Allure, the first and only magazine devoted to beauty, is an insider's guide to a woman's total image. Allure investigates and celebrates beauty and fashion with objectivity and candor, and places appearance in a larger cultural context.
Ready to deal with undereye bags? We’ve got a product for that. Want to fill skimpy brows? Yeah, got that one, too. In fact, we’ve got hundreds of editors’ favorite beauty products—all Best of Beauty winners—that’ll make your makeup routine faster, your hair glossier, your skin brighter, and your mental state healthier. Swear. Head to allure.com on your phone or tablet and click on the Allure Beauty Assistant tab. Answer a few questions about your beauty goals and gripes, and we’ll find the perfect masks, moisturizers, and lipstick shades just for you. You can shop them all without leaving the site—or, like, bed.…
The pandemonium that is backstage at a fashion show is always punctuated by a beacon of calm: the woman in black (from headband to sensible shoes) who is somehow making the most stunning women in the world look more spectacular. The transformation might happen with a mask made out of hundreds of handplaced sequins (as in Givenchy’s spring 2014 show, above) or maybe it’s just a few dabs of perfectly placed concealer (looking at you, Calvin Klein Collection fall 2010). No matter her tool, the woman in black is a magician. Pat McGrath has worked with our cover star Kim Kardashian West as well as Gisele Bündchen, Naomi Campbell, and every major designer and photographer on the planet. Give or take. To say she is in demand is like saying…
Most of us have family albums; Kim Kardashian West has magazine covers. And OK, there aren’t any embarrassing braces pictures in her retrospective, but there were some awkward moments along the way. “I was so nervous,” says Kardashian West of her 2012 Allure cover. “Like, oh, my God, I hardly have any makeup on. This is so not my comfort zone.” It was nothing compared to shooting for W in 2010: “I was so upset when that came out. Even though I’d done Playboy, I was crying about this,” says Kardashian West. “I thought, I’m naked for my first fashion shoot? But it’s one of my favorite covers now.” Fast-forward to 2014, and her Vogue cover hid a beautiful secret: “I was pregnant here with my son,” she says. “We…
Let’s Talk About Those Eyes The world’s most famous makeup artist took out her brushes, studied the world’s most famous face—and it’s a miracle our set didn’t implode. What did happen: Pat McGrath began blending a smoky eye that was 90 percent elegance and 10 percent seduction. To get the same ratio, draw the shape in pencil first, then buff the color up and out with powder. Watch what happens when Kardashian West answers our burning questions— while getting a foot massage— at allure.com/kim.…
I recently spent the afternoon at designer Jason Wu’s apartment, where he showed me his beautiful new fragrance a few months before its release. He explained that the bottle design, the notes of jasmine and fig, everything was connected to a memory in his life— the entire project was deeply personal. We often talk about how emotional a scent can be: Smelling Chanel No. 5 brings me back to spraying it for the first time in my mother’s bedroom (for the record, she never wore it…someone had given her the bottle, and it sat on display on her dresser for years). Similarly, one sharp whiff of perm solution transports me straight back to my middleschool mall-perm days (check out the throwback image above). I had a similar time-travel experience during…
When I was still in school, I followed all of the trends. I wore messy eyeliner and SPF 80 when I listened to Nirvana. I stopped wearing eyeliner completely when I discovered Annie Lennox and Sinéad O’Connor. And you can imagine all the makeup I wore in my Madonna, Bowie, and Blondie phase. I had dress-up parties, scoured thrift shops, and experimented with hair colors. Plus, my mum was and is a megababe, and she taught me to be expressive through fashion and art and makeup. She raised me in an environment where everyone was embraced for their quirks and idiosyncrasies. She taught me to have a sense of self and identity. I never felt like I fit into the social constructs of gender. When I was 16 and graduated…
