Surrey Homes | SH40 | February 2018 | Wedding supplement inside

Beauty
The Velvet
Collection, £19
Perfume Society
perfumesociety.org
Birchbox (birchbox.co.uk) declares itself to be the UK’s No.1
beauty box, and has tapped right into the current buzz for
‘personalisation’, via a questionnaire which identifies your
beauty issues and your style (are you a fashion-forward beauty?
Classic? Adventurous?). Then for £10 a month, you’ll receive
targeted samples, and get to pick one full-size product.
You can start with just one, no-commitment box, right
through to £110 for a yearly subscription (so that means
one box free). The brands to expect? There are dozens,
from Balance Me skincare through to Benefit via Paul & Joe
and Percy & Reed (the portfolio is listed on their site).
Latest in Beauty (latestinbeauty.com) offers the chance to
build your own box – you choose exactly which and how
many products you’ll receive each month, after browsing their
selection of 200+ treats for face, body, hair. Simply choose
your favourite products and it’s £9 a month for the Beauty
Novice (three products), £15 for the six-product Enthusiast
level, and £18 for the Beauty Guru, all with free p&p.
Latest in Beauty also do some fantastic collaborations
– from the Britain’s Next Top Model box (destined to
thrill a make-up obsessed teenager) through to the Good
Housekeeping Beauty Edit, featuring 12 of the stalwart
magazine’s beauty faves. These boxes are individually priced
(the value of the Top Model box is £120, for just £30).
If you’re more drawn to natural products, you might
want to check out the LoveLula Beauty Box– £13.95 a
month (recurring), focusing entirely on the organic and
natural brands featured on the lovelula.com website.
One recent box contained a full-size of Madara Smart
Rescue Cream (worth £31 alone), along with a fullsize
Inika lipstick, a Laidbare moisturiser, shampoo
and conditioner from The Seaweed Bath Company and
a sample of REN’s talked-about Perfect Canvas primer
(a brilliant new silicone-free under-make-up base).
If you tend towards upscale products, check out the highly
rated luxe box option, Cohorted (cohorted.co.uk). Very glossy
and stylish-looking, the boxes themselves are black, satinfinish
objects of beauty, finished with a hand-tied bow – as
you’d really want from a subscription of £35 a month, frankly.
As an example, their Christmas selection had a value of
£90 – and included a Cargo Emerald City Palette (12 wearable
eyeshadows), either a Huda Beauty Lip Strobe or a Tarte
Glossy Lip Paint (you couldn’t specify which), Eyeko’s fab
Skinny Liquid Eyeliner, and a Becca Shadow & Light Brow
Contour Mousse, another great find. They put together a
very slick online publication to go with each of their monthly
box editions – and also offer special edition themed boxes,
such as ‘The Perfect Thank You’ or ‘My Little Treat’.
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Mintd (mintdbox.com) is the other alternative, at the
luxury end of the scale – voted ‘most expensive but also most
luxury and premium’, in one newspaper review. At £70 a
month, they’re not kidding. Again, you can opt to create a
‘personalised beauty profile’, so Mintd can tailor products to
you. But slightly defeating the object of the exercise, I’d say,
you actually get full sizes (or super-deluxe sizes) of all the
products, which could be a fast-track to a cluttered bathroom
shelf or make-up bag. And while the value of the box of the
items is impressive (£171 for a recent edition), surely the point
of a beauty box is to let you have just enough of a product to
make up your own mind about whether you’d want a full-size?
Last, but not least, if fragrance is your thing, may I suggest
The Perfume Society’s boxes, from the website/hub for scentlovers
which I founded myself (perfumesociety.org)? We offer
monthly themed boxes such as Latest Launches (talkedabout
new scents), or The Velvet Collection, showcasing
some of perfumery’s most opulent creations and seasonal
themes such as the Travel Edition and Beautiful Blossoms.
The Perfume Society boxes are completely unique, being
entirely devoted to perfumes (although we do add a couple
of beauty ‘extras’ to each box, as a gift from us). We feature
fragrances from niche and independent names which thrill
die-hard perfumistas, such as Atkinsons, Map of the Heart and
the hot new brand Floral Street, along with well known names
like Lalique, Prada, Issey Miyake, Annick Goutal and more.
There are bespoke boxes produced for us by perfume houses
themselves, from Ormonde Jayne through to Escentric Molecules
and Shay & Blue, plus discovery boxes specially for men.
Shopping without leaving the comfort of your armchair?
A way to ensure you never again buy a moisturiser or a
perfume that doesn’t suit your skin, or a lipstick that doesn’t
flatter your skintone? What’s not to love about that?
The January Box,
£10/ month
Birchbox
birchbox.co.uk