2026 Beauty Haul of Fame! The Year’s Best Performing Foundations, Worth-It K-Beauty & The $10 Drugstore Hair Steal We Both Adore

Carlene Higgins (0:01)

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Welcome to Breaking Beauty, the podcast all about the breakthrough people, products and moments in beauty.

Jill Dunn (0:14)

We're your hosts, Jill Dunn and Carlene Higgins.

Carlene Higgins (0:22)

Welcome back to Breaking Beauty Podcast, everyone. I'm one of your co-hosts, Carlene Higgins, and I'm here with your friend and your other co-host, Jill Dunn.

Jill Dunn (0:31)

Hey, everyone. Hey, Carlene. Hey. How's your summer been?

Carlene Higgins (0:34)

It has been excellent, especially when we're here in New York. I'm so ready to do some shopping.

Jill Dunn (0:39)

Heck yeah.

Well, a little behind the scenes, it was Carlene's birthday week this week, so she's celebrating for a few extra days here in the city. Leo season, so she's going to be the star of the show for this week.

Carlene Higgins (0:52)

Yeah, I'm going to be treating myself and treating myself right.

Jill Dunn (0:56)

I can't wait to get the text. I got this for 80% off. I know.

But if you are new here, welcome. We are two long time magazine beauty editors, turned beauty podcasters. And if you've been around for a while, you probably know that we are more than 450 episodes deep at this point. And we're chatting about the breakthrough people products and moments in beauty. Join us on YouTube, join us on Instagram. And today we are doing a hashtag damn good episode, which is where we sort of put our editor hats on, sort of, we do put our editor hats on to review products in market, what we deem to be hashtag damn good.

Carlene Higgins (1:32)

So we do the damn goods episodes once a month. And every year we do a Hall of Fame episode, which is what we are bringing you today. And the Hall of Fame is a compilation of the very best products from our damn goods that stayed in our rotation.

And some new products that we may have missed throughout the year. So we are so happy to bring you our 2026 Hall of Fame.

Jill Dunn (1:57)

Updates. Updates.

Carlene Higgins (1:58)

You're going to hear about the latest skincare that we deem worthy of the crown, the Hall of Fame crown.

Jill Dunn (2:05)

Yes.

Carlene Higgins (2:06)

We're also going to be talking about makeup and hair.

Jill Dunn (2:09)

Yeah, lots of hot topics to cover also in the mix of it. And of course you can shop every single thing that we talk about on breakingbeautypodcast.com. We'll also link it here below in the YouTube description. So let's dive in Carlene.

Carlene Higgins (2:22)

Yes. Let's start with skincare because we know that's what you really love probably the most out of all the categories. So Jill, what is topping your Hall of Fame list?

Jill Dunn (2:32)

Well, I think you can't talk about 2026 skincare and not talk about K-Beauty.

Carlene Higgins (2:37)

Absolutely.

Jill Dunn (2:37)

We did a whole episode a few months back about Olive Young arriving here in the States. They're going to be within Sephora soon enough, coming in Canada as well in 2026 So K-Beauty is everywhere. It's not going away. One brand that has just exploded, I feel like there's a handful that are just viral machines. Medicube being one, Anua being the other one, Biodance being another one, and they are just launching products that go viral all the time. So one product that I've been really loving and it has gone viral is the Anua Azoleic Acid 10 Hyaluron Redness Soothing Serum that is $23 in the US., which is incredibly affordable and 31 in Canada.

Carlene Higgins (3:21)

We've got it here.

Jill Dunn (3:22)

I'm sure that most of you have seen it online. And so the whole point with Azoleic Acid, as we know as beauty editors, we've been told by dermatologists, Azoleic Acid is really great for soothing, reducing redness. And this has made it onto my top shelf. I have emptied one of these already. I really love how non-sticky it is, how it really does calm everything down.

And it's just been a go-to ever since I tried it.

Carlene Higgins (3:48)

I also feel like Azoleic Acid is the ingredient of 2026 We were kind of saying earlier in the year it was PDRN. But the ingredient that all the cosmetic chemists and everyone is talking about is Azoleic Acid. It's basically gone viral. The reason that it's in the news is because there's a creator who is Irish.

And did a post and basically said that Azoleic Acid in its raw ingredient form is a powder, kind of like zinc, like a white powder where it's always going to have that quality to it, which is why it typically is in a cream. And so the point that they were making was if it's in a clear formula, there's some kind of marketing trickery going on because you cannot have the amount of azelaic acid that they're claiming is in the formula in a clear serum.