Best store for makeup
It is said that beauty comes from within. However, everyone knows a girl's gotta wear a little something to make that inner beauty more visible. Sephora is true one-stop shopping. There's makeup, hair products, beauty supplies, and fragrances from the hottest and most classic brands around: Jean Paul Gaultier, Bourjois, Shu Uemura, Sonia Rykiel, and Frederic Fekkai ... the list goes on. You can find every shade of eyeliner in existence next to every size of tweezers ever created. What more could you ask for?

Only one thing: those pesky, fabulous beauty lines available only at certain department stores that aren't always convenient. This is why readers choose Beauty and Main as their other pick: it carries lines such as Laura Mercier, Trish McEvoy, Nars, Paula Dorf, Fresh, and Darphin - lines that otherwise can be difficult to find. Beauty and Main offers a quiet, peaceful environment and plenty of personalized, hands-on help from its staff. It also offers makeup application, private consultations, lessons, and parties for groups of six to nine.

Sephora, multiple locations, www.sephora.com; Beauty and Main, 30 Brattle Street, Cambridge, (617) 868-7171, www.beautyandmain.com.