ELLE’s 2022 Future of Beauty Awards
What makes a beauty product “great” in 2022? For the beauty team at ELLE, the secret sauce to a Future of Beauty-worthy launch goes something like this: a breakthrough formula, never-before-seen level of inclusivity, and advancements in results. We gazed into our crystal (makeup) ball—reviewing hundreds of submissions—and selected the most exciting launches in the market right now to bring you this year’s Future of Beauty winners. Check them out—and shop them!—below.
Facialist Shani Darden incorporates LED when she’s treating clients like Jessica Alba and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Now, the benefits can be replicated on your couch with Shani Darden by Déesse’s PRO LED Light Mask, which has triple the number of lights as its direct competitors and is the strongest on the consumer market.
Customers using the Theragun massage tool on their faces and necks (to ease tense foreheads and jaws) is the origin story behind the TheraFace Pro, which has three face-safe percussive attachments plus cleansing, LED light, and microcurrent rings to lift, cleanse, and much, much more.
Japanese brand Decorté started researching liposomes (tiny vesicles that help kick-start the delivery of active ingredients to the skin) in 1984, later bringing to market the Moisture Liposome Serum in 1992. This year, the brand revised that technology for the first time in 30 years, releasing the Liposome Advanced Repair Serum, a gel formula made with ceramides that hydrates via time-release over 24 hours.
Board-certified dermatologist and reconstructive skin cancer surgeon Antony Nakhla’s work with more than 10,000 skin cancer patients inspired Eighth Day’s Reparative Moisturizer. The PRP blend inside the thick cream also has proven skin-beneficial ingredients like resveratrol, CoQ10, and vitamins C and E to plump skin immediately but also deliver long-term hydration.
The inaugural product by beauty industry veteran and e-retailer Thirteen Lune founder Nyakio Grieco took on one of the products women of color find the most challenging: mineral sunscreen. On top of being a truly universal mineral sunscreen formula (the secret for getting such a high SPF rating in boosters), it’s also your morning moisturizer, serum, and primer.
Soho House used its discerning clientele (which is of a certain age) as test dummies when it came to creating its skincare line. The results include the 24/7 Treatment, which works whether you get a full eight hours of restful sleep or a not-so-great four post-dance club. The overnight mask uses lactic acid and fermented ingredients to smooth with ATP—yes, the energy inside of cells—to help the skin function better.
Having a stiff upper lip isn’t what you want when it comes to fillers. RHA Redensity smooths severe lines around the mouth with a breakthrough level of flexibility.
Your body heat triggers YSL Beauty’s The Bold High Pigment Lipstick to create an ultra-vibrant effect. It subtly separates into two layers, invisible to the naked eye: Pigment remains on the bottom, while the oil rises to the top—and your lips become bold and glossy, just like that.
You may not have an identical twin to walk the Gucci runway with, but there’s probably somebody out there with similar coloring and skin type. Hue Twins, a collaboration between Hue and Credo Beauty, maintains a database of over 1,300 real people, so you can see what your beauty doppelgänger is buying from brands like Exa Beauty and more.
Diversity in beauty doesn’t just mean releasing a line of 50-plus foundations; it’s also about welcoming consumers where they are in their journey. In 2018, actor Selma Blair announced that she’d been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and this year joined Guide Beauty, helping to launch the Easy on the Eyes Brush Collection. The thoughtfully designed vegan makeup brushes are geared toward those with different levels of hand control. Each has a shorter, ergonomic handle that can be held in several ways.
While we would never—like, ever—suggest you take your makeup bag out into the desert, OTM gives you that option. All three of the bags are lined in a heat-resistant shield that’ll keep your lipsticks, vitamin C serum, and all other precious top-shelf routine items safe from high temperatures, no matter where you’re going.
At Tracee Ellis Ross’ Pattern Beauty, the team noticed the need for products to support processed hair that’s phasing back to its natural texture, because breakage can happen as a strand goes from straight to coiled. The Transition Mask strengthens hair during this delicate time with white tea and manuka honey.
In 2018, Dyson debuted the Airwrap Styler, a combo hot tool and the first to harness the Coanda effect in a hair-curling device—using the law of physics to manipulate hair. It sold out almost immediately, and at one point had a 113,000-person waiting list. The version released this year, the Airwrap Multi-Styler, has enhanced that same technology, so the Airwrap can switch directions midstyle, as well as work on more hair types.
Forget the notion that shampoo needs to be stripping. This shampoo puts its patented molecule (named the K18Peptide, which reconnects the bonds that are broken in a strand of hair every time you dye, style, or every aggressively brush) back into hair so that each cleanse is a step toward shinier, healthier hair.
If your crunchy curls of the ’90s swore you of foam mousse forever—it’s time to give it another try. Queer Eye and Getting Curious‘s Jonathan Van Ness formulated their version of volumizing foam with hydrating hemi-squalane, so you’re getting lift and shine without hair feeling stiff.
This lightweight treatment caters to the little-addressed F layer, a three-nanometer area between the cells of the cuticle that must be hydrated for hair to look shiny. This leave-in, which should be used post-wash, has fruit extracts, the BLEU molecule (which will give you bond-building benefits), coconut fruit water, and sunflower seed oil.
Founder Babba Rivera was inspired by the important role that gel plays in Latinx community’s hair routine when it came to formulating her own version. But this one has an oil (we know, an oil and a gel seem like they wouldn’t mix) from the pequi, a Brazillian fruit, for a flake-free medium hold that adds shine to all hair types.
The industry continues to merge wellness and self-care with innovative new ingredients. The Nue Co. expanded its collection of functional fragrances with Water Therapy; a single spritz swaddles the wearer in a blend that evokes a day at the beach (and the serenity that comes along with it).