These women are ‘real’ beauty experts and use their insider knowledge to identify the most innovative products.” For the first time, a two-step voting process will determine the industry’s highest honors: CEW members will first determine the finalists in each of the 34 categories.

The CEW Board will later vote to determine the winners. Both ballots, for finalists and winners, will be cast electronically and tabulated by Ernst & Young LLP. The Metropolitan event allowed approximately 4,000 CEW members the opportunity to touch, smell and test products.

There were so many categories of beauty products (anything imaginable) vying to be selected the “best of the best” and the most innovative new beauty launches in 2005!

There were fragrances for men and women, bath, lotion, skin care, hair care, nail care (whew!) and so many more! Once in the building and the initial shock of where do I start wears down, I made a plan to start over by my favorite category, makeup, and then to work my way around to each section.

This was still amazingly hard because here again were many of my favorite names, Chanel, Bobbi Brown, M.A.C, Yves St. Laurent, and then there so many new companies with shiny baubles that caught my attention.

I was over stimulated! So finally I got a grip and focused on walking down each aisle (glad I checked my coat!) letting the sales reps show me what they had in their line-ups.

This would take dedication, but I’m a trooper and I was up for the challenge!! I met some astounding people through those aisles and one of them was Mally Roncal for Mally beauty products. She is so inviting and charming and enthusiastic.

I made it successfully through all of the makeup and by the end I had a makeover! I had a glowing experience with Moonglow, the 24 karate gold flakes had my skin radiating with just that sample voila! Next up is skincare. I love creams and anything that will make me soft and cozy, so again I had to collect my train of thought and concentrate. Focused - - let’s go!

Designer names and family names all convened in the same rows. Luxurious eye creams to take the years away, hand creams to make you soft and smooth; Aveeno, L’oreal Paris collagen filler, Prevage, Crabtree & Evelyn, to name a few. One of the standouts in body cream for me was the formula from grassroots body.

It has apricot and grape seed oil that smell absolutely delicious and leave you so smooth. For men they had a select amount from top names like John Varvatos and his SKIN collection featuring serums and treatments for him.

With a plethora of products (500 new products) to choose from, the members of the C.E.W are only allowed to choose one for each category. Wow! Good luck! 2006 CEW Beauty Awards finalists were announced on Friday, March10th. A gala red-carpet event, the 2006 CEW Beauty Awards ceremony will take place on Friday, May 5th at the Waldorf-Astoria, where a star-studded line-up of presenters will announce the winning products. The 2006 CEW Beauty Awards are sponsored by Allure, Givaudan, Arcade Marketing, FreshLook Color Contact Lenses, Restylane, CVS/pharmacy, Crest Whitestrips Renewal, Lalique, WWD Beauty Biz, KraftWorks, The Royal Promotion Group, Suite K, Vidicom, Max Custom Media, Scienceuticals, HBA, The Benchmarking Company, Ma Cher, Engelhard, and DDG.

For more information Contact:
Liz Kaplow / Stephanie Huang Kaplow Communications/ Phone: 212.221.1713