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

Alexa (0:01)

G-L-A-M, Gloss Angeles.

Sara Tan (0:14)

Fresh off the plane from New York City. Kirbie, what were we doing there, and why did we look so fabulous?

Kirbie Johnson (0:22)

We were at a Chanel pop-up in New York. We partnered with Chanel to bring all of our same Julino's 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 our listeners.

Sara Tan (1:11)

I also have to talk about what you were wearing, what I was wearing, because I feel like you need to buy that jumpsuit. It was like made for you.

Kirbie Johnson (1:19)

It was very cute. We went to Janet Mandel here in LA.

If you are looking for something fabulous to wear to an event, Janet Mandel has something for you.

Sara Tan (1:32)

Get over to that showroom.

Kirbie Johnson (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 in Chanel.

Sara Tan (1:41)

In 1995, Chanel, 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 heatwave.

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 Glamdolinos because we do so many events here in LA and see some old friends like Sophie Pavett and Katie Jane Hughes. Nam Vo was there. Jimena, who does brows for Chanel. Just so many fun people. And so thank you, Chanel. That was so fun.

Kirbie Johnson (2:18)

All right, so we just had Jess Cruel 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 gonna go through a few of these categories and give you our live reactions.

Sara Tan (3:04)

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.

Kirbie Johnson (3:23)

Way to go, Linda. You have created something that has a legacy.

Sara Tan (3:27)

What a woman.

Kirbie Johnson (3:28)

All right. So the first category we're going to just take a quick look at is skin.

Sara Tan (3:32)

Look at how many cleansers there are.

Kirbie Johnson (3:35)

Yes.

Sara Tan (3:36)

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, 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.

Kirbie Johnson (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.

Alexa (4:18)

Me too.

Kirbie Johnson (4:18)

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, 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.