Top Shelf: The Best Beauty Drops of September
Welcome to Top Shelf, Highsnobiety's monthly guide to the best new beauty products worth trying — and displaying in your bathroom.
Ah, September — sweet relief from the oppressive heat Mother Earth subjected us to this summer. With the shift in temperature comes a shift in my product rotation: I'm swapping powders for creams, fresh fragrances for sweet scents, and doubling up on moisture.
Luckily, brands have offered no shortage of winter-ready products. From iota's skin-nourishing shower gels to Aeir's Impossible Burger of fragrance, the month was packed with noteworthy beauty launches.
Let's get into it.
Gisou - Honey Infused Hair Perfume
As a fragrance enthusiast, it's pretty unacceptable that I'd never tried hair perfume before Gisou — known for its honey-powered haircare — allowed me to preview their scented spray. If you use fragrance-free shampoo (like David Mallett's perhaps?), Gisou's mist will wrap your strands, not your sensitive scalp, in floral, fruity, musky deliciousness.
Tatcha - Hinoki Body Oil
I don't use body oil religiously, but applying Tatcha's silky salve is the ultimate stress-reliever after a particularly packed day. On the odd occasion I shower at night (morning bathers, unite), I apply the ultra-moisturizing oil over my body lotion. Goes great with your favorite podcast.
Milk Makeup - Future Fluid Cream Concealer
Milk's latest offering puts the full in full coverage: blendable, moisturizing but not greasy, and packaged in a travel-friendly tube, Future Fluid checks all my boxes.
Perfumehead - Cosmic Cowboy
Daniel Patrick Giles of Perfumehead, the fragrance brand bottling pop culture, drew from Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge, Madonna's "Don’t Tell Me," and the Marlboro Man while dreaming up Cosmic Cowb0y, a rich, heady scent perfect for winter. From afar, the fragrance is sweet, almost fruity — but up close, it transforms into a smoky, incense-y cocktail. Cozy up.
iota - Supervitamin Body Wash
As I mentioned above, I'm a morning shower-er. The invigorating scent of iota's Supervitamin Body Wash in Mandarin Rind + Cedar Atlas wakes me up faster than a cup of green tea. Plus, the non-stripping formula doesn't dry out my skin.
Aeir - Virgin Olive
The founders of Aeir, another newly launched fragrance brand, have created the Impossible Burger of scent by eschewing natural extraction in favor of synthetics. Of the brand's four inaugural fragrances, Virgin Olive — an herbaceous, bitter concoction with a juniper-adjacent finish — is my favorite.
