The Lucky beauty department receives bags and bags of unsolicited products—mascara, self-tanner, perfume, dog shampoo, you name it—every day by messenger, from every beauty company you've ever heard of (and dozens more that you haven't). It sounds glamorous—our coworkers are incredulous when we complain—but until you've seen a beauty assistant slog "Apocalypse Now"-like through her own cubicle, you can't possibly understand how maddening the deluge can become. Despite all this, we are always especially thrilled to death to receive candles. All four of us hoard them in nooks on our already cluttered desks like squirrels stash nuts, only occasionally taking them home to burn.  If you love a candle as much as we do, check out Illume Candle's new online boutique: The whole month of October, you can enter to win one of three Room Therapy Collection candle sets, which include incredibly appealing scents like Sandalwood Hinoki and Black Amber & Lavender.

Regular Lucky readers have doubtlessly observed that we've got a little obsession in the makeup department. Still, when you really look at beauty director Jean Godfrey-June's computer, and start to register the sheer number of lip balms and glosses lined up below the screen, you begin to appreciate the magnitude of her possibly clinical disorder—in much the way that Shelley Duvall's panic escalated at she leafed through the hundreds of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" pages in The Shining.

"I do use them all," Jean insists (defensively). Currently #1 in rotation is something called Baume Baiser from Lancôme; the balm itself is made of a mysteriously springy, marshmallow-like material that smells like a French pastry.

There are people who can truly relax in salon chairs, but beauty assistant Cat Marnell is not one of them.  Unfortunately, highlighting her long, thick hair takes two hours minimum from start to finish. Cat typically passes the time hoarding all of the good magazines so no one else can have any, squirming despondently beneath her smock, and earnestly soliloquizing on Lindsay Lohan. But at Bumble and Bumble's downtown Manhattan salon, which is on the seventh floor overlooking the Hudson River, she did nothing but stare out the window for the duration of the appointment and left feeling as if she'd had a massage and a Reiki session, so peaceful was she.  The highlights were fabulous, too.  If you're in the New York City area, you must check it out—the view must be seen to be believed.

"This weekend I moved apartments in epically miserable fashion—boxes, grime, a crew of very un-burly (though willing) friends, a trek to unknown hinterlands to procure a shuddering, seemingly possessed UHaul, and—the final indignity!—a brand-new sofa that was exactly 3 inches too big to fit through the front door. To escape further heavy lifting, my two fellow-beauty-editor friends decided to organize my desolate new bathroom. Being editors, they edited—and a good thing, too: seven boxes into packing my toiletries I realized product ruthlessness is not exactly my strong point. They furiously spritzed and sampled, weeded out the 3/4-useds and the not-so-attractives; I gritted my teeth and looked away. The results make me very happy: Gleaming golden clusters of L'Artisan Parfumeur and Miller Harris perfumes (see picture below), neat lines of serum organized by ascending height. I did fish one thing out of the trash after they left, however: A grimy bottle of Stila hair powder in Créme Bouquet. Ok, maybe it's not the prettiest at this point, but there's a reason it's been grabbed so often. It gives hair incredible body and texture; you work in a dime-sized amount close to your scalp—it absorbs oil so you can completely skip washing your hair (crucial right now, as I still can't find my shower curtain)—plus the soapy/flowery/spicy/subtle scent works brilliantly as perfume too."

It was after Labor Day; who could blame Cat Marnell for forgetting her sunscreen on a trip to the beach? Her friends-who-will-look-60-when-they're-40 had nothing but a tropical oil spiked with SPF 4. The hideous sunburn that resulted required serious treatment; here, the regimen that worked: aspirin (brings down inflammation), calming lotions (like Kate Somerville's goatsmilk cream) and concealer (Mally's Cancellation Concealer).

While these miraculous shower gels—they leave SPF on your skin after they're rinsed off, crazy as it might seem—are not enough to protect a person all day at the beach, they do give you a head start. And they're better than nothing for the truly derelict.

Freeze 24/7 Ice Shield

By142 Body Wash

We started using these mists during the summer—Condé Nast laudibly goes into "energy conservation mode" when the temperature rises past a certain very-warm degree and nonessential lighting is turned off, the AC seems to blast at about half-power, and we all take off our hideous "office cardigans." The face spritzes were wildly appealing during these warmer moments, but we remain fixated on them—particularly good for that 4pm I-have-no-energy-give-me-cupcakes slump:

Lauren Hutton Soft Cover Wet Foundation
Dior HydrAction Deep Hydration Refreshing Spray
Burt's Bees Cucumber Complexion Refreshing Mist
Sonya Dakar Aromasol Mist