600 Episodes! Plus, Best of Beauty Hot Takes + How Well Do We Know Our Own Show?

Gloss Angeles

The hosts celebrate a massive milestone of 600 episodes with a nostalgic trivia game led by their producer. They also provide live reactions

Key takeaways

The hosts recently attended a Chanel pop-up in New York's Meatpacking District to celebrate the Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolue launch.
A debate ensued regarding the Inkey List balm cleanser, specifically addressing user concerns over its reformulation and texture.
The hosts compared high-end hair tools, weighing the value of the Shark Beauty 5-in-1 against the expensive Dyson Airwrap splurge.
Trivia revealed that Toni Braxton once famously used a vibrator as a facial massage tool.
The episode highlights the evolution of beauty categories in Allure's awards, noting an explosion of specialized hair and skin products.

Main topics

Gloss Angeles 600th Episode Celebration
Allure Best of Beauty Awards Reactions
Chanel New York Pop-up Experience

Notable quotes

I would be fighting for my life on some of these.

Conclusion

A celebratory look back at seven years of beauty coverage, blending in

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:04) Hi Speaker 1 (0:05) Kirby. Hi Sarah. Welcome to Los Angeles. Fresh off the plane. from New York City. Kirby, what were we doing there and why did we look so fabulous? We Speaker 3 (0:22) were at a Chanel pop-up in New York. We partnered with Chanel to bring all of our glam Julinos in the New York area to come and experience their pop-up, which was up for two weekends around fashion week for the Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolue. It's their new fragrance. And we had a great time. We had a bunch of guests from the past. We had people that we hadn't seen in a minute come and show up, friends. And we met a bunch of you based in New York, which was really exciting. And it was nice to put some names with some faces because we see a lot of you in our. Slack group. It was a short and sweet trip. We were in and out, but we had a great time. And thank you to the Chanel team for giving this opportunity to Speaker 1 (1:09) our listeners. I also have to talk about what you were wearing. I was wearing because I feel like you need to buy that jumpsuit. It was like made for you. It Speaker 3 (1:19) was very cute. We we went to Janet Mandel here in LA. If you are a If you're looking for something fabulous to wear to an event, Janet Mandel has something for you. Get over to that Speaker 1 (1:32) showroom. Speaker 3 (1:33) She had a lot of Chanel. She had a lot of everything. And we decided if we're going to host an event with Chanel, we might as well be Speaker 1 (1:39) in Chanel. In 1995, Chanel. Yes. A la Karl Lagerfeld. But yeah, that was so much fun. I felt like it was, it felt like fall in New York, which was like a nice reprieve from this LA heat wave. It was so fun. The pop-up was in the meatpacking district. And like Kirby said, it was so nice to actually connect with some of our New York glamgelinos because we do so many events here in LA and see some old friends like Sophie Pavitt and Katie Jane Hughes. Nam Vo was there. Ximena, who does brows for Chanel. Just so many fun people. And so thank you, Chanel. That was so fun. Speaker 3 (2:18) All right. So we just had Jess Krul on the podcast. If you haven't listened to her episode, go and listen to that before we talk about this. Best of Beauty is turning 30 this year. This is the 30th list. Jess walks through everything from how they receive the products, how a product is submitted, how they choose the winners. what the winners have to pay for, what they don't have to pay for. She clears all of that up. So if you have any questions about that, go check out Jess's interview from last week. Today, we are looking at the list for the first time because the winners were announced today as we are filming. We're going to go through a few Speaker 1 (3:00) of these categories and give you our live reactions. We also have to say thank you to Linda Wells. founding editor of Allure who stopped by the pop-up and there is an oral history of Best of Beauty in this issue. And I haven't read it yet, but I can't wait because she was the one who created Best of Beauty Awards. Yes. Speaker 3 (3:23) Way Speaker 1 (3:23) to go, Linda. Speaker 3 (3:24) You have Speaker 1 (3:25) created Speaker 3 (3:25) something that has a legacy. What a woman. All right. So the first category we're going to just take a quick look at is skin. Look at how many cleansers there are. Speaker 1 (3:35) Yes. So this was something that Jess Kroll mentioned to us. Like every year the categories change and the subcategories change based on what is trending and what people are buying and looking for. And I feel like this year, I mean, there's always, cleanser has always been a staple, but I feel like there's oil cleanser, gel cleanser, cream, balm, foam, there's scrub, like that's a lot. Speaker 3 (4:02) I'm surprised to see that Inkey List won the best balm cleanser only because there was a lot of backlash about this reformulation from them. The original version, so I love this cleanser. Me too. I love it. But the original cleanser separated a lot. So when you would squeeze it out of its packaging. it would sometimes leak a bunch of oil. You would eventually get the balm. And I personally like balm cleansers in that squeeze format. I don't like sticking my fingers into a jar. So that's not the issue here. The reformulation was supposed to mitigate that problem. However, I saw several videos with people being like, this is still an issue. It still separates, you know, because it's a balm texture, shaking it doesn't really do it. that much justice or really changes anything. So I would be curious to ask the Allure team why they selected that one as the best, because I personally, while I do think it removes a majority of the makeup and it feels really great on the skin and it's super affordable, I don't think it's the best user experience. Speaker 1 (5:12) Yeah. I do feel like that is missing a little explanation. I think last year there was a little bit more, but maybe they were just trying to streamline it this year. But for example, best under eye patches goes to Summer Friday's jet lag eye patches, which I feel like is such a huge win because there have been so many under eye patches. But I would love to know why they crowned the Summer Friday's one. I mean, I like these ones, but you know, they're, you can, one would argue, one could argue, I could say that they're all kind of the same. So I would love to know why this one came out on top. Speaker 3 (5:47) I think that they do have explanations somewhere. I think you have to look specifically for the stories for each of them, which lays everything out. But there's also a larger portal where you can go through and you can click on each tab and it'll just like bring up, I think, images of everything. Like if you're looking on the main page, it says best of beauty 2026. And then it says like skin, hair, splurges, base, whatever. And you can click those and then it will bring them up just. by name, but then there are larger stories that explain why each one was picked. I'm just having a hard time navigating that on my iPad. Yeah, Speaker 1 (6:22) maybe it was not built for the iPad experience. Speaker 3 (6:24) Yes. Okay, let's go to base. It says 26 foundations, concealers, blushes, bronzers, and powders that turn simple prep steps into sheer pleasure. Wow, the road highlight milk for illuminating primer. Yes. I I'm actually kind of shocked that primers are included in best of beauty. I feel like so many makeup artists brands now preach about not needing it. Right. Just like prep your skin, your, you know, use your skincare. Oh, okay. I will say when I was looking through some of these earlier, I didn't agree with a lot of the picks, but again, I'm a singular person. I don't know how the Allure team actually dukes this out because I would be fighting for my life on some of these. But best skin tint went to It Cosmetics Do It All Sheer Tint Face Balm. No brainer. Speaker 1 (7:17) We both Speaker 3 (7:17) love this. It's a great product. We know it's fabulous. Jones Road won best foundation stick. And I got to say, I had Melissa Herkman come over to my house and help me go through all of my foundations and shade match them for me properly. So she provided me with one. That is my natural tone and then