Innehållsförteckning för August 2022 från Allure

Green. Clean. Natural. Science based. Most people in the Allure world understand those terms are mutable at best. (Green means nothing more than a pretty color when you see it on a label.) Sometimes, people equate living a cleaner life with foregoing lab-manipulated ingredients and “chemicals” (a word that applies to water, for the record). But science can give nature an automatic boost in efficacy and help preserve the potency of products on shelves. In this issue, we explore the important interplay between nature and science, especially in skin care. We also investigate how recycling strategies are ever shifting. In “Is Aluminum the Answer?” we get a deeper understanding of why every brand seems to be launching metal tubes these days as part of a sustainability initiative. With that in…

BLOCK PARTY Lime green eyeliner is playful—even more so when it’s color-blocked with cobalt blue. At Capasa Milano’s fall 2022 show (far right), makeup artist Jen Myles used MAC Chromagraphic colored pencils in Hi-Def Cyan and Landscape Green (right) to make sure the wings and underliner were on point (see what we did there?) and then doubled down with Kryolan’s neon shades for a strong, saturated finish. GREAT LENGTHS False lashes bring the drama… especially when they are an electric shade of green. At Yuhan Wang’s fall 2022 show (left), makeup artist Rebecca Wordingham and her assistant handmade this striking pair of fringe by gluing yarn onto deconstructed eyelash strips. The result was wispy lashes that “gently oscillated like feathers as models walked.” Not into DIY? PaintLab’s Optical Green Lashes…

One day in Capri, the smell of the Tyrrhenian Sea filled the air and Champagne bubbles tickled my nose as I got engaged. I remember what I was wearing, olfactorily speaking: Dior Lucky, a joyful lily of the valley. This bottle of happiness still transports me back to that day—and there are five good reasons why. THERE’S A BIOLOGICAL PATHWAY BETWEEN SCENT AND EMOTION. With each breath we take, we inhale more than air. Above the nasal cavity is the olfactory bulb and, when stimulated by scent molecules, its neurons send messages directly to the brain’s limbic system, which controls behavioral and emotional responses. So, as we perceive smell, we get an emotional bang at the same time, says Rachel Herz, PhD, a neuroscientist and adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry…

“I’ve been chasing space my entire life,” says Sian Proctor, PhD, the first Black woman to pilot a spacecraft as part of SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission last fall. While her father, Edward, worked on the Apollo Mission at the NASA Tracking Station in Guam, Dr. Proctor was at home building model airplanes and dreaming of becoming a fighter pilot and astronaut. Years later, “life happened” and she decided to study geoscience instead—but Dr. Proctor never forgot her love of space. She eventually started working with NASA as a simulation astronaut, investigating food strategies for long-duration space flights. When the opportunity came to join Inspiration4, she jumped at the chance. During orbit, Dr. Proctor, who is also an artist, created a series of drawings and paintings inspired by her experience, which she…

“Bronzer is all the makeup I need for a day in the park. I like a matte formula. The sun can add the sparkle.”…

This is not a self-care, beauty-isa-ritual kind of story. It’s a science-driven-formulas kind of story. We’re here to talk about products that block the dulling, pore-enlarging effects of the stress hormone cortisol, which gets mainlined into your bloodstream by deadlines, arguments, and endless smartphone pings. “When stress hormones are dialed up, we get a downstream effect on many organs, including the skin—an increase in inflammation and oxidative stress, which can lead to acne breakouts, slower wound healing, thinning of the skin, and it’s thought to contribute to hyperpigmentation and textural changes over time,” says Whitney Bowe, MD, an assistant clinical professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. “We are learning more about these effects and how applying certain ingredients directly to the skin can help…

Everything has the potential to become a hair accessory in the hands of Janice Mascarenhas. A fine-tooth comb morphs into geometric sculpture when it’s attached to the ends of faceframing pieces; crystals make braids gleam across the wearer’s forehead; and brass keys clink together as neat plaits sway at the slightest tilt of the neck. Then there are the organic elements in Mascarenhas’s kit: Lately, they have been creating heavenly hair sculptures with clay. The idea came to them on a trip to their native Brazil. (Mascarenhas currently lives in Morocco, but travels frequently to their homeland.) While visiting a small Black community—a family, really—in the countryside of Piauí, Mascarenhas began doing hair using Earth’s natural resources. “When I touched the clay, when I touched [their] hair, I felt closer…

Do you have any idea what a goatskin glove smelled like in the 16th century? Very bad. Borderline putrid. Pretty much like a dead goat. Also, lye. And because the French town of Grasse was all about selling leather goods, this was a real problem for residents. “So we started taking the plants that grew naturally here—lavender, rosemary, thyme—and using those to scent the leather,” explains Antoine Leclef, a horticulturist from the region. (He uses the first-person quite broadly…. He was born in Grasse several hundred years later. Leclef is 34.) As the story goes, Catherine de Medici made it known that she was a big fan of her sweet-smelling gloves, and soon Grasse couldn’t scent its leather fast enough. After a while, the town got more ambitious about wielding…

I’ve had freckles for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I loved the way the little spots matched my hair and the specks of brown in my eyes. I missed them when they faded in the fall and winter and wondered why I didn’t have nearly as many as my mom and sister come summer. Other than that, though, I didn’t give them a whole lot of thought. Until, overnight it seemed, everyone wanted this thing I’d always had—there were freckle filters on Snapchat and TikTok, freckle henna kits, freckle tattoos (as in the needle kind). For the first time, I became fascinated by the scientific phenomenon of my newfound beauty currency. And I learned a thing or two (or eight). 1 “Freckles” is a slang word.…

Hibiscus flowers carpet the ground. Sunshine beams through skies painted with cottony clouds. Horses graze on lush hills in the distance. This is not a dreamland. It’s Hacienda AltaGracia, a resort nestled in the Talamanca mountains of Costa Rica. I am here at a retreat led by John Amaral, an energy therapy practitioner, who has been working with clients for 27 years. He started as a chiropractor before developing an energy-work practice that has gained a following among the .001 percent. “Everything is energy,” Amaral tells the group of 13 perfect strangers, all dressed in their best athleisure and matching sets, at the first workshop of the week. (Before you roll your eyes, consider that Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein held similar views about the nature of the universe.) Amaral…

Any beauty editor with a conscience has learned that with the thrill of almost limitless free beauty testers comes a constant hum of environmental guilt. In a given week, most of the products I receive (and there can be hundreds)—packaged in boxes, bottles, tubes, and cellophane wrappers—are difficult if not impossible to recycle. “Compostable” is nearly unheard of (and requires a home composter or…residence in San Francisco?). When I do my quarterly purge of all the half-used testers in my home office, the mountain of garbage leaves me thinking about penance more than product reviews. But in recent months that pile has started to catch the light a little differently. Every day, it seems, I receive a new aluminum-clad launch: JVN Hair’s formulas, Everist’s concentrated shampoos and conditioners, refillables from…

“Natural” is a loaded word in the beauty world. It’s right up there with “green” and “clean” and all the other vague terms cosmetics companies use to sell their wares. Typically, natural is used to describe anything that has not been created by humans. But if you go with that definition, there’s no such thing as natural in the beauty industry—to some extent, we have manipulated everything. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Naturals versus synthetics isn’t a black-or-white situation as some brands would have you believe. So, for the purpose of this article, let’s forget about using “natural” as a blanket term and focus on the specifics: skin-care ingredients made from plants that have been tweaked in research labs—exposed to extreme temperatures, say, or millions of little bugs—often to…

Makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench has put seashells, sequins, and snakeskin prints on skin—and now, for her new makeup line, piercings on mascara and lipstick tubes. The silver hoops studding her debut Berlin-inspired Industrial Collection can be removed and worn, but it’s the formulas inside that we’re piling on: mascara with a latex finish, electric green eye shadow, nearly black lip serum. A bit on the edgy side, sure, but if you look at Ffrench history, it’s in fact all very wearable. (This is a woman who once transformed a model into a lizard with lips the size of hot-dog buns.)…

Scarlett Johansson has a controversial statement to make: “Most people are pretty happy with their skin.” It’s one she says is backed up by the consumer research she did before launching her new skin-care line, The Outset. It’s also backed up by her own experience: “I just want to preserve the skin I have for the future.” For Johansson, skin care is a game of defense. “My routine is about putting moisture into my skin,” she says. “My skin has never reacted well to resurfacing. It doesn’t survive that complicated type of routine.” Johansson first experimented with skin care as a 12-year-old on the set of The Horse Whisperer. “I remember the makeup artist giving me cleansers, acne creams, there was a pink gunk,” she says. It was the beginning…

Transforming myself was always a dream for me. I’ve shaved my head a couple of times for roles and I would absolutely do it again. I think every woman should do it at least once in their life. I’ve never felt more free or more in tune with my beauty. I couldn’t hide behind my hair. A lot of people made fun of me when I had my head shaved. A lot of people said really mean things. But when I had short hair, I actually felt more confident; I felt very powerful. [Their words] slid off my back. People like to insert themselves in other people’s business when it doesn’t actually matter. Me having a shaved head for a project really upsets you that much? I’m doing fine. I…

I got curious about computer science when I was nine years old. I was watching PBS and they were interviewing someone from MIT who had created a social robot named Kismet. It had big ears that moved. It could smile. I didn’t know you could do that with machines. So, from when I was little, I had in my mind that I wanted to be a robotics engineer and I was going to MIT. Eventually, I did reach MIT, but I went to Georgia Tech for my undergraduate degree. I was working to get a robot to play peekaboo because social interactions show some forms of perceived intelligence. It was then that I learned about the code bias: Peekaboo doesn’t work when your robot doesn’t see you. [A few years…

“Making face charts is like creative therapy for me. I’ll prep one before a big red carpet [event] as an easy way to visualize what the final look will be. [For this chart], I was inspired by summer. To create glowing, radiant skin, I applied strokes of highlighter on the lids and the tops of cheekbones, which also gives a lifted effect. I think whether on paper or on a face, strategic placement of products can really enhance [one’s] features. I also emphasized the natural freckles with a wash of blush on the apples of the cheeks. I see this look for daytime. For night, I would add liner and make the skin more satin-like.” GET THE LOOK Chanel Les 4 Ombres in Clair-Obscur, Jillian Dempsey Lid Tint in Dew,…

After what feels like a long while, Kim Kardashian stops staring at my forehead and says I should get Botox. It’s very matter of fact. The way a grandmother might confirm that the melon she had said all along was overripe was, in fact, overripe. She continues, without emotion. Maybe some filler under my eyes. Oh, and I could stand some microblading in my eyebrows. Before you blame her for being judgmental and mean, I should say that I absolutely asked for it. Twice. I met Kardashian only a few minutes before this, when she told me, “People write all the time to say, ‘I heard you’re a really good facial consultant. Can I send a photo? What should I do?’ I am super honest: ‘Okay, you should try this…

HIGH SHINE A handful of gemstones can elevate your blush—and we mean that literally. Makeup artist Stevie Huynh used 3D appliqués from his local craft store, affixed with a dot of eyelash glue, for one very sparkling take on a rosy flush. (He glued them over Fenty Beauty Cheeks Out Freestyle Cream Blush in Daiquiri Dip, below, and Nars Powder Blush in Aroused, at right.) “Place the gemstones almost as freckles,” Huynh says. DOUBLE DOWN Ombré isn’t just for nails—a gradation of yellow and hot pink blush gives a sunset-atthe-beach vibe. To blend the two colors, “take a fluffy powder brush and start with the yellow in a C-shape from your cheekbones down [and around to your temples] like a contour,” says Huynh. “Then blend [pink] on the apples, back…