Allure Announces First-Ever Beauty Blogger Awards Winner

NEW YORK, June 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Allure, the Beauty Expert, today announced the winner of the first-ever Beauty Blogger Awards, sponsored by Revlon. Floridian Shannon Ray was named Allure's 2012 Beauty Blogger of the Year. This honor allows her the opportunity to:

• Display the Allure Blogger of the Year seal on her blog, Gloss and Dirt (glossanddirt.blogspot.com), distinguishing her blog from the 8,000+ blogs related to beauty currently on the Web.
• Serve as a contributor to allure.com's Daily Beauty Reporter blog, which attracts over 10,000 unique visitors a month.
• Be featured in Allure's October Best of Beauty issue, which hits newsstands in September 2012, alongside Beauty Blogger Awards runners-up Bailey Brown (Making up the Midwest - www.makingupthemw.com) and Dovey Kim (Cute and Mundane - www.cuteandmundane.com), and Buzzworthy Blog winner Brooke Pakulski (Blushing Noir - www.blushingnoir.com).
• Attend Allure's Annual Best of Beauty Awards event in New York City, giving her access to leading executives in the beauty industry. She'll also be backstage during a runway show at Fashion Week and receive a tour of the Revlon headquarters and a special preview of Revlon's 2013 line.

Beauty is a $56 billion business—and the beauty-blogging community continues to grow rapidly in size, influence, and engagement.

As Allure honors superior beauty products in the annual Best of Beauty Awards, Allure launched the Beauty Blogger Awards to credential and raise the profile of talented beauty bloggers. Ever since the FTC published guidelines in 2009 governing how bloggers and celebrities are allowed to endorse products, bloggers, along with the reviews they post touting products on their blogs, are held to higher standards. Allure established the Beauty Blogger Awards competition to acknowledge the bloggers who not only exhibit creativity and a strong understanding of the beauty world in their blogs, but also integrity and transparency.

Visit glossanddirt.com to learn more about Shannon Ray and her journey to becoming Allure's 2012 Blogger of the Year. You can view Ray's Beauty Blogger Award challenge submissions here: http://blogger-awards.allure.com/blogger/27. Ray was one of 15 beauty bloggers selected out of hundreds of applicants from across the country to compete in the Allure Beauty Blogger Awards. Over the course of five weeks, all 15 contestants competed in weekly challenges where they blogged about a variety of topics. Allure editors and allure.com readers voted for their favorite blog posts each week, and at the end of five weeks, Ray was the top-ranked blogger.

Allure also awarded the title of Most Buzzworthy Blogger to Brooke Pakulski of the blog Blushing Noir (blushingnoir.com). Pakulski's challenge posts as part of the Beauty Blogger Awards were shared the most by allure.com readers on Facebook and Twitter. You can view Pakulski's posts here: http://blogger-awards.allure.com/blogger/25.

About Allure
Allure, the Beauty Expert, is an insider's guide to a woman's total image. Allure investigates and celebrates skin care, hair, makeup, fragrance, and fashion with objectivity and candor, and places appearance in a larger cultural context.

SOURCE Allure