Allure, the first and only magazine devoted to beauty, is an insider's guide to a woman's total image. Allure investigates and celebrates beauty and fashion with objectivity and candor, and places appearance in a larger cultural context.
A few weeks ago, a noise startled me awake shortly before midnight—maybe a lead-footed cat jumping off the kitchen counter or a tree branch brushing the rooftop. My eyes popped open; my heart raced. I tried to get back to sleep. I lay there for 30 minutes. Then one hour. Thinking about sleep turned to overthinking: At what point should I give up and accept that this isn’t going to happen? And still I tried. Four more hours passed. Instead of drifting off into sweet slumber, I was dragging sheep over fences trying to knock myself out by sheer will. Sleeplessness has visited me a handful of times throughout my life, usually on nights of elevated stress: the evening before a major presentation in college and, more recently, the night…
First there was the hairpin, popular among Egyptians and designed with symbolic motifs, revived in the early 2000s with hairstylist Odile Gilbert’s line of U-shaped clips. Then the scrunchie made a comeback, with an impressive 2019 Oscars outing on Jason Momoa. Now the barrette’s time has come (again), but with a crucial update: One is no longer enough. Roughly 7 to 50 will do, stacked, like rungs on a ladder, along your hairline (like blogger Brittany Xavier’s, above) or clipped throughout a cascade of loose hair. Either way, we’ll say this: It bodes well for tiaras in 2020.…
BIOLOGIQUE RECHERCHE LOTION P50 PIGM 400 The cultiest of exfoliating toners, now souped up with hyperpigmentation-fighting wasabi extract. VINTNER’S DAUGHTER ACTIVE TREATMENT ESSENCE A cocktail of 30 (!) plant-based ingredients, like fruit enzymes and vitamin C, in a rich amber liquid. GLAMGLOW SUPERTONER EXFOLIATING ACID SOLUTION The formula is murky (that’s charcoal) and minty (that’s eucalyptus), with a gaggle of six acids that turns up the brightness on tired skin.…
Olay Sensitive Calming Liquid Cleanser with Hungarian Water Essence I’ve been a beauty editor for 12 years, and my skin still wigs out at times. (It gets blotchy in places, flaky in others.) So during a recent bad patch, I tried this creamy, aloe-infused cleanser. (“Sensitive” and “calming” jumped out at me.) After a few days, my face was smoother, less dry, bordering on radiant. If you have eczema or rosacea, however, dermatologists recommend fragrance-free washes (this one smells delightfully like cucumber).…
Botox can help smooth more than wrinkles: A recently published review in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology found that injections of BoNT-A, a protein found in neurotoxins like Botox and Xeomin, can soften and flatten raised scars after six months to a year of injections. “Neurotoxins are being used to relax muscles at the site of surgical scars to help them heal better,” says Joshua Zeichner, the director of cosmetic and clinical research in dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. “The less motion there is, the smaller the scar should be.” For this reason, one initial injection should be given as soon as possible, Zeichner says, with follow-ups every three to five months if needed.…
Reebok PureMove Bra This might look like an ordinary sports bra, but it doesn’t act like one. It’s made with a copolymer known as shear-thickening fluid that stiffens when it’s hit with force, which is precisely why you’ll find this material in bulletproof vests and space suits (to fend off extraterrestrial debris). In barre class, it held me in during the most intense movements but was also surprisingly—shockingly, really—comfortable.…
