This post is going up a little later than I expected (I was out of town for the holidays for an extra week, and then I got sick), but I’m back in Philly and back on my bullshit, so here it is now: my roundup of the best beauty products I bought in 2024!

I usually start my roundup posts with a survey of the beauty trends of the previous year, but I didn’t follow trends very closely in 2024. One trend that did stand out to me, though, was seasonal color analysis, which seemed to be everywhere online (and showed up in my real life, too). As opposed to the ethos of the mid-2010s, which mandated warm browns and oranges for absolutely everyone, the vibe of the mid-2020s seems to be finding what works for you and sticking to it. In that spirit, I missed most of the social-media-based microtrends (“boomer nails”?), and I’m fine with that. I’m old and tired and Trump just got reelected and I’m finishing my novel, give me a break.

I didn’t buy quite as many products in 2024 as I did in past years, partly because I was unemployed and partly, I think, because my seasonal color analysis in early August narrowed the field of color makeup for me. I haven’t sworn off every color outside my True Winter subseason, but being sure of my best colors has helped me become pickier with the makeup I buy. As I progress through my thirties, I find myself wanting to look good more often than I want to look edgy or avant-garde. I used to buy unflattering or uncanny colors as a challenge to myself, as if making them work for me would prove that I really was skilled at makeup, or that I really was attractive, or something—and then I’d gravitate toward my purples and berries and cool reds anyway, so what was the point? Yes, orange lipstick exists, and yes, it does suit a lot of people, but that doesn’t mean I have to own it.

A few general observations about my top dozen products of 2024:

-Just one brand, Maybelline, is represented more than once in the list. Drugstore brands continue to punch above their weight!

-More than half of the items are lip products, because that’s just the kind of girl I am and the kind of blog this is, sorry.

-My lukewarmness toward eye makeup persists. I bought only one powder eyeshadow (MAC Vex) last year and only two in 2023, and the last eyeshadow palette I bought was the Canmake Silky Soufflé Eyes quad in Pink Topaz, back in the summer of 2022. There just isn’t much energy around powder shadows these days, and creams and liquids are so much more convenient—but they also expire more quickly, so I’m trying not to buy too many of those, either.

-I bought a lot of nail polishes last year, and though only one made it into the top twelve, several others were strong contenders. Honestly, the reason they were relegated to the honorable mentions was that I liked them all pretty much equally and didn’t want fifty percent of my list to be nail polish. I suppose I could have made a top-fifteen or top-twenty list, but I like keeping the length consistent from year to year.

-Three of the products on my list have a blue shimmer or glitter or sheen. Maybe that was another trend for 2024—or maybe I’ll always have a soft spot for the uncanny. I did grow up in San Francisco, after all.

Let’s begin! As always, I’ve listed the products in chronological order of purchase, not in order of preference.

1. NYX Fat Oil Lip Drip in That’s Chic (review)

It’s a gloss, not an oil, but never mind that: it’s more moisturizing than most of my lip balms, it’s pretty long-lasting for a gloss, and it has an attractive squishy finish. I’ve even come to love the strong berry scent. I bought two other Lip Drips this year—Missed Call, a pinkish red, and Status Update, a nutmeg brown—but I still reach for That’s Chic most often. As you can see, I’ll need a replacement soon!

2. Glossier Cloud Paint in Spark

Another year, another Cloud Paint on my favorites list. Spark is a bright neutral red that fits into an array of looks and makes a good mixer for other Cloud Paints. For instance, I was excited about the new Black Cherry shade until I realized that it was a warm brick red, not the purplish red of a real cherry. But a clever Reddit commenter gave me the idea of mixing Spark and Eve, and that combination was much closer to what I’d hoped Black Cherry would be:

3. Maybelline Lash Discovery Waterproof Mascara

Speaking of Glossier, I’m perpetually on the lookout for mascara formulas that resemble Lash Slick but don’t cost $20. I just want something that subtly tints and lengthens my lashes, damn it! Why is that so hard to find? And why, whenever I find something similar, does it get discontinued within a year? I’m now on my second tube of Maybelline Lash Discovery, which means that I should probably order five more tubes before Maybelline pulls the product from the shelves.

Here’s a comparison of my bare lashes (on your right) and my lashes with Lash Discovery. This photo makes me wonder, not for the first time, if I should invest in an eyelash curler.

4. ILNP Flower Child

Despite being a faithful lurker on r/RedditLaqueristas (“the C was sold to pay for polish”), the subreddit for indie and niche nail polishes, I don’t often fall in love with the shades that go viral there. Those shades tend to be maximalist, incorporating duochromes and holo explosions and metallic flakes and thermal shifts in a single bottle, and they can look a little, well, tacky. Flower Child is a perfect example of that kind of polish: a sheer pink jelly base packed with holo sparkles and finished with an unearthly blue glow.

And yet! I couldn’t get enough of it this year—and as a collector of ’80s sweaters, I don’t exactly have the right to reject anything as tacky, do I? And Flower Child lasted several days on my nails without chipping, which is unusual for me.

5. Trader Joe’s Vanilla Lip Mask

This $6 lip mask is supposedly a dupe for the Laneige Lip Sleeping Mask, which costs an astounding $24 at Sephora. I’ve never tried the Laneige version, but I can confirm that the Trader Joe’s beauty department, unlike the Phillies in the 2024 postseason (I’m not over it), has hit yet another home run. The first time I used the lip mask, a stubborn dry patch that had plagued me for weeks was almost entirely gone by the morning. I now wear the mask every night, and though it can’t work miracles on really chapped lips—this is the first day in over a week that the temperature has risen above freezing—it never fails to improve them at least a little. I’m also a fan of the vanilla fragrance, which isn’t harsh, artificial, or overwhelming.

6. Essie Cosmic Chrome

Yes, basic-bitch glazed-donut nails are so 2022, but we had to wait a couple of years for a drugstore brand to replicate the chrome look in conventional lacquer. No, it’s not as eye-catching as chrome powder, but for those of us who can’t be bothered going to a salon or experimenting with powder at home, it’ll do. My favorite pairing for Cosmic Chrome is Cirque Rose Jelly (below), but I’m looking forward to trying it over some other jellies this year; it doesn’t show up as well over opaque polishes, unfortunately.

7. Sephora Collection About That Shine Sheer Shine Lipstick in Galactic Plum

Sephora’s house brand expanded its lip offerings dramatically in 2024, adding new lines of satin, matte, and sheer lipsticks. The Sheer Shine Lipsticks are clearly modeled on Glossier Ultralip (note the millennial-pink tube), but I find the Sephora formula to be lighter and more moisturizing than Ultralip, and I love the subtle rose scent (similar to the YSL lipstick scent, but fainter).

Needless to say, I was drawn to the weirdest Sheer Shine shade: Galactic Plum, a deep, slightly muted purple with specks of bright blue glitter. On my lips, though, Galactic Plum looks fairly conventional; the glitter shows up now and then, but serves mostly to pull the color a little cooler. This is a good representation of how Galactic Plum looks in indirect natural light:

8. Tower 28 JuiceBalm Tinted Lip Balm in Drink

After our color analysis session in August, my friend Lena and I went shopping in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, where I bought two lipsticks. This is a berry red that functions as a True Winter “MLBB”: it looks natural on me but isn’t brownish or warm-toned. The “tinted balm” moniker is misleading: this formula, though sheer, is pigmented enough to look nearly opaque after a couple of coats. It looks and feels to me like a lighter, less slippery version of the Revlon Glass Shine formula. It also works beautifully as a blush, more so than most of the lipstick-blush hybrids actually advertised as such. Drink has become my go-to interview lipstick, and if I ever find myself in a professional setting again, it will doubtless be my go-to work lipstick, too. (Given the current state of the job market, that feels like a pretty big if, but we continue to hope.)

9. Kryolan Lip Color Pearl in LCP629

The second lipstick I bought on my San Francisco shopping trip with Lena was this sheer magenta with blue frost, one of many shades at the Kryolan store on Union Street:

Having always associated Kryolan with stage makeup in palettes and squeeze tubes, I hadn’t realized that they made ready-to-wear products for non-MUAs, which was a nice surprise. However, you can tell that LCP629 comes from a brand that caters to professionals: there’s the no-nonsense shade name, the no-frills packaging, the distinctive formula (light and sheer but waxy, not slippery), and the sci-fi glow of the blue frost. I was wearing ILNP Flower Child that day, and Lena pointed out that LCP629 was its lipstick equivalent! It may be a decidedly offbeat shade, but I wore it surprisingly often last year. It makes me feel like a Y2K fairy (a Winx Club character, maybe?).

10. Maybelline Super Stay Vinyl Ink in Wicked

This long(ish)wear glossy lipstick was a birthday gift from my mother, who is not on social media, doesn’t read my blog, and last heard about seasonal color analysis in 1985, but still managed to choose the truest of True Winter reds from the Maybelline shelf at Target. I don’t adore the formula, which stays tacky for hours and comes off on cups and glasses, but the vivid berry red, coupled with the shiny finish, is flattering enough that I can overlook everything else. (I wore Wicked on Election Day, but I don’t hold that against it, either.)

11. MAC MACximal Sleek Satin Lipstick in Guessing Game (review)

I reviewed this lipstick at length in November, and nothing has changed in two months except that I’ve worn it a lot more. I still wish the longevity were a little better, but I appreciate that the formula doesn’t stain or dry out my lips, and I applaud MAC for executing one of the better lipstick reformulations in recent years.

12. About-Face Fractal Glitter Eye Paint in Refract

Finally, my annual pre-holiday sparkly purchase! I bought two of these liquid glitter shadows in 2024, but I’ve worn Refract, a light, slightly tarnished silver, more often than Tin Pan Alley, a light gold with a green shift. Having placed one of About-Face’s liquid matte shadows on my best-of-2022 list, I can confirm that the glitter formula is almost as good. Refract works both alone and as a topper, and it has remarkably little fallout for a glitter-bomb shadow, though removing it can be a pain. I wouldn’t call it subtle, exactly, but the particles are fine enough that you can dab it on lightly for a more understated “wet” look, as I’ve done here (photo taken in artificial light):

Honorable Mentions: About-Face Fractal Glitter Eye Paint in Tin Pan Alley; Cirque Colors Berry Jelly; Essie Flirty Flutters (the toned-down version of Flower Child); ILNP Good Fortune, Grapevine, and Sabrina; MAC MACximal Silky Matte Lipstick in Everybody’s Heroine (review coming soon, I promise!); NYX Fat Oil Lip Drip in Missed Call; Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Fire Peach and Porto Please; Zoya Inez. Here’s Inez (which would have made the top twelve if it hadn’t chipped so quickly) by the Atlantic Ocean on the first day of 2025:

And that’s a wrap for 2024! Thank you for reading my posts last year, and here’s hoping for a safe and happy 2025 for all of us. What were your favorite beauty purchases of 2024?