Before every launch had a waitlist and every product had a viral moment, there were these. The makeup products that earned their place in makeup bags the old-fashioned way, by being so good that nobody ever found anything better.
Do you remember the first time someone pressed a lipstick into your hand and said, simply, try this? Or the blush your mother wore to every event you attended as a child, the one that made her look like herself but better? Makeup has a particular way of lodging in the memory, a specific compact, a distinctive smell, the click of a particular case. These are the products that have been making those memories for decades. Some of them lived in your mother’s makeup bag before they ever lived in yours. Some were borrowed and never given back. Some were the first grown-up beauty product you ever owned. All of them are still being made, still being bought, and still without question, delivering.
The Complexion Classics
Since 1992
In 1992, Terry de Gunzburg, then Creative Director of YSL Beauté was sitting backstage on a photo shoot when she perfected the formula that would change the complexion category forever. At a time when makeup was almost entirely about coverage, she introduced a radical alternative: light. Not more concealer, not more foundation, but a targeted, radiance-giving pen that made tired skin look awake and alive. The little gold click-click-click became one of the most recognisable sounds in beauty. More than thirty years later at its peak it was selling every six seconds. It comes in twelve shades. It is still, without question, the most elegant solution to looking exhausted that the beauty industry has ever produced. Nothing has replaced it because nothing can.
Since 1996
Laura Mercier Tinted Moisturiser
Laura Mercier launched her brand in 1996 with a single founding belief: that what makes you unique makes you beautiful, and that makeup should enhance rather than mask. Her Tinted Moisturiser SPF 20, sheer, dewy, buildable was among the very first products she created and remains the one most associated with her name. It practically invented the skin tint category that every brand is now scrambling to own. The formula has been updated over the decades, most recently with an expanded shade range, but the philosophy behind it, your skin, but more luminous, more even, more alive has never changed. Session makeup artists have kept it in their kits since the beginning. So have the women who discovered it in their twenties and never looked for anything else.
The Lip Icons
Since 1971
Clinique Honey Almost Lipstick
Black Honey has been around since 1971, which means it predates the concept of no-makeup makeup by about thirty years. The Almost Lipstick format is deceptively simple: a sheer, buildable wash of colour that reads differently on every person who wears it, flattering every skin tone by working with the natural pigment of your lips rather than overriding it. It sat quietly in Clinique’s line for decades, worn by women who knew it was the best thing in their bag and told nobody. Then it went viral on TikTok, sold out globally, and an entirely new generation had the same reaction everyone before them had: why has nobody told me about this? Seven sell every minute worldwide. The original version of a truly great idea is always the best one.
Since 1999
There are hundreds of red lipsticks in the world. There is only one Ruby Woo. Launched by MAC in 1999 in their iconic matte retro finish, it is the definitive red lip, the benchmark against which every other red is tested and usually found wanting. Intensely pigmented, fully matte, it lasts in a way most reds simply do not. It has been worn by every significant face in music, film and fashion. It is MAC’s all-time best-selling shade. Every few years a new red lipstick is declared the one to replace it. It never is. New generations discover Ruby Woo every year and have the same reaction: this is it. This is the one. Which is, of course, exactly what was said about it in 1999.
Since 2001
Dior Addict Lip Glow did something quietly revolutionary when it launched in 2001: it made lips look better without making them look made up. The colour-reviver technology reads the pH and natural pigment of your lips and enhances them, every shade looks slightly different on every person who wears it, always flattering, never obvious. It has been reformulated and expanded over the years, now coming in over forty shades, but the core concept has never changed. It is the balm that does not look like a balm, the lipstick that does not look like a lipstick. The product you reach for when you want to look like yourself on a very good day. On a counter full of high drama, it is the one that whispers and wins.
“Makeup has a particular way of lodging in the memory. These are the products that have been making those memories for decades — and show absolutely no sign of stopping.”
The Cheek & Glow Heroes
Since 1999
François Nars launched Orgasm Blush in 1999 with a name no beauty editor could ignore and a formula that needed no help from the name at all. The peachy-pink with golden shimmer is universally flattering in a way that most blushes are not: it works on every skin tone, reads as natural on everyone, and adds a warmth and luminosity that mimics genuinely good skin rather than applied colour. It has been the best-selling blush at Sephora for most of the past twenty-five years. It has never had a celebrity ambassador. It has never needed a rebrand. It has never needed anything, in fact, except to keep being itself. In 2024 NARS reformulated the entire blush range with improved longevity and refillable packaging, a sensible update to a product that was already, in every meaningful sense, perfect.
Since 2001
The Shimmer Brick arrived in 2001 and immediately became one of those products that session makeup artists adopted quietly and absolutely. Five bands of complementary shimmer shades, pressed together in a single compact, swept across the face with a brush, blended at the edges, effortless, it delivers warmth, dimension and the kind of luminosity that looks lit-from-within rather than glitter-applied-on-top. Bobbi Brown built her entire brand on the philosophy that women should look like themselves, only more beautiful. The Shimmer Brick is that philosophy in compact form. It has never gone on trend. It has never gone off trend. It simply delivers, every time, on every face.
The Mascara Icon
Since 1971
The pink and green tube is one of the most recognisable objects in the history of beauty and also, still, one of the best mascaras ever made. Launched in 1971 with packaging inspired by Lilly Pulitzer prints and a water-based formula that was genuinely radical at the time, Great Lash did something simple and lasting: it made lashes look great without drama or effort. It has won the Allure Readers’ Choice Award twenty consecutive times. A tube sells every 1.2 seconds worldwide. For a great many women it was their first mascara. For an equally great number, it remains their last. There are products that you grow out of and products you grow into. Great Lash is the rare thing that manages to be both.
The Stain That Started It All
Since 1976
The origin story is almost too good to be true, and every word of it is accurate. In 1976, sisters Jane and Jean Ford, who owned a small beauty boutique in San Francisco called The Face Place were approached by an exotic dancer who needed something to tint her nipples for performances. They made her a rose-petal stain in a cork-stoppered bottle with a hand-drawn label. The dancer shared it with colleagues. Word spread. And a brand was born. Benetint remains the original cheek and lip stain, water-thin, buildable, kiss-proof, long-lasting and impossible to genuinely replicate despite decades of attempts. One sells every two minutes in 47 countries. It is the kind of product whose story always gets retold because it is the kind of story that deserves to be.
The Nail Colour That Changed Everything
Since 1994
Chanel Le Vernis in Rouge Noir
Created backstage at Chanel’s A/W 1994 show in Paris, when makeup artist Heidi Morawetz mixed black and red to produce a shade that had never quite existed before. Deep, dark, burgundy-black, unlike anything the nail polish category had seen. Then Uma Thurman wore it in Pulp Fiction and Chanel sold out globally overnight. Called Vamp in the US and Rouge Noir in the UK, it remains the shade that every professional manicurist lists as the one they replace most often in their kit. Session nail artist Jenni Draper, whose clients include Dame Helen Mirren and Anya Taylor-Joy, says it is referenced on every shoot because it is a classic that suits everyone. Nearly thirty years later, you can still go on a waiting list for it. That is not a trend. That is a legend.
