Doechii’s Controversial Met Gala Look, Infertility Tests, and Fenty’s New Partnership
It was a very busy week.
Hello! I have no intro essay for you today, because my brain is tapped out after a draining combination of Met Gala coverage and efforts to get ahead of my regular work before I attempt to take a week-long vacation starting next Friday. Hopefully the special behind-the-scenes at the Met edition we published on Wednesday and the special Mother’s Day edition that will hit your inbox tomorrow will quench your Allure Substack thirst.
On Brand
OK, I do have one more Met Gala story for you. While Doechii’s ensemble was widely considered one of the best of the night, there was one aspect of the look that raised some eyebrows: a teeny, tiny Louis Vuitton logo on her face, sculpted in a way that made it look like it was a brand burned into her skin. Some people saw it as subversive, others saw it as an uncomfortable misstep on a night that was supposed to be about celebrating Black culture. Jihan Forbes broke down the debate, writing, “Doechii’s beauty look did something last night that a lot of others did not but maybe should have: It started a real conversation.”
Baby Making
Back in 2024, Annie Daly interviewed 30 women who had gone through multiple failed rounds of IVF about their experiences with the process. All of those interviews turned into a thoughtful, if heartbreaking, overview of the realities of IVF, a triumph of modern medicine that comes with a high cost—financially and emotionally. During those interviews, many of the women said they wished they’d done more fertility testing earlier on in the process. A common lament, Daly writes in a new story published Friday, was “If only I’d gotten tested for that at the beginning of the process, rather than years into my journey, it would’ve saved me so much wasted time, energy, and money.” So, she spoke to doctors and patients to find out which tests, beyond the "standard infertility work-up," could be helpful to ask your own care team about. The story is, in my opinion, a must-read for anyone who’s been struggling to get pregnant.
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Alley-Oop
This week, Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin became the official beauty partners of the New York Liberty, a collab that seems made for the Allure team who are big fans of both the WNBA and Rihanna. But what does being a beauty partner of a basketball team mean? Guess you’ll have to read our story to find out.
In Other News
Like I said, we have been deep in the Met Gala trenches, but there are a few other things the Allure team has been buzzing about in our Group Chat Slack channel, like:
The Grand Theft Auto 6 trailers, featuring the game’s first woman protagonist.
How sick we are of brands claiming their body-care products are “shapewear in a bottle.”
Carly Simon’s beauty tips for anyone “tired of looking young.”
This week, I can’t stop talking about…
I feel like I am on a near-constant search to find products that make my hair look better. Better, to me, means thicker and bouncier and shinier and generally just not flat and limp against my head. I have been using this Nécessaire Scalp Serum on and off since it launched in 2022 and after enough rounds of seeing a marked difference in how my hair looks and feels when I’m using it, I finally wrote a review.
Fix it before you leave! "It was as very busy week." xo