K-Beauty's '2nd wave' has infiltrated my top shelf

& other faves from the start-of-year beauty boom

It is very common for beauty brands, particularly those at Sephora to launch new products on December 26. The thinking, I’ve been told, is that there is a rush to purchase new launches with gift cards acquired the day before. I’m Jewish, so, I wouldn’t know. But, as we all know, the week between Christmas and New Year’s exists outside the normal parameters of time itself, so many of these launches are not fully discovered (or covered) til the new year — when a host of other new ones come along.

All that said, after over a decade working in the beauty industry and trying more new launches than any remote-worker’s apartment should reasonably, house, this has been, at least in part, a year of rediscovering old favorites.