The Truth Behind Allure’s Best of Beauty Awards With Jessica Cruel

Gloss Angeles

In this episode of Gloss Angeles, Allure Editor-in-Chief Jessica Cruel shares behind-the-scenes insights into the 30-year history of the Bes

Key takeaways

• The Best of Beauty Awards involve a year-long evaluation process with thousands of products tested by a dedicated team.
• Winning is not influenced by paid placement; the selection is based on independent, journalistic scrutiny.

Main topics

• Behind-the-scenes judging process
• 30-year history of Best of Beauty Awards

Notable quotes

"It's a sacrifice. It is. I know. I don't you know, it's fun... but it could go wrong."

Conclusion

The Best of Beauty Awards remain a trusted, rigorous benchmark in beau

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) G-L-A-M, Los Angeles. Speaker 2 (0:05) Hi, Kirby. Hi, Sarah. Welcome to Los Angeles. Speaker 3 (0:14) Every year, Allure's Best of Beauty Awards cut through an increasingly crowded and increasingly confusing beauty market to identify the products that are actually worth our attention. But what does it take to earn that little red seal? And how do you narrow down thousands of submissions without losing your mind or your skin barrier? Today, we're joined by Allure Editor-in-Chief Jessica Krul to look back at three decades of beauty history, take us behind the scenes of how the winners are chosen, and unpack what this year's list reveals about where the industry is headed. Jess Krul in the house. Hi, hi. Welcome. Crazy Speaker 1 (0:47) week for you. Yes. Fashion week, best of beauty week, and the U.S. Open, which is where I was last night. I know. Jealous. The play was not what we wanted. No, it wasn't. But it was a good day out. Oh, my gosh. A historic day. Did you see Trinity? I didn't see Trinity. I was looking for her. Well, she came late. I Speaker 2 (1:07) love Speaker 1 (1:07) her. Well, maybe that's what happened. Yeah, because she had to Speaker 2 (1:09) play. You need Speaker 1 (1:10) the support of a good woman. Yeah, well, Speaker 2 (1:12) no, she has been supporting him throughout. She Speaker 1 (1:15) has. Speaker 2 (1:15) But I think she had to play that day or Speaker 1 (1:17) something. Speaker 2 (1:17) She Speaker 1 (1:17) did, Speaker 2 (1:17) and she like ran in late, right? Yeah, but that was probably it. Speaker 1 (1:20) Yeah, I know. That was probably it. And they were like, he Speaker 2 (1:22) will be back many times. Yes, he's so young. Speaker 1 (1:23) He's only 23. Speaker 2 (1:25) Tiafoe will be back. I love the two of them. All our faves. Speaker 1 (1:28) So we're excited for the American tennis males. Speaker 3 (1:32) Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, Jess, we want to jump right in. We're going to be talking all about best of beauty today, but we want to know what's currently on your face or what are a few products that you are loving and you love to tell people about? Speaker 1 (1:44) You know, it's so funny. People would think this is the easiest question for me. It's actually the hardest, but I'm pretty boring as far as editors go. I use SK-II treatment essence. I'm a big essence girl. And the funny thing about SK-II is I've been literally using it since my baby beauty editor days. When I was an intern at Self Magazine in the beauty closet, I was like, oh, what's this SK-II thing? And I've been using it since then. So almost 20 years. Speaker 2 (2:13) For a reason. Speaker 1 (2:15) Yes, for a reason. It's so good. It's so good. Right now, I have the Estee Lauder Double Wear on, which is the Best of Beauty Award winner. New formula. New formula. Speaker 3 (2:24) Okay. Speaker 1 (2:25) I love to hear that. And then I have the Danessa Myrace Flushed. which I think can't do any wrong. Tanessa is such a sweet human and great friend. And I also have about five red lips that I'm circulating between. I love the Anastasia Beverly Hills liquid lipstick. I'm not the only person still using liquid lipstick. Everybody switched over to gloss and I was like, no, no, no. I still want matte. Speaker 2 (2:55) Yeah. I still want my Speaker 1 (2:57) liquid lipstick. Yes. I love the lip bar. I actually think I'm going to wear the lip bar today. So those are some of the brands that are currently on my face. We love Melissa Butler. Yes. She's so sweet. And Speaker 3 (3:08) I love watching her on social too. She's constantly talking about the state of affairs, business, what's happening. And you know, Speaker 1 (3:15) I love a woman who talks about the money. Yes. Oh, Speaker 2 (3:17) same. I'm like, tell me Speaker 1 (3:19) more. Speaker 2 (3:20) Please, please. Okay, wait. Anything for your hair? Oh, hair. Speaker 1 (3:25) So, I pretty much use sacred top to bottom. Speaker 2 (3:28) Girl! I know! Miss Speaker 1 (3:31) Gina's got in a chokehold. In a chokehold. And, you know, as a journalist, as someone who's been doing this a long time, as someone with, you know, 4B, divorcee hair, I was skeptical. I went to the first event like, mm-hmm. And that's... To be fair, that's how I go into every event. Of Speaker 2 (3:50) course. Everything. I'm like, we'll see. But Speaker 1 (3:53) I love it. Speaker 2 (3:54) That detangling spray. This is a huge endorsement. I tell Speaker 1 (3:57) people that detangling spray is like the second best thing they launched after the sacred drops, which I use. Speaker 3 (4:02) So I'm a diehard scalp scrub girl. Yeah. The applicator being a nozzle and the way. You don't have to dig your hands in anything. Speaker 2 (4:12) It Speaker 3 (4:13) really does clean my scalp in a way that doesn't make my scalp too dry. It doesn't feel too squeaky clean. My actual hair feels amazing afterwards. And it's funny Speaker 1 (4:23) because for years, women with natural hair have been moving their products to nozzles. So if you go to the Sally Beauty, you can get a nozzle. And that's what I used to do. I used to make all my hot oil treatments and I used to put my leave-in in a nozzle. But now, you know, she's like... given it to us way more expensive than the Novels of the Sally Beauty. Speaker 3 (4:42) Oh, 100%. But yeah, you know, I was, I mean, for me, it was my first experience with a scalp scrub in the nozzle format. Because normally I Speaker 2 (4:52) was like, Speaker 3 (4:52) how is this going to work? And it, I mean, they figured it out. Yeah, Speaker 1 (4:54) Taraji P. Henson, the TPH by Taraji also does a good scalp scrub with a nozzle. It has like two nozzles, which is really nice. I need to try it. But yeah. I love Taraji's line. I do. Look, the Twist and Set has won many beauty awards, primarily from my own endorsement. I go around. If you see the winner in the Twist and Kareem category, most likely that's me. Yeah. Speaker 3 (5:20) Like, you know, everybody has their categories. Speaker 1 (5:22) It's me. I chose Speaker 3 (5:23) it. Speaker 1 (5:24) People talk about that brand though. I know. It's Speaker 2 (5:27) so Speaker 1 (5:27) good. I Speaker 2 (5:27) think Speaker 1 (5:27) that it's doing well. Speaker 2 (5:28) You know what I mean? People who know, know. Now Speaker 1 (5:32) that she owns it, I'm really excited to see what she does with it because I know that there's so much more that she wants to do with the brand. And so I'm really excited to see how she comes surging back because I love that twist and set. The cleansing line. My friends really love that line. So we'll see. Okay. All right, Taraji. We're keeping Speaker 3 (5:49) an eye out for you. I did want to ask before we get into best of beauty. Do you have a signature scent? Speaker 1 (5:55) So controversial. I don't really wear scent. Why? It gives me a headache. My entire team knows not to spray the scent in front of me. I do not like strong scents. I love candles, though. I keep a candle in the office, but I don't like strong scents on my body. If I am. Really trying to do something. Like, I'm like. I got to do it big. I'm going to do it big. Impression. I wear Tom Ford, a Ben, only from my navel down. Okay. So Speaker 3 (6:27) you can't do the shoulders, the head area. No, no, Speaker 1 (6:31) no. Speaker 3 (6:31) I Speaker 1 (6:32) do like stomach between the thighs. Okay. And that's it. Okay, girl. Between the thighs. Yes. Because they rub together. Speaker 1 (6:42) Don't make it sexy. Why you make it sexy? It Speaker 2 (6:45) is Speaker 1 (6:45) sexy though. Listen, we know you wrote a book about Speaker 3 (6:47) being single. I'm single. So Speaker 1 (6:48) nothing but Spanx and a little bit of Tom Ford. Speaker 1 (6:55) Sexy for yourself. For myself. Well, I'm going to be spraying some Speaker 3 (7:00) perfume between my legs for a different reason. Speaker 2 (7:02) Okay? Good Speaker 3 (7:03) for Speaker 1 (7:03) you. Speaker 2 (7:04) Thanks, babe. So you mentioned categories. We got to talk about best of beauty is 30. Speaker 1 (7:09) 30 years, yeah. Incredible. Speaker 2 (7:11) 30 years. So we want to give our listeners a sense of the scale of that. Because we get asked all the time. And we even wonder, like, what does that even look like when you are... going through this process, obviously we're friends with a lot of editors at Allure and we hear and we're like, we're not going to bother you right now because we know you're testing so many products. But like, how many products are you testing? How many people are testing? And how many months go into this work? Speaker 1 (7:35) You know, Best of Beauty has really turned into a year-long project. And this year we had 5,300 submissions. So that's a lot of product for us to get through, you know? Speaker 1 (7:48) We start in November. So we try to get some product in before the holiday because we want to make sure that people take that time over the holiday to test. Every week counts when it comes to Best of Beauty. So 5,300 submissions. We have about 100 people testing and we do it over the course of, I would say, six months. Wow. Six to nine. Yeah. That is incredible. Yeah. Speaker 2 (8:13) So, okay, you said 100 people testing. Is that freelancers? Do you guys hire more people to help? So Speaker 1 (8:19) we don't. We do hire people, but they're generally freelancers who help us with the package management. Got it. Because, like, all the spreadsheets, all the mail, all the shipping, right? So we do hire Best of Beauty freelancers. It's funny. A lot of our full-time editors started as Best of Beauty freelancers. Oh, cool. Yeah, there's about four or five of them who are starting as. you know, freelancers during that season. But so we do hire freelancers for that respect. We hire freelancers to write, obviously, with it's a full on task because we have 319 winners this year. So to write captions for 319 products like we can't do that and put the website on every day. So we hire freelancers in that respect. But the hundred people are all there are as a group of experts. Right. Who particularly help with the breakthroughs category in particular. And then the rest are the majority of the rest are Allure team members and then also friends of the brand within the building. So people who maybe formerly worked at Allure or we have people who like work on the talent team, but have tested at Allure for maybe like 15 years. Yeah. And so like sometimes actually the best person to test isn't. Like the classic beauty editor, because one, they have just so much more time and they're looking for something a little bit different. And I think we have to understand that we have so many categories and our job is find the best thing for the reader. And sometimes my team doesn't have that thing. Yeah. Right. We need to make sure that whoever says in the hair color category, like actually colors their hair at home. And it's not an editor who goes to the salon and gets it done. I remember last year when we were talking about best of beauty on the pod, Speaker 3 (9:57) we were looking in. The site was beautiful. It was done so well. Speaker 1 (10:01) Oh my gosh. Ingrid, you just got your shout out. Amber, Ingrid, they love your work. Speaker 3 (10:06) No, it was so stunning. But we saw some of the quotes that were pulled and some of the faces. And it was, I remember one was like a graphic designer. And I thought this is really interesting and makes sense to me because like you said, we're in the thick of it. But also like there are probably some people on the team that don't have that thing that needs to be tested. That's really cool. Speaker 1 (10:26) And I think, you know, one time we had this company come in to the building and there were a lot of scientists and we were touring them around the beauty closet. And they were like, hi, would you like us to come and teach you the more empirical way to test best of beauty? And I said. sorry, but no, thank you. We test it like a reader tests. So if I'm going to make a flub using the mascara because the instructions aren't clear or because the wand is funky, I need to know that because that's how the reader is going to experience it. 100%. So I'm always doing it representing the reader and not like the beauty packaging community or the science community. And so if it's Speaker 2 (11:04) a Speaker 1 (11:04) flop, it's a flop. Speaker 2 (11:05) Totally. Yes. Okay. So you said 300, how many winners this year? 319. 319. And how many categories? Oh, Speaker 1 (11:13) I can't even tell you. Oh, Speaker 2 (11:14) okay. Speaker 1 (11:15) It's so many categories. Obviously we have the basic like hair, skin, tools. I can't, I think it's like 19 top categories. Okay. And then from there you get into like. Got it. The micro. The micro category. Is Speaker 3 (11:31) this the most winners you've had ever? We