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Back when I was first starting out as a beauty editor, shopping for products was a little less overwhelming than it is now. Mind you, this was nearly a decade ago, when we did most of our shopping in actual stores and Instagram was still just a photo sharing app between friends.
I was working as an assistant at a women’s lifestyle magazine then, and we had this reoccurring page that highlighted noteworthy beauty launches each month. To determine which products would make the cut, my boss and I would hold a big pitch meeting with all the top dogs at the magazine (including our editor-in-chief, a self-described beauty minimalist who had the sort of unflappable confidence that made a 20-something-year-old me extremely nervous.)