There’s something strangely comforting about getting ready in a space shared with like-minded people. A place where there’s no pressure to look effortlessly put-together, or expectation that your makeup bag should be perfectly curated with a collection of high-end beauty products.

I’m talking about the girls who choose to start their days at 7am with a gym class, followed by a sturdy kneel in front of a full-length mirror squeezed into a locker room that’s about half the size it needs to be for a gym in the middle of a major city. These aren’t the glamorous moments TikTok has convinced us we need every day. There’s no 30 minutes spent leisurely getting ready in front of a mirror, iced matcha in hand, with a VOGUE Beauty Secrets video playing on the iPad. This is the raw reality of being a working woman in 2026, trying to do it all while simultaneously channelling that inner ‘office siren’ that gets progressively pushed down our feeds the further we progress in our careers.

On this particular morning, I stopped to take a minute for myself for the first time in a while. In my rush to clean up after my class and get ‘presentable’ for a day at the office, I paused to take in the flurry of beauty products scattered around me, each one chosen by women trying to get themselves through the day.

These weren’t the brand-new serums that sit pretty on your vanity, and they weren’t the heirloom-quality fragrances reserved for a night out. These were the trusted, beaten-up and well-loved beauty products that girls had chosen to throw into their everyday work bags and rely on to get them ready for the day.

There’s something genuinely interesting about seeing what women actually use to get ready in a space as crowded, rushed and, let’s be honest, unglamorous as a gym locker room. But that’s exactly why, as a beauty editor, I’m always on the lookout for the products that aren’t just the latest and greatest in beauty, but the ones we actually trust enough to use every day, and that goes beyond what I use, and well into what everyone uses.

Because if there’s one thing we need to start doing as women in 2026, it’s trusting each other’s beauty recommendations. So here’s an honest, raw wrap-up of what I saw the girls at my gym, One Playground, use, and if they’re reading this – Here’s to you.