Fall Cozy Challenge: Tag a holy-grail self-care product that you're thankful for!

[TeamBIC]

Autumn is approaching! We’re getting cozy in the Beauty Insider Community, and what better way to channel the spirit of the season than with a beauty challenge? For the next few months, we’re calling on you to respond to weekly beauty-related prompts inspired by ✨fall✨. We’re doubling down on self-care and autumnal glam right in time for colder weather and spooky season, and we hope you’ll join us for the fun!

Check out our weekly prompts below:

• Week 1 (9/1 - 9/7): Tag your fave fall lip product (plus any selfies or swatches!) 💋
• Week 2 (9/8 - 9/14): Share a fragrance that gives you cozy vibes 🍂
• Week 3 (9/15 -9/21): Shout-out your go-to self-care masks 🧖🏼
• Week 4 (9/22 - 9/28): List your bath & body routine for colder months 🛁
• Week 5 (9/29 - 10/5): Post a photo of a fall-inspired eye look 👀
• Week 6 (10/6 – 10/12): Tag your current hair care routine 💇🏾
• Week 7 (10/13 – 10/19): Name a seasonal home scent you’ve been loving 🕯️
• Week 8 (10/20 – 10/26): Show us your amazing autumn-inspired nail designs 💅
• Week 9 (10/27 – 11/2): Happy Halloween! Name a beauty product or trend you were scared to try but ended up loving 🎃
• Week 10: (11/3 – 11/9): Tag your skincare routine of the season 💆
• Week 11 (11/10 – 11/16): Name a hair tool you would use to get glam during the holidays 🔥
• Week 12 (11/17 – 11/23): Tag a holy-grail self-care product that you’re thankful for 🦃

Hit the "Reply" button below and use the "#" symbol to tag a standout product in your self-care routine. The Beauty Insider Community can't wait to hear your recommendation!

[GeorginaBT]

Luxe vibes are always in season @Westcoasty. 😉 Great choice! 

[Kim888]

I quite love the Tory Burch Nuit Azure perfume for fall - it just has such a warm comforting scent !! 

 

I also love pumpkin home fragrance!!! Not sweet ones though, like the more spice ones !! NEST New York Pumpkin Chai Candle ! 

[haleyvvvv]

I also really like Nuit Azur, @Kim888!! 

[pocketvenus]

Like @WinglessOne , I am a huge fan of Anubis, although my favourite from the house is Salome. Bengal Rouge by this house is also very cozy, pretty traditional and French. With its lemon cream and vanilla paired with shaded in with labdanum and a touch of animalism, it gives off Guerlain Shalimar Eau de Parfum vibes.

Other autumn favourites

• For gourmands, Etat Libre's Like This is a cheeky pumpkin spice without strictly being a gourmand. Has a fuzzy quality. If you like cardamom cafe vibes, KILIAN Paris Intoxicated is lovely and smooth. I also would recommend Jazmin Sarai's Otis & Me. TOM FORD Tobacco Vanille Eau de Parfum Fragrance is also pretty classic.
• For a light smoke, Kerosene's Broken Theories is a spicy smoky scent that's pleasantly rough around the edges. Right now, also enjoying Libertine Fragrance's Burrow which is sweeter and thicker, think mazafati dates, booze and a smoldering vetiver.
• For next level smokes, Hiram Green's Hyde is pretty bracing birch tar scent. Beaufort London's Vi et Armis is also excellent, spicy-smoky in a peaty way. The opening is harsh, you just need to ride it out because the dry down is fantastic. And for a full-bore spicy smoky incense, nothing beats Amouage's legendary Interlude Man.
• Autumn is a great time for harder leathers. Mona di Orio's Cuir and Cire Trudon's Revolution are both pretty good bets. For a darker, smoother ride, Etat Libre's Attaquer le Soleil is a lovely labdanum. 
• For spicy scents, CdG's original fragrance, Comme des Garcons, is really great this time of year, the richness of the cloves and other warm spices over labdanum comes out well.
• You can break out the heavier ouds as the weather cools. Some of my favourites are Kilian's Musk Oud, which is a romantic rose-oud that's not complicated, just smells sooo good and the discontinued Oud Extreme which is an inky black, austere oud. Areej le Dore's Russian Oud for a rich chocolatey oud. Mona di Orio's utterly fantastic Oudh Osmanthus is like a cozy cashmere sweater of an oud. And while I wouldn't call it cozy, I have to mention Amouage's Opus VII for a sharper, cool and shadowy take.

[eshoe]

@pocketvenus your reads are always super helpful. You give me hints about scents that I didn’t know I needed👍🏼

[pocketvenus]

@eshoe Aw, thank you! Anytime you'd like recommendations, just tag me 💖

[eshoe]

I will take you up on that, @pocketvenus 🙌🏼💗

[WinglessOne]

Hmm, fragrance is another category I don't restrict by season. Well, except for certain fragrances that evoke a holiday or specific seasonal event. I suppose smoky leathery incense could be a fall fragrance... smoky scents remind me sometimes of fireplaces lit in late fall, bonfires at cider mills with a warm cider donut in one hand and a mug of hot cider or hot cocoa in the other, or burning leaves. When I was a little kid in suburban Michigan, one of my neighbors regularly burned fallen leaves each autumn and it's still one of my favorite scents. 

If I'm gonna talk about smoky leathery incense, I gotta talk about Papillon Anubis. It's the king of this fragrance category, as far as I'm concerned. I wear Anubis throughout the year. I've even worn it to bed several times as a sleep aid: warm, dark, mysterious, even a bit mystic, with jasmine woven into the comfy blanket of this fragrance. It's a comforting hug to me. It can be overpowering if you get trigger happy with it: this is a funky animalistic jasmine that will knock people back if overused. I went through 3 samples of Anubis before buying a full size bottle, and now it's forever a rebuy. Few fragrances are more perfectly named than this one. 

For a fragrance Sephora carries: KILIAN Paris Black Phantom - "Memento Mori" 1.7 oz/ 50 mL Eau de Parfum Spray is still one of my faves to pair with a super smoky scent like Le Labo Patchouli 24. On its own, Black Phantom smells like sweetened coffee blended with toasted nuts and served in a charred—perhaps still smoking—rum barrel. I wear it on one arm and Patchouli 24 on the other arm. Patchouli 24 smells straight up like a bbq smoke pit, so it lends a sturdy backbone to Black Phantom. I love the combo. 

[eshoe]

Not sure I could wear a scent that reminds me of bbq to bed, @WinglessOne. I might be too hungry to fall asleep.

[WinglessOne]

@eshoe  Oh, I don't wear Pachouli 24 to bed (or Black Phantom, for that matter). I love smoky fragrances, but Pachouli 24's not the right kind of smoke for bedtime. 😂 

[eshoe]

Totally lol’d @WinglessOne 

[SportyGirly125]

I wish they would bring this back Bath and Body Works Vanilla Mocha Cafe. I also get cozy vibes from Maison Margiela 'REPLICA' Coffee Break Eau de Toilette Travel Spray 0.34 oz/ 10 mL Eau de Toilette Spray 

[eshoe]

Coffee Break is one of my favorite cooler weather scents @SportyGirly125. @faeriegirl helped me fall in love with that one😉

[WinglessOne]

Sneaking in a few more "fall colors" of lipstick... I was cleaning up my Apple photo album and found a few more throwback lip swatches for this thread. But I'll post just one of them. 

This is Bite Amuse Bouche Kale with Bite Lip Pencil 052. [ EDIT: wait, the liner might be MAKE UP FOR EVER Artist Color Pencil Brow, Eye & Lip Liner 300 Absolute Emerald instead. I always use one or the other with Kale. ] Kale is one of my favorite shades ever, but also a chronic bleeder. Luckily, 052 is a near-perfect shade match that helps control the bleed. If Bite ever brings back the Amuse Bouche line, I hope Kale (or something similar) is in the shade lineup. Sure, I can custom-blend this blackened teal at home with MAC, Inglot, and/or Danessa Myricks pigments—but that doesn't help me when I'm on the go and want to touch up my lip color. Sigh... 

April 2019: Bite Amuse Bouche in Kale, with Bite Lip Pencil 052 as a perimeter liner.

And here's a whole bunch of hand/arm swatches I've posted in various BIC threads. I'm sure teals are more winter than fall to some (okay, many) people, but to me they're year-round like all other shades. 💙💚 

Spoiler

Swatches of 5 matte black lipsticks. One is clearly deeper in the void than the others. 😄Top to bottom: Fenty Mattemoiselle in Turks & Caicos, ColourPop Lux in Getty, MUFE Artist Rouge in C603, Gucci Rouge a Levres in Valentine Verdante, Guerlain Rouge G in 111.ColourPop Good Fortune Lux Liquid Lip Trio (Lunar New Year 2020).MAC Liptensity Double Fudge, NARS Audacious Deborah, PMG LuxeTrance She’s So Deep, & 3 ColourPop Lux (bullet) reds.A few black lipsticks. Squid Ink is a blue so dark, it’s almost black.1-6 are PMG; 7, 8, & 12 are ColourPop Lux bullets; 9 is NYX Suede Matte; 10 is NARS Audacious; 11 is MAC Liptensity.3 PMG MatteTrances and 2 other reference shades.

Thanks to this exercise, I'm surprised by how many swatches I've posted for people in the last 3 years! 🤣 I'd tidy up my BIC photo album if I could move all those swatch photos into a "Swatches" album without breaking the existing photo URLs in threads. 

[haleyvvvv]

What a fabulous lippie, @WinglessOne!! 💄 Great look!! 💙 And so many swatches!!

[heavyhedon]

@WinglessOne -- you read my mind! I was also thinking of greens & teals and navy-- back in my misspent youth, people brought out their navy coats, skirts and blouses in autumn, as well as their tan, brown, grey or rusty colored suede clothes-- those colors still mean Fall to me. 

 Love all the swatches! Some of those black-ish lippies have been on my radar for a while. We're so lucky to have all the choices now instead of having to buy an extra liner pencil just for our for lips, like in the 80s. 

[WinglessOne]

Thanks @heavyhedon ! Heh, a couple years ago (in The Before Times) one of my building's front desk workers and I chatted with a younger tenant in the lobby, and we told her how the only reliable way to get black lipstick in the 80s was to use black eyeliner. It was a true multipurpose beauty product: eyeliner, cream eyeshadow, lipstick, brow pencil, beauty mark maker (for folks who were into that), and temporary face tattoo. I can't even imagine how many black eyeliner pencils I used that decade. I don't remember when Wet'n'Wild released a black lipstick, but I was thrilled to find it in a drugstore one day. 🤣 

[heavyhedon]

 Fall was made for pulling out the black lipstick! One I have is Elf Lipstick in Black Out; one I'd love to try is KVD Beauty Everlasting Liquid Lipstick Witches 

[haleyvvvv]

Love this lippie look on you, @heavyhedon!! 🖤

[FullCoverageBB]

@heavyhedon , absolutely gorgeous on you. Black lipstick is hard, but you rock it like a champ!!!

[mishanyc]

My favorite fall lip product is the lip color I wore on my wedding day. MAC Plumful is a beautiful cool toned pinky plum that wears so well. I usually prefer warm terracotta/rust shades but this gorgeous one has my heart.