How Does the Strategist Hall of Fame Work?
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We write about hundredsof products across dozens of categories on the Strategist every week. While we stand behind all of them, Strategist Hall of Fames are a collection of the best, most-stood-behind products in each category (kitchen, sleep, travel, to name a few) that have appeared on our website. Editors review our extensive archive and independently select our favorite products to feature, cherry-picking the already cherry-picked things to highlight the items that stand out from the pack and, in some cases, just deeply delight us.
We update our Hall of Fames at least once a year. Some items remain in the Hall of Fame year after year because they continue to be the best of the best. Others are new — new products launched that year or new-to-us products that became Strategist favorites.Each of the products featured in a Strategist Hall of Fame has previously been written about on our site.
Below are all of our Hall of Fame collections and how they are made.
Best in Class is what we call our series of carefully chosen, rigorously vetted flagship shopping guides (you can read about the Best in Class methodology here). We have over 400 of them, designed to help you find exactly what you’re looking for, from bidets and protein powders to sleeper sofas and headphones. Every Best in Class has a best overall product — the item we’d recommend to anyone who wants the very best version of that product. And all of those Best in Class winners can be found here, in our Best in Class Hall of Fame.
There are 13 parents on staff at the Strategist with kids ranging in age from newborn to teenage. Collectively, we have wrangled a lot of school-supplies lists year in and year out. Every August, to help make it a little easier to get your own students ready for the upcoming academic year, we round up 100 essential items in every category — from the best backpacks and indestructible sneakers to the water bottles we buy on repeat — all Strategist approved.
Our team of beauty writers and editors spend countless hours interviewing dermatologists and makeup artists, decoding ingredients lists, and testing products on our own faces and hair to find the absolute best products for every step of your routine. And once a year, they pore over our vast archive of beauty stories to curate the Beauty Hall of Fame — the 100 best beauty products to take care of every inch of our body.
All year long, we talk to college students and recent graduates about the items that make their dorms feel like home (and bigger than they really are). We test twin XL bedding and mattress toppers, microwaves and communal shower shoes, and group-friendly card games. And ahead of college move-in day each year, we round up the 100 best of all of those items (and more) in our Dorm Hall of Fame. Consider it the ultimate dorm packing list.
We regularly surface hundreds of excellent drugstore items, from the expert-recommended face washes and toothpastes in our Best in Class stories to the Epsom salts and mascaras famous people recommend to us in our “Celebrity Shopping” column. We’ve rounded up all the 100 best of those items here, and thrown in some other cheap but extremely useful items we wish you could find at CVS or Rite Aid. Welcome to our dream drugstore.
We curate hundreds of gift guides each year for every possible recipient — brothers and sisters, moms and dads, pilates obsessives and birders, and so much more. The Gift Hall of Fame is a careful curation of the 100 most foolproof gifts that our editors would be pleased to both give and receive, all of which we’ve recommended in one of our many guides. We update the list four times a year with new seasonal picks, ensuring you can find a gift for anyone on your list, any time of year.
Over the years, we’ve found the best, nicest-looking furniture and décor for every corner of your home, as recommended by interior designers, architects, and all-around stylish folks. We’ve sat on hundreds of couches, slept on several hundred sets of sheets, and installed dozens of curtain rods. The 100 most beautiful and functional of each of those items, and many more, is added to our Home Hall of Fame.
We’ve covered just about every kitchen tool that exists. We’ve found the sheet pans that last longer than a year or two, the knives professional chefs use themselves, and the one-trick-pony gadgets (like garlic mincers and greens strippers) that are actually worth a spot in your crowded drawers. The Kitchen Hall of Fame is all of those worth-it, long-lasting, expert-recommended items we’d have in our ideal kitchen.
Good lighting makes everything better, which is why we take the task of finding the most functional and stylish table lamps, desk lamps, floor lamps, overhead lights, and lightbulbs seriously. We’ve tried hundreds of them and asked experts about thousands more, and all of our (and their) favorites for every space and style have earned a spot in our Lighting Hall of Fame.
The perfect men’s wardrobe has well-made, well-fitting, timeless items for every occasion — and ideally ones that can do double-duty. The Menswear Hall of Fame has 100 pieces of clothing with all of the above, all tested by our staff or recommended by men whose taste we trust. There are chinos you can wear to the office and for slightly more formal events, simple white tees that look good on their own and layered under button-ups, and rain boots that last forever.
The Strategist is full of stationery nerds — and so is its slate of contributors and tasteful (and famous) experts. So we have a lot of thoughts on the best pens, notebooks, planners, and more. And as office (and home office) workers ourselves, we’ve tried our fair share of comfortable chairs and standing desks. In the Office Hall of Fame, we select the 100 items that would make up our dream home office.
Since 2018, the Strategist staff has slept on more than three dozen mattresses and over 20 types of linen sheets, asked all sorts of people how they get their best sleep, and found sound machines, sleep masks, and magnesium sprays that help us get to the REM stage faster. Our Sleep Hall of Fame culls the best of that deep archive, rounding up the things every kind of sleeper needs to attain conked-out bliss.
Our toy expert, senior writer Liza Corsillo, spends all year finding and playing with the best toys for kids of every age. She attends toy fairs, talks to child-development experts, parents, and teachers about the stuff they like as much as kids do, and puts the newest toys to the test with her own son. The toys she (and experts and kids) like best earn a spot in the Toy Hall of Fame, her yearly roundup of the 100 very best toys.
It’s not just carry-on luggage and personal-item bags but also things that make flying better like neck pillows and eye masks, things that make being a tourist better like portable chargers and cute walking shoes, plus gear and gadgets for every other part of travel. Whether you’re taking an international flight or a weekend road trip, the Travel Hall of Fame has everything you’ll need on your packing list.
Ever since the beginning of the Strategist, we’ve asked those with enviable, discerning, and exceptional tastes about the clothes they’re buying for themselves. We’ve also tried on more T-shirts, pull-on pants, and swimsuits than we can count. And every year, we round up the best, most essential of all the women’s clothes we’ve recommended in our Womenswear Hall of Fame, our dream closet.
To build the ultimate wedding registry, we comb through our archives for both practical and delightful items that suit couples of all kinds. We start with the Best in Class kitchen, bedding, and other home goods you’ll find on most registries, then sprinkle in pieces from our ”Steal My Registry” series, where we hear from people with good taste about what they registered for for their weddings. The result is this collection of 100 beautiful, functional items for any home and any couple.
There are many seasoned parents on the Strategist staff who alone have tested hundreds of car seats, pumping bras, high chairs, strollers, cribs, and more. And there are many other seasoned parents we’ve called upon over the years to find out how they might revise their own baby registries now that they know better. We’ve combined that collective experience (along with recommendations from many an expert) to create this list of the 100 most essential items for any new parent. Feel free to build your entire registry straight from our picks.
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- The Best Things Strategist Editors Have Bought This Year (So Far)
- 63 Things You Should Never Buy Full Price
- The Strategist Fall 100
The Strategist is designed to surface useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. Every product is independently selected by our team of editors, whom you can read about here. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change.
