Makeup App: The first rule of Makeup Alley is you do not talk about Makeup, and I broke that rule, disastrously. It lurked on Makeup Alley, the premier website for beauty addicts to review and discuss products, for the better part of a decade, starting when I was an acne-smattered high school student with stretch marks on my stomach. Makeup, it seemed, held the key to my becoming a more beautiful person, if I was willing to pony up for the products users raved about.
It found some small miracles as a result of cross-referencing the site during every beauty run I made — Mario Badescu Drying Lotion really does treat zits the way celebrities say it does, Band-Aid Blister Block is a genius chafing solution on brutal summer days. That’s part of the mad genius of Makeup Alley: No matter how much stuff you have, you’ll keep coming back to the site to learn about the latest and greatest so you can buy even more.
Despite the evolution of the beauty industry, Makeup Alley continues to hum along as it always did thanks to an intensely close-knit group of users. Even if you’re not a Makeup Alley poster or lurker, you’re likely still a part of its far-flung network: Makeup Alley’s SEO is so crazy-good that its review pages are often among the top results when you Google beauty products. Go ahead, try it.
Hara Glick and Elky Mart founded Makeup Alley as a place to host product reviews and beauty forums in February 1999.
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Also read: Beauty Tools That Are a Necessity Part 2
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