The most innovative products of the year offer brand-new ways to get smoother skin, fuller hair, and a better complexion.
Reported by Brooke Le Poer Trench
Living Proof Full Thickening Mousse, $19.50
There's a whole new approach to adding oomph to your hair. Most volumizing products try to hold hair off the scalp with a gluelike ingredient...that falls apart in wind or when you so much as touch it with a brush. This mousse instead contains a flexible polymer (the company worked with MIT researchers to create it) that adds volume through the length of the hair and stays effective—through mussing and fussing—until the next time you shampoo. "The polymer is superflexible, so it gives volume without feeling sticky," says Jim Hammer, a cosmetic chemist. qvc.com
Advanced Home Actives Brazilian Peel Professional Strength Facial Treatment, $78
Glycolic acid peels fight wrinkles and leave skin glowing. But the struggle has always been to find an at-home version that's superstrong—but not so intense that you could risk burning your face off. This peel has a neutralizer—inspired by stomach antacids—that can switch off the acid in its 30 percent glycolic peel (this is high enough that, typically, only professionals use it) within ten minutes of it hitting your skin. In other words, there's basically no way it can irritate. (The key is a double-barreled dispenser that keeps the glycolic solution away from the neutralizer until you hit the plunger.) "The strength of the peel brings a high percentage of glycolic acid to the home market safely," says Amy B. Lewis, clinical assistant professor of dermatology at Yale School of Medicine. "That means a better and faster improvement in skin texture and tone than can be achieved using at-home peels that aren't this strong." sephora.com.
