This hell year has felt like five, but as we speed toward its demise, we’d like to get a little sentimental and thank some of the beauty products we got to hang out with during these Unprecedented Times.
After racking our brains to remember what we actually tried over the past 353 days, we found that 16 memorable products stood out among the rest. From a stone made of lotion to a fun face-zapping tool, here are the items that earned glowing reviews, became our go-to recommendations, and managed to help us feel a little better in 2020.
If you like your skin-care products to be uplifting multitaskers that smell good and feel good, this toner is for you. It’s gently exfoliating yet hydrating at the same time. It keeps breakouts at bay, has a bouncy texture, and smells refreshing yet energizing in a not too overly watermelon-y kind of way. It’s viscous enough that you can just slap into your skin with your bare hands. After you do, you look considerably glow-ier and feel considerably better, and for me, a good mood was a hot commodity this year. —Erica Smith, beauty writer
I ditched most makeup this year, but I’ll fill in my brows when I want to feel something again. A lot of brow pencils have the right shape and size, or the perfect formula consistency, but the darker shades often look too gray or too crayon-brown once on. I keep coming back to this pencil because its shades look believable from the get-go, without requiring a lot of blending out or brow gelling afterward. The skinny precision tip makes it easy to get believable hair-like strokes, the pigment glides on without scraping your skin, and once it’s on, it doesn’t budge for the rest of the day. —E.S.