What do YOU think are the best beauty bargains of 2023?
Thanks to a boom in stylish budget brands, our make-up bags have never been more affordably chic. So...
AwEll- GROOMEd welcometo this, Inspire’s sixth annual beauty awards, and the second to take place during a cost-of-living crisis. Many of us also struggled through pandemic financial woes, meaning it ’ s a long time since we have felt anything remotely resembling flush.
Money has rarely felt as tight, not least as we stagger into Christmas, all of us busy cutting corners.
But we still need our beauty wares — we will always need their magic. Indeed, I would argue that we crave glamour now more than ever: for cheer , for charm, for screwing up our courage into a ball and plodding Britishly on.
Fortunately, nowhere does budget beauty as brilliantly as Blighty.
In Boots and Superdrug , we have retail giants committed to bringing us the best the industry has to offer at bargain prices.
whether it’s their own brands — such as Boots’ trusty No 7 skincare or Superdrug’s cracking cosmetic newcomer Studio london — or decadesold stalwarts such as Rimmel, Batiste and The Body Shop.
From 1980s colour king Barry M to playful pioneers 3ina ( pro - nounced ‘Mina’), the UK is the place for power pigment costing pennies.
Add supermarket deals — lidl and Aldi included — Amazon offers and international names such as l ’Oreal, Bourjois, Maybelline, Max Factor, CeraVe, Byoma, Garnier, Bioderma, Vichy, Aveeno, e.l.f., and Italian geniuses Kiko Milano, and it’s entirely possible to look , feel and smell as dazzling as if you had spent hundreds.
Many of us will also have subscribed to Beauty Pie, which offers state -of-the-art products without the mark -ups (from £4.95 a month, or try its 60- day free trial, beautypie.com). with the wolf at the door, we are no less chic — but we are more inventive.
To guarantee bang for our buck, we asked three industry giants for their product passions: CEO and founder of the British Beauty Council Millie Kendall OBE; make -up artist and brand owner R uby Hammer MBE; and beauty guru and podcaster Emma Gunavardhana, of The Emma Guns Show.
I have given you my own awardwinners, too: the beauty buys I’ve lived with, loved, and relied on time and time again in 2023, bringing me joy when it felt thin on the ground.
Take a look at our inventory of excellence, cherry- pick for your Christmas stocking, and vote now to be entered into our fabulous prize draw to scoop a selection of our winners.