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November is beauty advent calendar season and this is the year you should finally join the wait lists.
The hysteria around beauty advent calendars has reached fever pitch.
Over 55,000 signed up for the launch of MAC’s Box of Tricks Advent Calendar, €155, filled with 24 miniature and full sizes cult beauty favourites including Velvet Teddy and Ruby Woo lipstick. The Boots No7 advent calendar famously garners hundreds of thousands of sign-ups, so much so that this year they’ve created two. If you’re not in-store the day the Jo Malone advent calendar launches, you haven’t a hope, and the Charlotte Tilbury one is as hard to get a hold of as an affordable house.
Why are we all losing the plot for expensive miniature beauty products? When did the humble €5 Tesco chocolate advent calendar, created for children, get replaced with a luxurious box filled with miniscule hot cloth cleansers for adult women?
Well, if you’re wondering that, it’s because you’ve never allowed yourself the luxury of a beauty advent calendar. The trick is to get it in November before it’s sold out, then treat yourself every single day in the run up to Christmas so you can emerged a fully smoothed and moisturised woman with a new wardrobe of tiny eye creams and face oils. Think of the joy your morning miniature chocolate Santa gave you before your school, or the teeny Rudolph waiting behind a door for you when you got home. Now, imagine it’s a little tub of Charlotte Tilbury Magic Cream. You haven’t felt the joy of it since Santa left the toy you coloured on the Argos catalogue under the tree.
Your parents will never understand, nor will anyone who washes with a four-in-one cleanser-body wash-shampoo-conditioner. But when you join our cult of tiny cosmetics, you’ll understand that it’s because they’ve never experienced the delight of being surprised by finding a little vial of Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair.
Most come with full size gems, but the sample sizes are never a disappointment – you’ll get a year out of a miniature lip balm or face oil and nothing will make you feel more put together than when you have to take a carry-on on a flight and find you have a wardrobe of little serums and dinky mascaras to fit in your plastic bag.
Best of all is the opportunity to explore what’s new in the world of beauty and speed dating through the trends. Have you been dedicated to the same blah moisturiser all your life, in fear of trying something new in case it disappoints? Or you’ve never felt the urge to try an exfoliating cleanser? Sure, perhaps the green eyeshadow isn’t for you, but you might just find that a make-up melting cleansing balm is the holy grail that’s been missing from your life. It’s like getting the opportunity to do a Supermarket Sweep of the Beauty Hall.
Of course, they are highly unneeded but what is deeply necessary is that this year, you give yourself some kindness. You deserve mini daily treats, and true self-love is finding the little Diptyque candle you’ve always wanted to buy behind a door or trying out soap brows or Olaplex.
We’ve rounded up the best of the bunch to buy now here. Don’t hold out too long.
Photography by Charlotte Tilbury.