Before the calendar flips and you start going through the ritual of screwing up all the checks you write, comes the urge to sum up, assess, record, reflect on, and of course, rank the previous year. This year would be impossible to sum up glibly, I assumed: 2005 was a pileup of grief, giving the sidewalk apocalyptic preachers more proof that our evil ways have come to bite us, at last, on our mortal asses. Even so, while Shiva the Destroyer danced across ocean, land, and sky, some of us, myself included, had the bad taste to have a good year. I married. I made friends—and what’s rare, they’re good ones I hope to keep for longer than a season or two. And then I wrote a novel, which some people even managed to read all the way through, the poor dears.

So just when I was afraid I’d have to try to sum up this whole maniacal year in a single blog post, who should save me but my dear friend Annie who proposed the best cop-out imaginable: a best-of-beauty list. Now I can handle that.

Now that I’ve turned twenty-nine and said hello to the back end of my twenties, I finally have the knack for unabashed pursuit of my own prettification. I’m no longer embarrassed, no longer apologetic or ironic. I let the pursuit of prettiness make me as happy as it can. And why not? Why not!

So here for the fun of it are my best beauty finds of the year.

MAKEUP

Best Concealer/Highlighter
Yves Saint Laurent Touche Éclat #3 ($36)
The woman at the YSL counter at Barney’s whipped this golden tube out, clicked it like a retractable ballpoint pen a few times to saturate the soft brush with color, then painted it along my browline, under the eyes, around the corners of my nose where it gets a little red, and patted to blend. She showed me a mirror. I looked wide awake, youthful, radiant, flawless. I cannot be without it, and one tube lasted me nearly all year.

Best Foundation for Sensitive Skin in a Hard-to-Match Tone
Aromaleigh Glissade ($16.50) + Coquille Illuminating Corrective Finishing Powder in Nectarine ($7.50 minijar)
You know what I want in a foundation? I want it to make me look perfect all day long, and to feel like I’m wearing nothing at all. Also, I want it to come in shades that match my mixed Asian skin. This stuff, brushed on with Aromaleigh’s Delectable kabuki brush, is what I’ve been waiting for my whole life. I go for added radiance with a touch of peachy shimmer in the form of their Coquille powder. I’ve never gotten more compliments on my skin. Come to think of it, I've never gotten any compliments on my skin until now.

Best Mascara
Yves Saint Laurent Luxurious Mascara in Burgundy ($24)
This is no colored mascara for disco drag queens. The burgundy is barely there, just a hint of color. It thickens, lengthens, and really does make my eyelashes look nearly fake. I’ve tried a lot of mascaras in search of the greatest of them all, and I think I finally found it.

Best Eyeliner
DHC Eyeliner Pencil in Black Brown ($6)
Goes on smoothly, blends easily, stays put, doesn’t irritate. And it’s $6.

Best Red Lip for the Brave
NARS Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Cruella ($22)
A Barney’s makeover artist went at me with this, and all day people kept telling me how great I looked. I wore it to work and my cranky managing editor stared into my mouth and said, “Wow, that color looks great on you.” Not a red lip for the shy, it goes on a bright matte field of complete color saturation. It seems to have a bluish base, but not so much that it veers magenta; it's a neutral, although far from namby pamby. The texture is lightweight, more silicone than wax, and it’s surprisingly nondrying.

Best Lip Gloss
Chanel Cristalle Gloss ($24.50)
I honestly couldn’t tell you what color it is. Stupid label, can’t read it. It’s a sheer pink with a gold gleam, and it stays put. Sure, it’s sticky, and a little drying (needs some lip balm underneath), but it's shiny as all get out and may be the most flattering lipgloss color I have ever encountered.

SKINCARE

Best Anti-Aging Skincare for Paranoid Twenty-somethings
Yves Rocher Pro-Retinol 100% Vegétal Self Defense Day Night Face Eyes ($18/$15.50 refill, $9/$7.75 during Yves Rocher’s frequent 50% off sales)
This year I noticed, to my despair, that no matter how much sleep I got, I looked like I wasn’t getting enough. My skin looked dull, dry, with big pores and fine lines around the eyes. This jar of all-purpose skin cream for twenty-somethings amazed me by fixing all that in a couple of weeks. I’m back to my old (young) skin again. I now believe in skincare.

Best Makeup Remover
DHC Cleansing Oil ($24)
It smells like rosemary and olive oil, it feels luxurious as you massage it gently into your skin, and it rinses completely clean. It’s one of the gentlest and kindest cleansers I’ve ever encountered, and the weirdness of a water soluble oil makes it super cool.

Best Facial Exfoliator
Micro Fiber Facial Mitt ($5.15)
I bought this on a whim in a local drugstore. Best thing that ever happened to my face. Gentler than exfoliators that use walnut husks or apricot kernels, more effective than the useless exfoliators that use soft round microbeads, this washcloth doesn’t irritate, and it seems to remove every last bit of dead, dull skin, leaving your face smooth, clean, and glowing. You just throw it in the laundry once a week to clean it. I swear by it.

Best Soap
Carley’s Clear and Smooth Natural Soap ($20 for 5 soaps + $6 S&H, via seller clearandsmooth on eBay)
Almost all soap makes me itch, or it stings in inconvenient places. Shower gel never makes me feel totally clean. This gentle, moisturizing, thoroughly cleansing soap is a shea butter enriched godsend for the sensitive skinned. I will buy it again and again. Plus, I can use it on my hair.

HAIR

Best Shampoo
Lush Ultimate Shine Solid Shampoo Bar ($6.95)
Leaves my hair squeaky clean without stripping it. There’s no obnoxious bottle to clog a landfill. It also has little glittery sparkles in it, for a little zing in your hair. (Not sci-fi disco crazy, just a little twinkle here and there.)

Best Hair Conditioner
Chidoriya camellia oil ($31)
Do as the geisha do: rub a few drops of this between the palms of your hands, then smooth it through your hair while it’s still damp from your shower. It calms flyaways and lends your hair a silken texture and shine. Great facial moisturizer for flaky dry days too.

Best Styling Stuff for Short Hair
d:fi d:struct pliable molding cream ($9.99)
My hairstylist, Seiko at Hair Kuwayama, always puts this in my short do, transforming it from a sexless bore to a spiky, textural sculpture of mad cowlicks in motion. It’s not greasy, and it holds much better than most styling creams. The fruity tropical smell is delicious.

FRAGRANCE

Best New Fragrance
Bond No. 9 Chinatown
Some people report this as a gourmand. Not me. For me, it’s an austere spicy incense without the creamy ambery-vanilla that underpins most florientals and gives them broad appeal. Instead, I get a gorgeous peach blossom, cardamom, and sandalwood, and it smells, to me, like what heat smells like.

Best Classic Fragrance Find
Coup de Fouet
Caron in general is my best classic fragrance find this year. Donna at the boutique in New York is the best fragrance sales associate in the whole city. She’ll tell you outright if something doesn’t smell right on you. Bless her. Coup de Fouet did smell right on me. Oh so right. A spicy carnation, not as heavyhanded as its parfum incarnation Poivre, Coup de Fouet is wicked, wearable, warm, and doesn’t smell like it’s aged a day.

Best Fragrance I Thought I Didn’t Like But Fell for Like a Ton of Bricks, Without Warning
Iris Poudre
The first time I smelled it on paper, it seemed too girly for me. The second time I smelled it, I put it on, and I noticed it was classically beautiful, but still, not me. Then, out of nowhere, it seems I grew up. I put it on a second time and I felt instantly as if I’d been thrown down on a satin featherdown bed and kissed hard. I was in Love. It’s the femininity of talcum powder, violet scented lipstick, neither sweetly innocent nor overtly sexy, just completely feminine; and as it wears on, through the blurred softness of the powder a clean, bright core emerges, summer woods and flowers, suffused with sunlight. Well. That’s love for you. It makes you a better woman than you were before.

Best Fragrance Deal
Musc Ravageur lotion (55€)
The dictionary definition of sultry, this sweet, spicy, “dirty” vanilla, musky scent works best close to the skin, in the cleavage, at the nape of the neck, in the crook of an arm, along the curve of the hip, where a naughty boy might want to smell a naughty girl. But like all Frederic Malle scents, it’s too damn expensive. Plus, the citrus topnote seems oddly highpitched for something that dips eventually so low. The trick is the lotion: it’s cheaper, it lasts forever and is easy to apply just where you want it, and the topnotes vanish almost instantly, taking you straight to the part that’s good for bad girls.

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For more Best of 2005 lists, please visit these blogs:

• An Alabaster Brow


• Beauty Addict


• Blogdorf Goodman


• Bois de Jasmin


• c'est chic


• Crazy Jay Blue


• The Great She Elephant


• Hrmph


• Koneko's *Mostly* Beauty Diary


• Legerdenez


• Make a Mental Note


• Monkey Posh


• Mother Hen's Place


• my life my words my mind


• no one knows why the wolf laughs


• Now Smell This


• ¡Ombligo!


• Peppermint Patty


• Perfume-Smellin' Things


• Scentzilla!


• She'll be feverish after so much thinking


• Slap of the Day


• Victoria's Own

Note: It might take a while for everyone to post her list, so if you don't see the Best of 2005 image, check back later.