About Allure

Learn more about Allure's policies, annual awards, Best of Beauty testing and submission guidelines, and our editorial team.

Who We Are

Hello! Welcome to Allure.

We are thrilled you want to learn more about our team and what we do here. We strive to bring honest, innovative, and inspiring content to readers, whether via our website, social channels, or through the Beauty Box subscription service. At Allure, we believe that makeup and hair are significant art forms, that “anti-aging” is a terrible idea, and that everyone’s beauty deserves to be included and celebrated.

Our rigorous reporting and fact-checking, highly anticipated annual Best of Beauty Awards, and a commitment to creative exploration have made Allure the leading publication in beauty journalism for over 30 years.

Editorial Standards & Methodology

Why Trust Us

Whether we’re sharing dispatches from South Korea on the next big injectable trend or doing a deep dive into a buzzy new ingredient in skin-care products, our editorial team maintains meticulous research and reporting standards.

Allure strives to bring you up-to-the-minute news and information, but we also believe in looking before jumping. This means we verify all information before passing it along to our readers and followers. We work with only the leading experts in dermatology, plastic surgery, psychology, and other branches of medicine, as well as the industry’s top beauty professionals, to ensure that anything and everything you read in Allure is accurate, reliable, and based firmly in science and expertise.

And when those experts disagree? We keep digging until we find a consensus and the strongest guidance possible.

Product Reviews & Testing

Testing each and every product that is featured on Allure (and debating, re-testing, and fact-checking…) is what has made us the most trusted name in beauty—and why our little red seal has become synonymous with the best of the best.

We value the faith readers put in our coverage and opinions. We also respect how hard you work for the money you spend, and would never recommend a product that we did not try, test, and truly love, whether it’s a $15 face moisturizer or a $150 limited-edition fragrance.

To jump to our Best of Beauty Awards guidelines, click here.

Affiliate Disclaimer

Every product you see recommended on Allure has been independently tested and hand-picked by a member of our editorial team—there’s nothing we tell you to buy that we would not purchase and use ourselves. When you click on an Allure link to purchase a product, we may earn an affiliate commission, which helps us keep the lights on.

The Allure Best of Beauty Awards

Since 1996, Allure’s Best of Beauty Awards seal—a.k.a. that little red circle that instantly tells you a product is definitely worth it—has been granted to only the best, brightest, and most innovative products on the beauty market.

Curious to learn more about how we test the products that ultimately win our prestigious award? Here’s everything you need to know about Allure's Best of Beauty Awards, including how to submit your own brand’s products for consideration next year.

See our full 2025 Best of Beauty award-winners list to discover the most recent batch of prestigious products that earned a spot in Allure’s Best of Beauty history books.

Best of Beauty Awards 2025 Submission Guidelines

Submissions for the 2025 Best of Beauty Awards are currently closed. Please check back in the fall after this year's winners are announced!

How Best of Beauty Award Testing Works

Our testing process is intensive, research-based, and multilevel. In addition to the many beauty experts across our editorial team, we work closely with cosmetic chemists, makeup artists, dermatologists, hairstylists, and manicurists to compile a full-picture review of any given product.

To read a more detailed description of our extensive testing process, click here.

Clean Beauty Seal

Introduced in 2019, the Allure Clean Best of Beauty seal is awarded to the top products that meet our rigorous performance standards—and our very specific clean standard (because we all know the word “clean” can be pretty murky when applied to beauty products). To learn about the ingredients excluded from clean products, guidelines, how we test, and how to submit, you can read more on Allure’s Clean Best of Beauty seal here.

Allure’s Sustainability Pledge

When it comes to sustainability and ethics, Allure is committed to helping the beauty industry be the very best it can be. Transparency and clarity are essential to that mission. So, in 2021, Allure made a detailed commitment to readers that we would avoid terms we believe can mislead consumers.

For instance, we no longer refer to plastic packaging as “recyclable,” as only 9% of all plastics ever made have been turned into something useful (!), nor do we refer to products as “biodegradable” unless we are being extremely specific about what that means in regard to a specific item’s impact on the environment. We’ll never, ever use the term “Earth-friendly,” because no product can avoid impacting the Earth unless it is nonexistent. And we will only use the word “green” to describe something that is literally verdant in color.

Read our entire sustainability pledge here.

How to Subscribe to the Allure Beauty Box

Are you in perpetual pursuit to try the latest and greatest products? Subscribe to the famed Allure Beauty Box, the number-one editor-curated beauty subscription service on the market, featuring limited-edition themed boxes and collaborations throughout the year. Learn more and see how to subscribe to the Allure Beauty Box right here.

Accolades & Recognition

2020: Nominee, Best Social: Fashion & Beauty, Webby Awards

2020: "To All the Fragrances I’ve Loved Before" by Sable Yong | Finalist, The Fragrance Foundation Awards (2020)

2020: "How to Smell Good Everywhere, Always" edited by Brennan Kilbane | Finalist, The Fragrance Foundation Awards (2020)

2020: "Scents of Strength" by Liana Schaffner | Finalist, The Fragrance Foundation Awards

2017: Magazine of the Year, AdWeek

2017: Editor of the Year, AdWeek

2022: The Melanin Edit, Allergen and Allure | Winner, MM&M Awards in the Diversity and Inclusion/Social Causes Campaign category

2024: “26 Women Get Real About Freezing Their Eggs” and “‘I Felt Misled’: Are Women Getting the Full Truth About Egg Freezing?” by Paige Stables, with three examples of social media, “Egg Freezing Success Rates,” “Egg Freezing by Numbers,” and “Five Women Break the Ice on What It Was Really Like to Freeze Their Eggs” | Finalist, ASME National Magazine Awards for Service Journalism

Masthead: Meet the Allure Editorial Team

The Allure staff currently includes a team of 18 full-time writers and editors, who have each spent their career covering beauty and wellness, along with a robust roster of freelance reporters. Among us, we have more than 160 years experience in the field of beauty journalism. In addition to written storytelling, our art, photo, video, and social media teams help bring Allure's reporting on the beauty industry to its full, multimedia potential. To read each team member’s full bio, click on their photo.