As little kids, many of us pictured 2025 as a year we'd be able to travel to our salon appointments in flying cars, where robots would cut and color our hair. That Jetsons-esque vision of the future hasn't panned out quite yet. Still, it doesn't mean we don't see incredible, once-unthinkable innovation happening every day, especially in the beauty sphere. The 2025 Readers' Choice Awards Breakthrough winners represent the coolest and most disruptive technology coming out of the beauty industry. They also show us that you, dear Allure readers, really want products that make your daily beauty routine simpler.

Take, for instance, the Dyson Supersonic Nural Hair Dryer, a smart blow-dryer featuring technology that remembers your styling settings and adjusts the temperature automatically if it gets too close to your scalp. Or the Glow Recipe Watermelon Glow Niacinamide Hue Drops in Sun Glow that combines a potent skin-care serum with a complexion-enhancing bronze tint to get you glowing in seconds, and even glowier over time. The Hero Mighty Patch Body patches are designed so you can slap one on before spin class and treat bacne during your sweat sesh. And the Makeup By Mario SoftSculpt Bronzing & Shaping Serum features nifty packaging that transforms the product from an all-over liquid bronzer to a more targeted contour with a click and a twist.

Want to learn more about these trailblazing products that thousands of your fellow Allure readers deemed revolutionary for their beauty routines? Keep reading to hear from top experts in the biz on what makes these launches true breakthroughs—and how they might offer a glimpse into the future of beauty.

Be sure to check out our other 2025 Readers' Choice categories, like skin and makeup, to see if your favorite products made the cut.

All the Winning Products:

• The skin winner: Glow Recipe Watermelon Glow Niacinamide Hue Drops in Sun Glow, $35
• The body winner: Hero Mighty Patch Body, $15
• The makeup winner: Makeup by Mario SoftSculpt Bronzing & Shaping Serum, $36
• The hair winner: Dyson Supersonic Nural Hair Dryer, $499

Readers' Choice Awards 2025 Breakthrough Winners:

The skin winner: Glow Recipe Watermelon Glow Niacinamide Hue Drops in Sun Glow

Lots of makeup products contain skin-care ingredients, but in most cases, the concentration of those ingredients is not enough to have any real impact on your skin in the long term. Glow Recipe Watermelon Glow Niacinamide Hue Drops flip that script, taking the brand's best-selling Dew Drops and blending it with a golden-bronze tint. The result is a makeup-infused skin-care formula that gives you an immediate glow and improves skin's tone and texture in the long run.

Inspired by TikTok users mixing Dew Drops with their bronzer, the Glow Recipe founders briefed both their skin-care and their makeup labs on creating a "niacinamide-based serum with a sprinkle of bronze," says cofounder Sarah Lee. The submission from the skin-care lab won. "It's a serum first and foremost, so the skin-care aspect had to be perfect," she adds. The formula contains niacinamide and hyaluronic acid—ingredients found in the original—as well as Centella asiatica. Also known as cica or tiger grass, the plant-based ingredient is "high in antioxidants to assist in the prevention of free-radical damage to the skin," says cosmetic chemist Amanda Lam. "It can also aid in reducing inflammation and improving dull skin."

The result is a really nice blend of hydrating and soothing ingredients. "The combination of the three is what's great," says Mona Gohara, MD, a board-certified dermatologist in Hamden, Connecticut. "The niacinamide brightens, the centella soothes, and the hyaluronic acid hydrates." Lam calls out additional humectants on the ingredients list— glycereth-26, glycerin, and propanediol—that attract moisture into the skin and contribute to that "plump, dewy look" you get immediately after applying the serum.

The real feat of the Hue Drops is that even though it comes in two illuminating shades—Sun Glow, a golden bronze, and Rosy Glow, a pale pink—anyone can wear it since it's missing a traditional complexion base. "Normally, complexion products contain [a base of] titanium dioxide (a white pigment) to increase opacity," says Lam. But in the Hue Drops, the base itself is completely transparent. "The formula just uses effect pigments to lightly add color and shimmer without creating too much opacity, which is why it works across a wide variety of skin tones," says Lam. (It contains the tiniest trace of titanium dioxide, but not enough to look white or chalky on skin.)

The end result is a serum that can be worn alone, mixed in with your foundation, or as a highlighter for a glistening (never greasy) finish. "For someone who loves being tan but is scared of sun damage and can't commit to always self-tanning, the Hue Drops were made for me," says Allure's Angela Trakoshis. "The tinted formula gives a buildable glow, while leaving my skin super hydrated."

Hero Mighty Patches are beloved for their ability to treat pesky breakouts, but it would take an entire box of 36 to successfully target body acne in one go. That's why, in 2024, the brand set its sights on creating patches for the neck down. However, this wasn't just a cut-and-paste job. Due to the significant differences between body and facial acne, the team went back to the drawing board. "Body skin is thicker; in fact, back skin is some of the thickest on the body," says Dr. Gohara. Then there's the issue of friction and sweat. "Tight clothes, backpacks, athletic gear, they can all cause friction and lead to breakouts," she adds. "Plus, the body is just sweatier than your face."

Taking these factors into consideration, as well as the obvious issue of the skin on your body covering more surface area, Hero got to work. It took over a dozen tries—and a little arts and crafts—to design the perfect patch that wouldn't peel off when you moved. "We started by cutting out different shapes to find what would curve and flex with your body, and we found out pretty early on that [the patch] needed to have notches," says Samantha Drake, senior manager of global new product innovation at Hero.

Once that was settled, the team had to figure out the exact shape and placement of the notches so the patch would stay in place whether you rolled over in your sleep or played right-back in a soccer match (which Drake did during testing). "We all tested the patches while working out," Drake says. "We wanted to know that they could be worn on any area of the body, and during different activities." From my own personal experience, it stayed in place during both an hour-and-a-half-long ballet class (the epitome of friction and sweat) and a particularly challenging Peloton spin class (the epitome of fun and sweat, courtesy of Cody Rigsby).

The final patch is a long rectangle with curved notches along the corners. While the shape is new and patent-pending, the hydrocolloid material is the same as Mighty Patch The Original (and the rest of the range). Hydrocolloid patches protect blemishes, suck out oil and bacteria, and keep the area moist to promote healing, Dr. Gohara explains. The fact that Mighty Patch uses pure hydrocolloid is a big selling point for her and Lam. "Hydrocolloids work perfectly on their own to protect the skin," says Lam. "They don't need additional ingredients to promote this benefit." In that sense, the Body Patch represents two sides of the beauty coin—a back-to-basics and a cutting-edge approach to tackling the hard-to-tackle issue of body breakouts.

The makeup winner: Makeup by Mario SoftSculpt Bronzing & Shaping Serum

We ask a lot of our bronzers. We want them to sculpt our cheekbones, warm our skin tones, and give us a just-got-back-from-vacation glow, all while being easy to use and as natural-looking as possible. Very few formulas check every box, but the liquid bronzer perfection that is Makeup by Mario SoftSculpt Bronzing & Shaping Serum certainly does—and then adds boxes we didn't know we needed.

What started as a passion product for makeup artist Mario Dedivanovic, who "always loves to look 'kissed by the sun,'" says Rasa Gardiner, the senior director of global education at Makeup by Mario, has become a best seller that attracts fans across the beauty spectrum. "It unites artists and consumers because it's the product we've all been dreaming about," says makeup artist Georgina Graham, who not only wears it every day but also keeps it in the kit she takes backstage and on set. "It's versatile, easy to apply, and gives you the healthy glow you wish you always woke up with."

The product's serum-like texture makes it nearly impossible to mess up, while its unique, water-based emulsion with soft-focus pigments gives the SoftSculpt Bronzing & Shaping Serum its second-skin finish, says Gardiner. Hyaluronic acid and vitamin E ensure the formula feels good and provide your skin with a kick of hydration. "Hyaluronic acid acts like a sponge, holding up to a thousand times its weight in water," says Dr. Gohara. Vitamin E, she explains, is one of the most powerful antioxidants that protects our skin against free radicals and prevents the formation of fine lines, sagging, dullness, and discoloration. "But it can also lock in moisture."

While the bronze fluid glimmers in the bottle, you won't see a speck of glitter on your skin. That's because the formula is infused with a complexion-enhancing pearl pigment that just leaves skin looking "luminous and supernatural," says Gardiner. The secret is minuscule pigments. "Because of the small particle size of the pigments, on skin, the pearlescent liquid just appears as a sheen," says Lam. The result is a (synthetic) suntan in a bottle, in a shade range that leans neutral, not orange-y bronze. "Mario believes in having this beautiful neutrality to his shades—not too cool, not too warm—to get the most natural effect possible," says Gardiner.

And, proof that you don't get to be a world-famous makeup artist without paying attention to the details, the packaging has a dual applicator. There's a pump for dispensing the liquid bronzer, but you can twist it off to reveal a doe-foot applicator for contouring. "This bronzer always leaves me looking glowy," says Allure's beauty closet associate Edward Horgan, who appreciates the applicator options. "I can dot it on with the doe foot for a softer look or use the pump to put it on the back of my hand and build it up for a fuller-coverage, high-glam effect."

The hair winner: Dyson Supersonic Nural Hair Dryer

Dyson changed the blow-dryer game in 2016 with its Supersonic dryer. But after nine years of chatting with professional hairstylists, the company realized it could make improvements. Fast forward to 2025, and we see the results of the gargantuan amount of data collected and some ingenious engineering work, including using technology not typically found in beauty tools, to make the Supersonic Nural one of the most personalized dryers on the market.

The Dyson Supersonic Nural offers three new core features, all the result of itty-bitty sensors built into the dryer. The first is its "pause detect" function that slows down the hairdryer's air flow when you put it down. To do this, engineers at Dyson added an "accelerometer," which detects a change in speed and is found in devices like your laptop and your phone, explains Murray McKendrick, senior design engineer at Dyson. Once the accelerometer senses that movement has stopped, it automatically deactivates the heater and lowers the speed of the dryer. "I love that it won't blow off the table or blow someone's napkin away at the salon," says New York City-based hairstylist Devin Toth. I personally love that it won't burn me if I wedge it between my legs as I struggle to unclip sections of hair.

According to Toth, a lot of blow-dryers are made so they don't get hot enough to hurt your scalp, "but then they're not a great blow-dryer," he says. The Nural's new "scalp protect" feature addresses this by cooling down as it gets closer to your head, thanks to an infrared light that measures the distance between the blow-dryer and your scalp. (The sensor is called a "time of flight" sensor and is often used in robot guidance and vehicle tracking.) "This dryer is the best of both worlds," adds Toth. "It's an effective blow-dryer, but when it comes close to your scalp, it cools off."

The Nural can also remember your specific temperature and air-flow settings for each of its five attachments. The exact technology involves magnetic fields (McKendrick says it took a while for even the engineers to get their heads around how to make it work in the hairdryer), but all you need to know is that each attachment is programmed with recommended presets. You can change the settings, and the dryer will remember those adjustments every time you click on that specific attachment. It makes the Nural an especially personalized blow-dryer and super-efficient, something Allure's senior editor Jesa Marie Calaor loves about the tool. "It dried my thick, wavy hair in four minutes and 50 seconds, and my hair came out so smooth,” she says.

All these functions not only make styling simpler for professionals and consumers alike, but they also make using the dryer "kinda fun," adds Toth. "I know that sounds silly, but having a blow-dryer that's fun to use is going to have you styling your hair more than with one that's clunky and annoying."