Testing, Testing.(personal care products)(Product/service evaluation)

Byline: Alyssa Kolsky Hertzig

For five months, thousands of products flood into allure for Best of Beauty consideration. Here's how we pick the winners.

T he American woman has an average of 4.5 products in her shower. At the height of Best of Beauty testing, allure beauty director Amy Keller Laird had 59. And that was only a fraction of the 2,478 total products we tested this year. When the creams, cleansers, and lipsticks started arriving in February, a team of staffers logged them in, then divided them up into shopping bags for each tester. Before long, our cubicles were piled high with bags upon bags of products...and our managing editor/fire warden was barking about how we'd be trapped if there were a fire. If you saw our shins, you'd notice the bruises we got from tripping over the heaps (sadly, the bags held no remedies). Even turning on our overhead light became a feat (one editor figured out how to poke the switch with a long umbrella). But as the months passed and we slathered our way through the bags, the piles dwindled--and certain creams (and lipsticks and shampoos) rose to the top.

SKIN SAMPLES

During the testing period, our workday started at home in the shower. Each morning we slathered on body scrubs, shower gels, and shaving creams, sometimes even sampling two or more from the same category by trying each on a different limb. And though the results were the most important factor (body lotions had to give us softer skin, cleansers had to take off makeup, and so on), aesthetics were also significant: Everything had to feel great and smell amazing, too. And while there were many treasured finds, there were also plenty of misfires: pore-clogging moisturizers that caused breakouts, bum self-tanners that produced orange skin, and (in one case) an eye reddened after its rendezvous with an exploding tube of pimple cream.

HAIR TACTICS

When you're testing at least one new shampoo, conditioner, and styling product every morning for five months straight, there are bound to be a few bad hair days along the way. For us, they ranged from the fairly innocuous (frizz-smoothing creams that just didn't smooth frizz) to the borderline horrific (the "clear" glaze that turned one blonde editor's hair taupe, forcing an urgent visit to the colorist to remove the offending shade before her date the following night). But we forgot all about the clunkers as we began to unearth the gems: a straightening lotion that halved our blow-drying time, a shampoo that gave us unprecedented shine, and a volumizing spray that made one editor's husband (who hadn't even noticed when she got highlights) ask, "Did you do something to your hair? It looks... good ."