Brand of the Year
If these past two years have taught us anything, it's that sometimes less is more. We're booked and busy, we're living, learning, eating, working, and sleeping within the same four walls — and our priorities have changed. If there's one beauty brand that lives and breathes minimalism, it's Merit. Yet, this well-edited curation of products is anything but boring. In fact, Merit is the complete opposite. Everything is housed in luxury packaging, the formulas are all clean, and the products pack a serious pigment payoff, especially in the case of our favorites from the brand: The Minimalist Perfecting Complexion Foundation and Concealer Stick ($38), Brow 1980 Volumizing Eyebrow Pomade Gel ($24), and Shade Slick Tinted Lip Oil ($24).
We're not the only ones embracing Merit's refreshing, pared-down aesthetic. The brand boasts celebrity fans like Nicole Richie and Mandy Moore, but what's even more impressive is the consumer response. Before it even launched its debut products in January of this year, Merit built up a following of more than 10K on Instagram. (It now has more than 111K, BTW.) Postlaunch, Merit has sold one product every 17 seconds on its direct-to-consumer website. If Merit's rapid success is any indication of an industry shift toward a less-is-more approach, we're so here for it.
Merit
Beauty Collaboration of the Year
ColourPop x Lizzie McGuire
ColourPop is no stranger to a buzzy collab. In the past year alone, it's
launched collections with Hocus Pocus, Animal Crossing, Star Wars: The Mandalorian, and The Nightmare Before Christmas (to name a few) — but none resonated with our '90s-kid nostalgia quite as much as ColourPop x Lizzie McGuire. While the Lizzie McGuire reboot is officially off the table (*cartoon Lizzie stomping in anger*), we can ride our Gordo-Lizzie ship into the sunset with this makeup collection full of everything you need to cosplay your early-aughts self.
We're talking Bubblegum Pop Lippie Scrub ($9), Dear Diary So Juicy Lip Glosses ($18 for the set), and, of course, the 2000s staple that is body glitter thanks to Get a Grip! Glitter Gel ($10). BRB while we place an order for all eight products in the collection. Once they arrive, we know exactly where to store them: in our Caboodle right next to our scrunchies and crimper.
Beauty Changemaker of the Year
Sharon Chuter
It only takes one breakthrough idea to make your mark on an industry. As for Sharon Chuter, her impact on the beauty industry (and culture as a whole, if we're being honest) is so vast, we've lost count. She entered the scene as the founder of Uoma Beauty, a brand devoted to inclusion and diversity, but it was the launch of her #PullUpOrShutUp movement last summer that elevated Chuter to beauty-icon status. The viral hashtag encouraged brands to publicly disclose the number of Black employees (or lack thereof) in leadership roles following George Floyd's killing. It has since evolved into an organization called Pull Up For Change. But Chuter wasn't done.
Her next big move came this past February, when in honor of Black History Month, Chuter unveiled Make It Black. The goal: shift public perception of the color black. In visuals, black often has a negative connotation — dictionary definitions of the word even include descriptors like evil and wicked. To move the narrative, Chuter partnered with popular beauty brands to release their products in reimagined black packaging to show that black can be both luxurious and beautiful. She even created a petition on Change.org encouraging dictionaries to update their definitions of the word.
Campaign of the Year
Billie’s Fairy Tales Reimagined
If you’ve ever seen a brand’s attempt at a pride campaign and rolled your eyes, we can relate. Billie’s campaign for this year’s Pride Month, on the other hand, left us with huge smiles (and a lot more screenshots on our camera rolls). The razor company reimagined three classic fairy tales and made them much less exclusionary. Each Princess Reimagined story (Rapunzel, Snow White, and Cinderella) featured characters of different backgrounds, gender identities, and body types, all of whom, most importantly, weren’t dependent on men to save them.
For example, unlike the classic Rapunzel, in which the princess with long hair escapes imprisonment with the help of a thief named Flynn, Billie’s Rapunzel, illustrated by artist Sofie Birkin, is a curvy, queer woman of color who, instead of rocking a long head of hair, has a buzz cut and long armpit hair. And unlike her outdated counterpart, Rapunzel 2.0 is not actually locked in a tower. She lives in a penthouse apartment . . . that she owns. Plus, throughout June, the brand donated one percent of its revenue to The Trevor Project, which provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ+ youth.
Beauty Trend of the Year
The Wolf Cut
Like nearly every beauty trend of the past year, the wolf cut catapulted into popularity thanks to a few viral TikToks — and is a nod to decades past. No, the wolf cut has nothing to do with Jacob's flowing, glossy hair in The Twilight Saga: New Moon; it actually has more in common with a couple other iconic hairstyles, more specifically, the shag and the mullet. The wolf cut lives somewhere between the two.
It has all the cool, edgy layers we love in a shag with the length and volume of
a modern mullet. Combined, you get a new, lived-in style with tons of fun movement. Pro tip: Chop some traditional bangs (or even a set of curtain bangs), which complement the cut to a T.
Retailer of the Year
Thirteen Lune
The brainchild of Nyakio Grieco (of Nyakio Beauty fame) and Patrick Herning (a cofounder of the size-inclusive retailer 11 Honoré), Thirteen Lune has created a new landscape for inclusivity in beauty. The ecommerce platform launched at the end of 2020 with 13 beauty brands all created by Black and brown founders, a segment of the industry hit especially hard by the pandemic. One year later, the retailer has expanded to more than 100 brands, but it still abides by its 90/10 rule.
This means 90 percent of the brands carried will always be created by Black and brown founders who make products for people of all colors. As for the remaining 10 percent, that's dedicated to ally brands committed to inclusivity and diversity not only within their own companies, but within the beauty industry as a whole. Plus, thanks to a recent $3 million funding round led by Fearless Fund (a venture capital firm led by and created for women of color), Thirteen Lune can continue on its mission to create generational wealth in the Black and brown community.
Beauty Innovation of the Year
Ephemeral Tattoos
If you've ever been warned to "give it a good think" or that "tattoos are forever" when tossing around the idea of getting some ink, now you can have the last laugh. Introducing Ephemeral Tattoo, a new studio that specializes in innovative, semipermanent, made-to-fade tattoos. Yes, you read that right. This ink was designed by chemical engineers to purposefully fade after nine to 15 months (depending on the individual).
At the risk of sounding like your high school chem teacher, we'll just say Ephemeral Tattoo ink is created using pigment designed to be broken down by your body naturally, unlike permanent tattoos with ink clumps too large to be removed. The two have a few things in common, however, including the trained tattoo artist drawing your design at a brick-and-mortar studio (Ephemeral has a location in New York and Los Angeles) and that you must be 18 years old, even for the semipermanent one.
Gadget of the Year
Droplette
Fact: Your skin is designed to act like a barrier and keep things out, which is ideal when battling grime, toxins, infection, you name it. But it's also for this very reason that skin-care products are so tricky to formulate. The large molecules in some skin-care products can have a hard time even getting through to where they are most needed and most effective, which is where Droplette comes in.
Its motto: smaller is better. Droplette Micro-Infuser ($299) uses Droplette technology to turn ingredient capsules into tiny, fast-moving droplets (almost like a fine mist) that break through your skin's barrier. Meaning, this technology helps proven ingredients like collagen, retinol, and glycolic acid reach 20 times deeper than traditional skin-care products and get to work faster.
Image Source: Getty / Gregg DeGuire
Image Source: Getty / Claudio Lavenia