Allure’s Best of Beauty Live 2026 Lit Up Lower Manhattan

Mid-October in New York City is often filled with gloomy gray days, and the Financial District—the Big Apple’s steely home for big business, bougie briefcases, and skyscrapers—tends to be a pretty colorless place. But at 11 a.m. on Oct. 18, 2026, in a sleek, subterranean space a stone’s throw from where Succession filmed its exterior shots, Lower Manhattan was dappled with some much-needed color: Specifically, the crimson totes of Allure’s fourth annual Best of Beauty Live.

The better part of the day’s 1,500 or so attendees were greeted with the vibrant carryalls soon after stepping through the venue’s glass doors, and returnees and first-timers alike were eager to start stuffing them with as many winning products as space would allow. (Though as they would soon learn, many more capacious bags were to come.) While the weather was overcast—and the puffer coats and bomber jackets were in moody neutral hues—the day was about to get a whole lot brighter.

Allure editor in chief Jessica Cruel kicked things off with one of the day’s first Insider Sessions, “Complexion Tailoring with Rose and Ben Beauty,” hosted by brand co-founder (and 2026 Allure Readers’ Choice Top Beauty Creator) Rose Siard in the intimate, burgundy-draped Salon space. “It does feel a little strange to be out of my dark room where I normally film,” Siard said with a smile before she began demystifying the ROY G. BIV world of color correction.

Meanwhile, around the corner in the Gallery—the larger of the two educational spaces—the day began with “Meet Your Milky Hydration Match,” where Laneige’s Robby Ramsarran dove into the brand’s hydration-focused offerings. Several of that session’s guests kept their Laneige eye masks on throughout the day like a Best of Beauty Live badge of honor, and toward the end of the event, a young attendee I struck up a conversation with cited the class as among her personal favorites given their kaleidoscopic offerings: “They had a new lip mask where you can swirl the colors,” she noted.

Indeed, K-Beauty’s presence was strongly seen—and felt, in all its glorious textures—throughout the event. Beauty of Joseon’s activation included shade matching for the brand’s Tinted Mineral Dayscreen and giveaways of the Best of Beauty-winning Ginseng Cleansing Oil, while catty-corner at Amazon’s K-Beauty Experience, guests explored trending products and picked up pro tips from experts, including editors from Allure Korea. (The aforementioned young attendee also named this booth’s skin analysis one of her highlights.)

Right beside the K-Beauty Experience stood Amazon’s Beauty Atelier, where makeup artists painted lids with chrome sparkles or soft cat eyes; created smooth, airbrushed bases; or glossed up “shellac” pouts; each look utilizing multiple Best of Beauty winners. Lips and eyes were also adorned at the L’Oreal Paris booth, where guests received touch-ups before hitting the adjacent Allure Red Carpet. There, they took professional snaps and selfies with the squad.

In rooms elegantly concealed by draped beige gauze, attendees received consultations for—and, if they qualified, treatments of—Botox or Juvéderm lip filler, courtesy of SkinSpirit providers. (Many attendees, a brand rep shared, left the event with their first-ever neuromodulator.) Next door, DiamondGlow provided on-site microdermabrasion treatments on the back of guests’ hands. “Bitch!” one attendee exclaimed thrice to a pal filming the treatment, impressed by the change in texture; “Now you have to pay for the other hand,” the friend quipped. At Alle’s claw machine, folks took turns trying their luck at grabbing boxes containing reward codes. In classic claw-machine fashion, success rates varied (a cowbell clang throughout the room anytime someone proved successful), but players were pleased to learn they’d be taking home goodies regardless of how deft they were with the joystick.

While the claw machine was finicky, the claw clips were not: At The Hair Edit’s Booth, strands were wound into sophisticated French twists, pulled into chic chignons, and pinned back with the award-winning Gilded Ellipse Flat Lay Claw Clip. During one appointment, a stylist lit up when a colleague working the Wella station came over to greet her (across the room at his booth, guests learned about the brand’s Ultimate Repair 5-in-1-Leave-In before getting touch-ups). Rizos Curls provided consultations and helped textured girlies (gender-neutral) build their perfect routine while offering product demos that led one wavy-haired guest to exclaim, “I mean, it smells amazing.” As a user of the Heat Protection Multivitamin Leave-In myself: Co-sign.

Also obscured by gauzy dividers—creating a bit of an oasis from the chaos—were the by-appointment stations for Glamnetic and Octavia Morgan Fragrances. At the former, attendees received pro-tips for applying press-ons, leaving with a fresh set on their hands and in their gift bags. At the latter, guests made the brand’s Best of Beauty-winning Vanillin Supreme their own, and in more ways than one: After exploring different layering combinations featuring the award-winning fragrance, they could engrave their own personalized bottle. Fragrance was also the topic of conversation at the Olay and Secret activations, where guests dove deep into the notes that power their personal-care products.

Fresh off a shoot with Madonna (casual), makeup artist Marcelo Gutierrez rolled off a flight and onto the stage at The Salon, where he provided tips and tricks for creating a signature, sultry fall look. At one point in the sesh, as he gave a model smoked-out lids ready for a night out on the town, and when attendees tapped excess product off their own brushes in unison, they created, as Gutierrez said with a laugh, “great ASMR.” The look was sealed with a kiss of the 3D Hydra Lipgloss; at the brand’s beauty counter, guests received complimentary shade-matching to discover their own perfect hue in that very lippie.

During “Set Your Look,” makeup artist Jerry Johnson revealed the makeup-setting techniques of the woman whose name is practically synonymous with translucent powder, Laura Mercier. After perfecting their powder routines (including tips and tricks specific to the under-eye area), Johnson had guests lock everything in with the brand’s setting spray—so any attendees who planned on hitting up the evening festivities could anticipate doing so with their beats intact.

Post-sesh, Johnson snapped a photo with BeautyStat founder Ron Robinson, who was taking in his first-ever Best of Beauty. “It’s been really interesting, how everyone’s really yearning to understand more about the products,” Robinson tells me when I catch him taking in the scene from one of the rest areas later in the day. “How to use them, how to incorporate them into their routine. I just applaud Allure for being able to bring all this together!”

Among Robinson’s favorite activations was EltaMD, where guests received personalized skin consultations with board-certified dermatologist Dustin Portela, DO, as well as makeup touch-ups by pro artists and tips for reapplication. The game-day themed set-up, replete with jersey-clad staffers and a locker containing pom-poms and a football, brought a little AAD Conference energy (IYKYK) to the event floor. At the booth for another derm-beloved brand, La Roche-Posay, guests learned about the dark-spot targeting Mela B3 line, including the Double Dose Discoloration Treatment, before leaving with shiny purple metallic totes. (Capacious bag count: Two.)

Bouncing between sessions and the floor, I had the chance to chat with Justin Parker Ollivierre, La Roche-Posay’s head of engagement and a first-time attendee. He was impressed by the crowd's curiosity and the “quality of the beauty products conversation,” he tells me. “You see people going up, asking what ingredients are in the products, what the latest innovations are. So, it feels [richer] in dialogue than a traditional beauty convention.”

Before “Mastering the Perfect Brow,” Anastasia Soare, the founder of Anastasia Beverly Hills and high priestess of plucking and penciling, made her way around the gallery, greeting guests and encouraging them to ask questions before hitting the stage to share her legendary brow-shaping techniques. (Pro tip: Your brows should be darker on the ends than they are at the front.) In the following session, ColorWow’s head of global education, Giles Robinson, brought high energy—and, by the end of the session, even higher hair. After opening with a demonstration of the brand’s instantly defrizzing Dream Coat Supernatural Spray, Robinson then walked attendees through achieving the ultimate supermodel blowout; by the end of the demo, his model looked ready to stomp down a runway arm-in-arm with Stephanie Seymour and Cindy Crawford.

Back at the Salon, during “Longwear Eye Looks, Two Ways with Wonderskin,” makeup artist Karol Rodriguez demo’d different ways to use the brand’s BoB-winning 1440 Longwear Eyeliner to create eye looks for any makeup style—something anyone can achieve, she emphasized with the warm gusto of your best girlfriend (who also happens to be an impossibly cool pro MUA who has worked with Ice Spice and Ciara Miller). “Makeup artists are no different than regular people; we don’t hold a pencil any differently than you do, we don’t have different eyes than you do. We just really know how to finesse; that’s really what makeup artistry is,” she said. “Knowing your way around formulas, knowing how to fix things, knowing how to finesse.”

Shain Kish, head of artistry for Saie, opened “The Signature SaieGlow” with a storytime: One year he came home from summer camp to find that his mother had replaced all the Britney Spears posters in his room with grizzly bears; so, in turn, he ripped off all the covers of her ‘90s Allure magazine and plastered them over his walls. “So this is really giving full-circle moment,” he said before jumping into a glow-getting base makeup tutorial modeled on Allure content director Sophia Panych.

And of course, it wouldn’t be a Best of Beauty event without, well, Allure—and fans were eager to get their hands on the brand of the hour. A line wound around the circular space for the Allure Beauty Box activation, where guests spun, Wheel of Fortune-style, for a chance to win a free subscription for a year and to score one of the day’s most enviable totes, a cream-colored canvas bag with red accents. (Capacious bag count: Three.) At the Allure Winners: Pick a Card counter, guests tested their luck even further, drawing oversized playing cards to win a number of award-winning products that corresponded to the figure on their card.

As the event wound down, this intrepid girl reporter took a load off on a cushioned black seat by the door. Event staff doled out Allure-emblazoned duffels stuffed with even more Best of Beauty winners (capacious bag number four) as guests poured out into the streets of FiDi, lids freshly spackled with glitter, hair teased, lips lacquered. Best of Beauty live achieved exactly what it set out to, I thought, or at least gave the world exactly what it needs right now: some much-needed joy, and a whole lot more color.

For more on Allure's Best of Beauty Awards:

• Best of Beauty 2026: Breakthroughs Winners
• The Allure Best of Beauty 2027 Submission Guidelines
• Best of Beauty 2026: Skin Winners
• Best of Beauty 2026: Base Winners
• Allure Had a Pizza Party to Celebrate Best of Beauty’s Birthday