Meet the very best makeup of 2018 as we kick off the Coveteur Choice Awards—a recurring series in which we ask the coolest, chicest people we know to judge the top products on the market. For our debut, we tapped influential beauty entrepreneurs, editors, and makeup artists to test beautiful new cosmetics from the past year and name their favorites. See the menus above to meet our judges and the winning products. Below, see our process.
First, we laid out everything—every shadow, lipstick, foundation, etc.—that launched in 2018 on one long table and narrowed down our absolute favorites over months. We compared, we gossiped, we texted across time zones, we took handwritten notes—and came up with our top 30 across 10 makeup categories.
We have visited the homes, closets, and offices of the best beauty experts and artists in the world—some of whom have garnered major followings on social media. For our judge’s panel, we picked six pros who know luxury beauty inside and out, but who can also spot a great bargain when they try one. (Check out their bios in the menu above.)
This is when our offices turned into a beauty lover’s fantasy of Santa’s workshop. We set up an assembly line to create customized super luxe boxes filled with the top 30 picks (and one really cute Coveteur sweatshirt). These hauls went with judges to Paris, London, Seattle, L.A., and even the Berkshire Mountains to test their limits so the judges could tell us what they really think.
After almost two weeks the responses we got back were thorough: Pictures of makeup in use on the streets of Paris, Instagram stories with field notes, and more than 200 data points with all the details we could ask for. Our judges told us how the makeup felt, how it looked, how it wore throughout the day, and, of course, which ones were the *true* winners. Now we’re ready to share it all with you!
