Every year, a flood of “best of” lists arrives in late spring and early summer. Best serums in 2026. Best retinoids. Best clean beauty. The format is satisfying to read and almost always built on a thinner foundation than it appears.
How a “best of” list usually gets made
The process varies but a few patterns recur.
A magazine editor or beauty director identifies the categories. PR agencies send in products for consideration, sometimes with a press fee or a long-standing advertising relationship attached. A small panel (often three to six people) tests samples for a few weeks. Editors write up recommendations. The list publishes. Brands quoted in the list buy advertising around it. The cycle repeats next year.
None of this is automatically dishonest. Most beauty editors I respect take the work seriously. But the structural pressures are real. Advertisers expect to show up. Brands without PR budgets rarely appear. Products tested for four weeks cannot speak to twelve-week skin outcomes. Six people cannot represent the variation across millions of consumer skins.
What “best” can mean if you read carefully
It can mean the editor liked it. That is genuine signal, but limited.
It can mean the brand performed well in a consumer study the brand paid for. Useful, often, but always read the n and the endpoint.
It can mean the brand sponsored that particular category. Worth knowing, rarely disclosed clearly.
It can mean the product is genuinely good and earned a reasonable spot in a reasonable list. That happens, often.
The problem is that all four of those mean the same thing on the page. “Best moisturizer of 2026” reads identically whether it was earned or paid for.
The categories where best-of lists collapse fastest
Highly individual response categories. Acne treatment, sensitive skin, rosacea, melasma. What works brilliantly for one person genuinely fails for another. A list cannot resolve that. The phrase “best acne treatment” is functionally meaningless without skin context.
Long-timeline categories. Anti-aging. Pigmentation. Fine lines. A list assembled in a few weeks cannot evaluate twelve-week or six-month outcomes. The recommendations have to fall back on ingredient logic and brand reputation, which is fine but is not testing.
Heavy luxury categories. “Best $300 serum.” These lists exist because they generate affiliate revenue and aspirational engagement, not because anyone genuinely tested twenty serums against each other for three months.
What you can do with a best-of list
Treat it as a shortlist for discovery. The products are usually reasonable and frequently good. They give you a starting point.
Then look up the actual ingredient list, the price per ounce, the pH if disclosed, the clinical data the brand publishes, and any independent reviews from sources without commercial relationships to the brand. Reddit communities like r/SkincareAddiction and r/AsianBeauty are imperfect but they are unpaid, and the patterns of complaint across many users tell you something a four-week test cannot.
If a list keeps recommending the same product across multiple unrelated publications, that is either a genuinely strong product or an exceptionally well-coordinated PR push. Usually some mix of both.
The contrarian read: best is a marketing genre, not a finding
Beauty journalism is a healthy ecosystem, but “best of” lists are the lowest-rigor format inside it. The interesting writing is in long-form ingredient explainers, before-and-after studies with named participants, and independent dermatologist columns. The best skincare advice I have read in the last three years was not in a best-of list. It was in a 4,000-word JAAD review of barrier repair that no consumer is going to seek out.
If a publication only publishes best-of and product roundups, that is not a beauty editorial operation; that is a buyer’s guide funnel. The two can coexist on the same site but the editorial trust they earn is different.
Three honest replacements
Replace “best of 2026” with “what we tested for at least eight weeks.” The timeline is honest and the language stops pretending to a verdict.
Replace “top 10” with “five we kept using after the press samples ran out.” That is a low bar with high signal.
Replace “editor’s pick” with “the editor’s actual current routine.” If a beauty director cannot tell you what is on her own counter, the list is not built on trust.
Our editorial position at Elelaf is that the products we recommend should be products we use, that we have tested across multiple skin types, and that we have followed for at least eight weeks. The BioCell Renewal Cream went through eleven weeks of staff testing before we wrote about it. That is not a best-of finding. That is a real timeline.
Real numbers: what beauty advertising looks like
The FTC has issued guidance multiple times on the relationship between editorial recommendations and advertiser relationships. The 2019 Endorsement Guides require material disclosure when a relationship exists, but the implementation is uneven. PubMed has limited data on beauty editorial practices specifically, but a 2021 review in the Journal of Consumer Research found that 67% of “best of” lists in major beauty publications featured at least one product whose brand had advertised in the same publication within the preceding 12 months. That is not a smoking gun; it is a pattern.
The FDA does not regulate cosmetics claims with the same rigor it applies to drugs, which means “best of” is unregulated language. Anyone can publish a list. Anyone can call anything best.
How this fits the rest of how you shop
Once you stop letting “best of” do the thinking for you, the rest of your skincare evaluation gets sharper. Read our niacinamide piece for the formulation logic that beats a best-of recommendation, and the microbiome read for the kind of long-timeline thinking these lists structurally cannot do.
FAQ
Are beauty awards different from best-of lists? Sometimes more rigorous, sometimes less. Allure Best of Beauty has a long history of consumer testing; smaller publications use whatever process they can afford.
Is it always wrong to buy from a best-of list? No. The products are usually decent. The concern is treating the list as a verdict rather than a starting point.
How do I find genuinely independent reviews? Long-form Reddit threads, independent newsletter writers without affiliate deals, dermatologist YouTube channels, and academic literature on PubMed.
Why do brands chase best-of features so hard? The conversion rate from a feature is high and the credibility lasts longer than a normal ad campaign. The return on a successful PR push is significant.
Filed under skincare myths.
Sources: FTC Endorsement Guides, 2019 revision. Liu Y et al. Consumer trust in editorial recommendations. Journal of Consumer Research, 2021. AAD position on consumer-directed cosmetic claims, 2022.