The Best Beauty Collaborations of 2016

By Renée Tse

Date December 13, 2016

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When it comes to beauty news, nothing gets us more excited than an upcoming beauty collab announcement. Whether it’s with a pop icon, a designer or a fictional character (looking at you, Hello Kitty), hearing that one of our fave brands is teaming up with [insert someone amazing] for a new line of products is like being a kid in a candy store. We want them all.

Sure, there were some anti-climatic ones (ahem, Kylie Jenner x Khloe Kardashian), but overall, we saw some pretty mind-blowing partnerships in 2016. For example, Victoria Beckham and Estée Lauder and Gwen Stefani and Urban Decay. Two of our fave multi-hyphenated power women took the beauty industry by storm with their much-anticipated limited-edition collections. Then there were some unexpected collabs that launched beautiful packaging like Caudalie and Jason Wu‘s mist and the Japanese-meets-Korean beauty collab by Shu Uemura and Kye. But if there ever was a competition for the most collabs, M.A.C. would take the crown, year after year. The cosmetic brand is the king of collabs (they pump out a new collab every other week). While we beauty junkies have seen some incredible collabs in the past, 2016 may be the best year yet, with MUAs, photographers and A-list celebs (see: Caitlyn Jenner and Mariah Carey) dipping their toes into the beauty world.

With 2017 just around the corner, we look back at our fave beauty collaborations of the year. 2017, we can’t wait to see how you’re going to top 2016, because with this past year’s line-up, it’s not going to be easy.