What’s your favourite Christmas custom? Decorating the tree? A trip to see the lights? Hanging up stockings, perhaps?
Regular readers will know that I’m not a huge fan of Yule. My treat to myself next week will be a solo expedition to see Lesley Manville in Oedipus – hardly festive japes.
However, there is one tradition that does spark joy for me and that is Inspire’s annual beauty awards (along with – I admit it – the suitably dour In the Bleak Midwinter).
I adore this festive ritual, a celebration of glamour in which we sift through the year’s best beauty boosters.
There is no finer feedback on my daubing, spritzing and column-writing year than this collective demonstration of how you feel about it all.
And it appears you love this annual deep dive as much as I do, as you voted in your thousands, delivering your verdicts on the very best in beauty.
After all, whatever myself and the other judges think, it is your opinion that really matters.
The 15 winners of the Inspire Beauty Award’s have been revealed
Your pick of the crop features classic, old and new
Well, the results are in for 2024 – and how utterly fascinating they are.
Your pick of the crop features classics, old and new. Under ‘old’, we have veterans such as Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair (£65 for 30ml, Boots.com), the ‘little brown bottle’ launched in 1982 as the world’s first night serum, and, by day, Clinique Moisture Surge (£26 for 30ml), born six years later, and since spun off into a host of hydrating incarnations.
While, by way of the new, you applaud Bobbi Brown Weightless Skin Foundation (£43) and Glossier Boy Brow Arch (£24, uk.glossier.com), two of the most exciting cosmetic formulas of 2024, both of which hit the shelves in August.
Judge and columnist Hannah Betts
You are strong on high-street heroes such as Vaseline, Batiste, CeraVe, Kiko and Max Factor. Presumably, this is because you, like me, are spending cautiously and looking after your hard-earned cash.
You understand that make-up remover stays on your skin for seconds and is a good product to save on, backing CeraVe Hydrating Cleanser (£12.50 for 236ml, Boots.com) as the winner, closely followed by Garnier Micellar Water (£3.15 for 100ml).
Many of us are still strictly budgeting, knowing that in our bargain dry shampoo, lip salve and cleanser, we’re also buying the best.
That said, yours is a high/low spending philosophy and you also appreciate the morale-boosting impact of acquiring some humdinger at a more indulgent price.
THE WINNERS: IN FULL
Most thrillingly, my beloved Olverum Bath Oil (from £43.50, libertylondon.com) topped the poll. Meaning ‘true oil’, and created by a German pharmacologist and a winemaker in 1931, this venerable aromatherapeutic concoction was once a luxury known only to a select few.
Its precise formula is a fiercely-guarded secret, but acolytes swear by its therapeutic fusion of eucalyptus, juniper, lime, lemon peel, geranium, Siberian fir needle and rosemary to soothe body and soul.
Eight decades after its creation, Mayfair’s Barbers by Royal Appointment, Truefitt & Hill, had been asked to carry a small number of bottles for the Royal Household. Naturally, it never revealed who is the blue-blooded Olverum fan.
Meaning ‘true oil’, Olverum was created by a German pharmacologist and a winemaker in 1931
The Hawksley family, founders of beautiful Belgravia perfumer Les Senteurs, came across Olverum in Truefitt & Hill, buying, then relaunching the brand in 2015. A 250ml flacon (£78, libertylondon.com) should see you through fifty baths. I have my eye on the two for £124 offer at bathandunwind.com, or, rather, I hope the supplier of my Christmas stocking does.
If you’ll allow me a little light trend spotting, your approach to foundation is exemplary. Your winner, Bobbi Brown Weightless Skin Foundation (£43, Boots.com), really is sensational: a 53-shade, ‘real’ skin, no-make-up make-up, managing to look even better at the end of a long day than it did at the beginning. It’s a youth-in-a-bottle wonder. If you are yet to try it, I suggest you invest.
However, the runner up in this category, e.l.f.’s’s Halo Glow Liquid Filter Complexion (£15, Boots.com) is a clever choice too, widely regarded as a dupe for the Charlotte Tilbury Hollywood Flawless Filter (£39, charlottetilbury.com), one of which sells every two minutes. Both are skincare/make-up hybrids, glow boosters providing a dewy, soft-focus effect across 12 shades. You pays your money, you makes your choice.
Whatever this choice, please use your complexion enhancer on top of the Clinique Moisture Surge variant with SPF 25 in it (£28 for 30ml, boots.com) for daily damage protection, swapping it for something with SPF 50 during sunnier months.
You’re also a fan of modish kajal liners, Victoria Beckham and Hildun dominating the eye pencil category with 37 per cent to last year’s winner, Victoria Beckham Beauty Satin Kajal Liner (£32, victoriabeckhambeauty.com), and 46 per cent to this year’s victor, new-broom Hildun Beauty Silk to Set Kajal Liner (£16, hildunbeauty.co.uk).
Who better than Hildun founder, former beauty journalist Suzy Griffin Dunne, to explain what the term means?
Suzy’s independent Irish company, Hildun, was founded in 2022
She told me: ‘Kajal is a traditional eye make-up that originated in ancient Egypt and the Indian subcontinent. It has a soft and silky texture that glides smoothly on the outer and inner lids. It’s great for creating natural, subtle and smoky looks, in addition to defining the waterline. The result is gentle, nourishing and gorgeously richly-pigmented.’
Suzy’s independent Irish company was founded in 2022. She made it her mission to incorporate key features from the most luxurious cosmetics in the world into Hildun, but at more affordable prices.
Your winning £16 Kajal Liners were introduced as part of the brand’s first collection. More shades will be added to the current seven in 2025. Their quality is exceptional, obviously rivalling premium brands. What is more, application is super easy, the pigment gliding effortlessly on, then lasting.
I have Silk to Set in Navy Nights and Immortal Metallic Eyeliner in Silver on as I type and have to keep pausing to admire myself.
The best-selling shades are the browns Pecan and Chocolate, and, as my fellow judge and Hildun champion Ruby Hammer tells us, the industry’s professional arm went wild for them. The royal family’s make-up artist, Hannah Martin, loved the formula so much she joined forces to create her very own Hildun liner, a sister shade to Pecan, ‘Spiced Pecan’ which launched in June 2024 and also became a top-seller.
Reading between the lines, your overall approach to make-up – your aesthetic, if you will – is beautifully bang up-to-date.
You’re happy with a barely-there, naturally-augmented look when it comes to mascara and lips, falling back onto high-street basics Max Factor and rosy-tinted Vaseline.
However, you add definition, artistry and individual flourish with high-tech blusher – ragingly fashionable in 2024 – in the form of Bobbi Brown Pot Rouge for Lips & Cheeks (£32, bobbibrown.co.uk), a famously flattering bestseller.
Leighton Denny nail polish in shade ‘Provocative’
Your other great modernising touch is another of my joys of ’24, Glossier Boy Brow Arch (£24, uk.glossier.com). This new phenomenon is the natural-look dream: with a precision tip for hair-like strokes and flat side to fill gaps, long-lasting, water-, smudge- and hot flash-resistant.
Good news for the overplucked of the Seventies or Nineties eras, it also comes in grey. Proof, were one to require it, that Glossier is not merely a millennial and Gen Z obsession, but for beauty lovers of all ages.
No less reflective of your supreme taste is your penchant for Leighton Denny nail varnish. Mr Denny was the first manicure guru to score an MBE for his great British brilliance. His shades are seriously fabulous: I’ll be wearing the limited-edition Opaque Metallic Varnish in Raspberry Crush (£12.50, leightondenny.com) over Yule.
But, I also relish the ease of his plant-based, brightening treatment, Nail Illuminator Milky Brightening Nail Polish & Base Coat (£14, leightondenny.com) for the chic, ‘no make-up make-up’ nail that took flight this year.
Meanwhile, I insist that you add all our worthy winners to your Christmas list and wish you an extremely beautiful New Year.