied by everyone), Drunk Elephant‘s C-Firma plus T.L.C. Framboos pair (the prestige skincare duo of the year), L’Oréal Paris Voluminous Lash Paradise (the drugstore product that crossed every editor’s threshold), and Glossier Cloud Paint (the cream blush that defined a year of minimalism). Five of the six were from female-founded brands. Four of the six did not exist three years ago. The story of beauty in 2017 was new brands taking new ground, and the established prestige houses being pushed to react.
The New Year’s Eve look, simplified
NYE 2017 fell on a Sunday, and the look we landed on was the simplest we had done in years. The Fenty foundation, a single dab of Killawatt Freestyle highlighter on the cheekbones, the Sublime palette swept across the lid in the deepest shade, a flick of black liquid liner, and a Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk lipstick. Total time: twelve minutes. The full-glam NYE looks that had defined the previous five years had quietly been replaced by an editorial preference for the polished, restrained version of the same idea. We were not going to a Times Square ball-drop event; we were having dinner with friends and walking home in the cold. The look that delivered for that was the look that delivered. We had also bought a single bottle of Veuve Clicquot for the toast and called it a complete plan.
The Sephora Beauty Insider points game
December was the month every beauty editor finally cashed in their Sephora Beauty Insider points, and the rewards game in 2017 had reached an absurd level of complexity. The Rouge Reward redemption tier had introduced the limited-edition prestige rewards — a full-size Pat McGrath palette for 2,500 points, an exclusive Tatcha kit for 1,000 — and the entire system had effectively turned a season’s worth of spending into a points-arbitrage exercise. We redeemed a 500-point reward for a NARS lipstick and called it a small victory. The competing program at Ulta was mathematically more generous on a percentage basis but lacked the prestige rewards. We are loyal to Sephora primarily because the reward is the rare-product access, not the dollars off.
The Stunna Lip Paint reset
On December 26 — the day after Christmas, perfectly timed — Fenty Beauty launched Stunna Lip Paint in Uncensored, a single universal red. The launch followed the same playbook the September one had — controlled press release, minimal advance leak, sell-out within hours. The product itself was a long-wear matte liquid lipstick in a single shade designed to flatter every skin tone. It worked. We bought one and a friend bought three. The Stunna launch confirmed that Fenty’s first quarter had not been a fluke and that the brand was going to be one of the dominant players in 2018. The day-after-Christmas launch was also a strategic masterstroke — every beauty editor who had been quietly winding down for the year suddenly had a new product to write about, and the press cycle re-engaged through the New Year. The launch also pulled forward our December skincare and made us realize how much we had been thinking about beauty as marketing rather than just product.
The skincare reset, January-prep
The last week of December is the one we use to plan the next year’s skincare routine, and 2018’s plan is committed: keep the C-Firma morning, keep the T.L.C. Framboos two nights a week, keep the SkinCeuticals retinol on the alternate two, add a real bond-building treatment for hair (Olaplex No. 3 already qualifies, but we are going to be more disciplined about weekly use), and finally stop using moisturizers that contain fragrance. The fragrance-in-moisturizer conversation in December beauty press had reached a critical mass — the editor consensus was that fragrance compounds in skincare were a real source of irritation and that brands selling on “natural” or “clean” claims were not always cleaner than the prestige formulas. We are switching to CeraVe‘s fragrance-free PM moisturizer for daily wear. The reset is small, the savings are significant, and the skin agrees.
Closing
2017 ends with a bathroom counter that we are happy about, a closet full of gift sets we will work through in January, and a year-end list that we are confident in. January 2018 will arrive with the post-holiday quiet, the new year skincare resolutions (the only kind we keep), and the early signs of which 2017 launches will define the year ahead. The Fenty effect is going to keep playing out. The Glossier expansion is going to accelerate. The drugstore is going to keep gaining market share. We will see you on the first Tuesday of January, and on the third Tuesday of December for the final winter jewellery roundup of 2017.