My 12 Best Beauty Finds Of The Year

Discontinued lipstick shades are, infuriatingly, par for the course these days, so Code8’s service at its Burlington Arcade store is a real godsend. I didn’t expect it to be so successful at replicating my favourite red from a long-demised brand but, despite only having a stump to work with, they managed to cook up the exact same shade. You sit at the bar and either hand over your sample or discuss which unique colour you want (and what texture – matte or satin). Your make-up artist will start mushing and mixing pigments before your eyes, and you’ll be testing and adjusting until you have exactly what you want. The waxes are then melted, poured into a mould and fed into a machine that produces your perfect lipstick, which you get in its own box with a little bow. It’s a 45-minute experience and a fab thing to do with your friends.

Available at CODEEIGHT.COM

Revitalash’s brow mascaras are the best – the super-pigmented inks tint (and set) every hair individually with a glossy transparency that makes them look entirely natural. They don’t budge, fade, clump or go on too heavily, and they condition brows with peptides and oat extracts. The three shades (clear, taupe or brown) come with an additional precision styling brush-and-comb for those who love their high-maintenance brow sculpting.

Available at LOOKFANTASTIC.COM

For the person who has everything, a gemstone-infused (at least, that’s what the name says – I can’t find any amethyst on the ingredients list) toothpaste that makes cleaning your teeth enjoyable. The gently jasmine-and-mint flavoured gel has fluoride and surface stain-removing mild abrasives but more interestingly, it’s tinted a jewel blue. That’s because, like a purple brassy tone-removing shampoo, the pigments in here will neutralise yellow hues for an optical, if temporary, tooth whitening effect, and it really works. It comes with a silver (not real silver sadly) toothbrush and toothpaste squeezer so you can wrench out every last drop.

Available at MAHSA.CO.UK

A rare eyeliner pencil that doesn’t smudge at all (it’s water as well as oil-resistant), despite smoothing on like butter. Et al. uses bio-based materials and earth-friendly ingredients with added skincare benefits, and these pencils – in a whopping ten shades, the latest an eye colour-popping burgundy – are recyclable and compostable, and feature ceramides to care for delicate eye skin. You’ll get loads of use out of them, too: no ultra-thin twist-up or half-sized pencil inside the barrel that only lasts a few weeks!

Available at ETALBEAUTYCOLLECTIVE.CO.UK

I love my original Peep Club heated eye wand so much I have two; their soothing warmth and microvibrations are a balm for burning, dry eyes. But this upgraded one goes one (or, in fact, two) better, adding anti-inflammatory and redness-reducing green and amber LED light frequencies to the collagen-boosting red LED of the original. Used daily, this tiny wand can actually help reduce irritation and rosacea in the eye area while keeping sore eyeballs comfy and hydrated.

Available at PEEPCLUB.CO.UK

This delicate low-foam jelly that purifies skin and dissolves make-up (including eye make-up) with the lightest of touches took skin therapist Debbie Thomas eight years to perfect, and it was worth it. It supports your skin barrier, hydrates and calms inflammation, feels delicious on your skin and is so concentrated that one bottle will last you many months.

Available at CELLIS.COM

If you’ve had your fill of Christmassy woodfire smoke and gingerbread candles, here’s a more original way of capturing winter in scented soy and rapeseed wax. With Hinoki wood, vetiver and sage, it smells cold, fresh and herby, conjuring a frosty woodland floor at dawn’s pale first light. Smelling it, you could almost be there yourself, had you been able to drag yourself out of bed that early.

Available at WILDSMITHSKIN.COM

I can’t get into collagen powders because of their snotty flavour and I find artificially-flavoured options even worse. Because you normally need a daily 10g dose (that’s a lot) for it to work, there is no way to make it undetectable as far as I’m concerned, even in my coffee. So, this breakthrough formula by Wild Nutrition is a find: the sustainably-farmed marine collagen peptides have a weight of only 500 Dalton (the average weight is 2000-6000D, and the higher the weight, the harder it is for the body to absorb), making them so bioavailable that only 3g is needed daily. That does the trick: miraculously, I can’t taste it. The instantly-dissolving dust is spiked with collagen co-factor nutrients essential for their production – and very useful for collagen-deficient ‘menopausals’ like me.

Available at WILDNUTRITION.COM